The resilience trap: Deepening the ‘risk shift’ in social policy via the crisis and resilience fund

Introduction

On 13 January 2026, the UK government announced the establishment of the Crisis and Resilience Fund (CRF), replacing the Household Support Fund in England. The Household Support Fund, administered by Local Authorities, provided crisis payments for households struggling to pay essential costs such as energy and water bills, food and possibly clothing (see Citizens Advice, 2026). While it retains a strong focus on immediate crisis relief in the form of cash payments and support-in-kind, the CRF also focuses significantly on promoting financial resilience, defined broadly as ‘The ability of individuals to withstand and recover from financial shocks’ (DWP, 2026: 3). Although this ostensibly focuses on sustainable economic wellbeing, resilience has become a ‘technique of welfare governance directed at low-income citizens’ (Donoghue, 2020: 10). Beyond this immediate crisis relief, the CRF embodies the continuation of a ‘risk shift’ from the state on to individuals. This commentary outlines this through a close reading of the Crisis and Resilience Fund: Guidance for local authorities in England (1 April 2026 to 31 March 2029). This risk shift is likely to increase potential vulnerability, could increase administrative burden on both individuals and local authorities, and will contribute to internalising the logics of a financialised social citizenship.

The idea of resilience has become increasingly pervasive in social policy, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon and Anglophone world. This often takes the form of ‘resilience thinking’: applying the ontological and epistemological principles of resilience on to policy problems and solutions (see Donoghue, forthcoming 2026; Joseph, 2013). The attractiveness of resilience in policy areas as diverse as ecology, infrastructure, poverty, and community matters is twofold: it is framed as a highly ‘positive’ concept (who would choose to be not resilient?) and has constructive ambiguity, meaning it can be applied to many different issues with relative ease. Resilience also conforms strongly to the western post-industrial welfare state, which aims not to support people reactively but to provide both soft and hard skills to help people maintain their economic independence in an era of significant uncertainty in the economy, labour market and society, ultimately driving economic growth. This is reflected clearly in the government's latest welfare reform programme, Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working (2025), stating that the current approach to welfare support is ‘driving up economic inactivity and driving down opportunity’ (DWP, 2025: 6).

Resilience has been used as a justification for interventions by the state aimed at changing not just behaviour but also individual subjectivities. I have argued elsewhere that there exists a ‘resilience paradox’: ‘to be resilient requires some degree of material and ontological security’ and yet welfare reforms in recent times ‘demand the most from, and provide the least for, those worst affected by socio-material insecurity’ (Donoghue and Edmiston, 2020: 25). Those who fall foul of this paradox are presented as unable to gain or maintain economic independence and are thus legitimate subjects for intervention. This is the resilience trap. This intervention focuses on internalising the practices of the financialised citizen in an era of asset-based welfare (Dowling, 2017; Adkins et al., 2020) and social investment, in which risk is not mitigated but shifted into more acceptable spheres that facilitate finance-led accumulation (see Donoghue, 2022). The complementarity of resilience thinking is emphasized in the context of an enduring austerity localism: a ‘pro-local’, ‘anti state’ discourse that facilitates ‘roll-back neoliberalism’ (Dagdeviren et al., 2019: 147). In other words, via discourses of empowerment, Local Authorities and local communities become responsibilised for their wellbeing in a context of vanishing resources (Dagdeviren et al., 2019).

Alleviating crisis, building resilience

The CRF ‘has been made available to local authorities in England to support low-income households who encounter a financial shock and to support activity that builds individual and community financial resilience’ (DWP, 2026: 5; emphasis added). There is a conscious continuation of crisis response mechanisms from existing and previous funds; the CRF ‘is not intended to replace existing LWA [Local Welfare Assistance] schemes, which play an important role as established discretionary crisis support mechanisms’ (DWP, 2026: 5). In this sense, the ‘crisis’ component of the CRF is not as novel as the ‘resilience’ component. Indeed, financial resilience itself can in some sense be seen as the heir to New Labour's financial literacy focus, that was incorporated into a broader programme of asset-based welfare, accelerating the financialisation of welfare. New Labour moved away from ‘redistribution of wealth [to] the incorporation of individuals within the mainstream financial system and the opening up of opportunities to enhance financial literacy’ (Finlayson, 2009: 408).

