This forum is intended for the purposes of obtaining advice in relation to benefit claims, tax credit claims, Child Support Agency claims and the National Minimum wage. It is not intended as a sounding board to criticise those receiving benefit, nor to criticise staff who work in the administration of claims, nor a discussion board for benefit politics.

Recent threads have required the intervention of the Site Team and on occasion, restrictions have had to be placed on accounts because of the forum being used as a tool to project abuse directly or indirectly toward administritive staff.

As it states quite clearly in the forum rules in regard to staff of organisations:

Whether you like them or not, they are just doing their job. Please do not refer to these people in any personal insulting or offensive way. They are not the policymakers in their organisations and are only doing a job.

Likewise, abuse toward claimants simply for claiming benefit, will not be tolerated. Claimants come here for advice, often at their most vulnerable. They are entitled to receive advice and support without fear of being abused. Site Team have restricted accounts in the past when attacks on claimants have been undertaken by other members for no reason other than the member claims benefit. Fortunately abuse toward claimants is uncommon on CAG .

CAG is unique in comparison to other benefit forums out there, in that we have both claimants and staff on these forums and we expect both to treat each other decently. We do not have a 'them and us' mentality, and it is this working together approach that has led to success in people receiving their correct entitlements. We will not allow CAG to degenerate like some other benefit forum where threads become an argument between administritive staff and benefit claimants and advice gets lost along the way as the argument takes centre stage.

We will monitor these threads and respond to reported posts as necessery. Members behaving unreasonably toward staff or claimants or otherwise in breach of the forum rules will have restrictions placed on their accounts, and repeat or serious breaches may result in an account ban. We will apply this consistently throughout the benefit forum. Please be advised that nothing has changed, the forum rules are exactly the same as they were before - this thread is to serve as a reminder. As such, no discussion on this will be entered into.

Please also remember that this is not the place to discuss the benefit system in general, or to debate the latest media reports on benefit claimants (Daily Mail for example!) - please post such threads in the bear garden. This forum is about helping people to get what they are legally entitled to. This reminder does not extend to posts about new legislation/policies coming into force which is providing information to benefit claimants.

Thank you

well said

dx

Post to reorder stickies.