Although the crisis component ensures that families and households are able to access immediate support to stabilise their situations and avoid plunging into crisis, the CRF overall represents the next stage in the continuing deepening of deservingness criteria and responsibilisation placed upon claimants. The implication of the CRF is that although immediate crisis support should not be removed as it is a lifeline, nevertheless those who access such support are in need of further intervention – in this case involving debt advice, budgeting classes, money coaching and so on. Although the crisis component of the CRF is focused on person-centred, trauma-informed responses, and is couched strongly in rights language and the importance of individual circumstances, Local Authorities will be strongly encouraged – if not compelled – to refer claimants to resilience services.

Financial resilience is defined as ‘the ability of individuals to withstand and recover from financial shocks – such as sudden income loss or unexpected expenses. The purpose of building financial resilience is to enable individuals to better manage future financial shocks and reduce the need for crisis support’ (DWP, 2026: 6). Again, the positive connotations of this are axiomatic; the aim is not to simply alleviate immediate crisis, but ensure that people do not fall into further crisis and have the tools to avoid such crises in the future. The language and focus of the approach to resilience contradicts the ethos of the crisis alleviation. This is framed in terms of empowering people to take control of their financial circumstances. Yet, there is a significant literature that demonstrates how the language of ‘empowerment’ often results in responsibilisation (e.g., Dagdeviren et al., 2019; Norton, 2021; Donoghue, 2013). The focus of empowerment/responsibilisation is invariably on individual independence from local or national state supports. This has long term implications because the ontology of resilience posits that the world is too complex to address problems, and individuals must learn to adapt. Thus there is a tacit assumption that households will face further crises, but ideally they should address these without state support.

The guidance states that ‘[b]y strengthening financial resilience among individuals, Authorities empower citizens to better manage financial shocks and mitigate the occurrence, recurrence and escalation of crises’ (DWP, 2026: 7). This is a focus on individual agency without considering material circumstances and conditions. As argued by James and Angsten-Clark (forthcoming, 2026), ‘financial resilience has been narrowly framed as what individuals can do in the event of a financial shock and yet fails to take account of the lived experience of those it purports to help. In this sense, like other policy fields where resilience has been employed, financial resilience appears radical but fails to deliver any real improvement in outcomes’. If this is the case, one can see the inclusion of resilience thinking in crisis responses as a mechanism to shift claimants ‘off the books’, as it were, through a discourse of empowerment (of individuals, households, families, etc.). This process of referring claimants away from immediate support into essentially supporting change in behaviour and perspectives is baked-in to the CRF:

Authorities are expected to use Crisis Payments and Housing Payments as a gateway to wider support. Voluntary, person-centred referrals to Resilience Services are key to the CRF outcomes by connecting Crisis Payments and Housing Payments to the local support landscape. This may include provisions from the Authority, central government or voluntary and community sector organisations. This fosters an environment that builds financial resilience and reduces crisis need. Authorities are expected to use the CRF's Community Coordination strand to support their development of referral pathways (DWP, 2026: 27; emphasis added).

The inclusion of resilience and resilience thinking into the evolution of crisis support at the Local Authority level has instrumental and ideological logics. On the instrumental side, the CRF embodies the ethos of social investment. The inclusion of resilience provides an unambiguous ‘social return on investment’ to the crisis fund. No longer is this a sunk cost that may avoid increasing burden on local and national social security systems by intervening before a crisis deepens further. Rather it can be seen as using immediate crisis funds to ensure the development of productive factors that contribute to economic growth (see Bagadirov et al., 2025: 13). It also links with the specific UK approach to social investment via Social Impact Bonds that are ‘orientated towards producing self-responsibilised, financially literate and economically productive subjects’ (Dowling, 2017: 303).

Resilience as discipline; crisis as the lack of discipline

The CRF implicitly focuses on shifting claimants from the ‘crisis pathway’ to the ‘resilience pathway’ (my words). Ideally, the resilience pathway will funnel claimants into services (in the third sector) that will inculcate the behaviours and practices conducive to financialised citizenship. The highly financialised, asset-based welfare architecture in the UK (and England particularly) requires financialised subjects, and financial resilience is the conduit through which to develop such subjects. Resilience thinking centres risk on to individuals while framing it as freedom. After engaging with resilience services, the onus is on the claimant to make ‘correct’ choices in terms of saving, budgeting, and reducing debt (e.g., DWP, 2026: 29–30). So, although the stated objective is a ‘person-centred, outcomes-led model with strong wraparound support in alignment with the Fund's intent to address root causes, not just crisis symptoms’ (DWP, 2026: 30; emphasis added), the focus is essentially on a neoliberalised logic of individual knowledge and action over material circumstances. The CRF acknowledges the complexity of economic and social conditions coalescing to cause crisis, but implicitly argues that the solution can be found in increasing knowledge of financial planning and budgeting. Although increasing knowledge and access to information appears beneficial, the problem arises when no amount of budgeting can address a shortfall between one's income and necessary living expenses – a reality for an increasing number of households in a time of sustained inflation and cost of living crises. Furthermore, the research on the outcome of financial education interventions is unclear and contested (e.g., Willis, 2011). The broader implication is therefore on inculcating the discipline of the market, supported by a social policy architecture governed by the logics of financialisation and assetisation. A financialised and financially resilient individual is one that is economically productive (i.e., producing for the economy) and not a burden on the state. This also points to the reality that when it comes to social and financial resilience, it is only those experiencing or at risk of hardship that have the resilience label applied.

This individualisation of risk and distribution of discipline is therefore likely to have differentiated impacts along the lines of ‘race’/ethnicity, gender, geography and potentially age. Prime-age working men will likely have the greatest chance of achieving financial resilience because of their access to the labour market. Those with caring responsibilities, those more affected by the gendered division of labour (e.g., women), those who may be engaging with multiple services (e.g., people from migrant or ethnic minority backgrounds; care leavers) are more likely to face multiple disadvantage that is not a result of ‘poor financial planning’ or budgeting but rather complex interacting material and social factors. One increased risk for these groups is if the further development of the CRF leads to the de-emphasis (financially or politically) of other services, disadvantaged groups will find their disadvantage compounded and possibly embedded further. Those with No Recourse to Public Funds are not eligible for the CRF, and it would be at the discretion of caseworkers to find alternative pathways to support (DWP, 2026). Likewise, in areas with greater disadvantage, pressure on Local Authorities will be greater; made worse by the fact that a number of councils are already struggling to provide basic services (e.g., LGA, 2026).

Furthermore, the basic definition of resilience used in the CRF – the ability to recover from shocks (DWP, 2026: 3) is essentially the ability to ‘bounce back’. The idea of bouncing back – or merely coping – has been largely replaced in the resilience literature for definitions that prioritise ‘bouncing forward’, ‘thriving’ and ‘transformative agency’ (Halvorsen et al., 2022: 17), notwithstanding the significant difficulty of achieving such transformation especially without the extensive resources to do so (Dagdeviren and Donoghue, 2019). The language of the CRF would suggest that the ostensible aim of the CRF is to alleviate the initial crisis and ensure this does not happen again, in terms of providing access to skills and resources that enhance coping over thriving. Of course, in reality there is little more that Local Authorities could do, especially in a context of highly restricted budgets and an enduring austerity now baked into social and public policy, alongside increasing numbers of people accessing financial support services – even before the CRF is rolled out.

Ultimately, then, the practice and inculcation of resilience thinking here is geared towards the broader goals of the liberal welfare state, essentially that of labour market insertion, and the creation of financially savvy individuals. As I argue elsewhere low-income households, which by definition are the most likely to require access to crisis funds, are compelled to participate in markets and structures they do not have the resources from which to derive much direct benefit. The financialised individual must act as if they are a financial actor, able to invest in products and services and so on:

Occupying a limbo between full social citizen, able to participate and consume, and passive recipient of state or voluntary support, the logic of social investment commodifies the individual not through their labour power, but through the potential of a social return on investment. In becoming a financial(-ised) subject, the individual in question must embrace neoliberal, financialised rationalities of resilience in order to work through the system (Donoghue, 2022: 512).

The need for crisis support can be seen as tacit acknowledgement of a failure to exist in this configuration. Resilience services aimed at developing those skills to avoid crisis are constructed with the requirements of this configuration in mind. The crisis fund recipient's deservingness of support within the CRF is still predicated on individual need (DWP, 2026), but now contains the implied criteria that they must engage in resilience thinking to gain financial resilience and thus reduce their ‘reliance’ on social supports.

From individual needs to a conveyor belt of resilience?

The design of the CRF is such that the action with the least administrative burden is likely to refer every claimant to resilience services, rather than working on a case-by-case basis. The guidance states that ‘Authorities must adopt a needs-based approach that seeks to address underlying needs alongside provision of immediate support’ (DWP, 2026: 8). This is a resource intensive endeavour that overworked and overleveraged council services may struggle to provide in the first instance. Indeed, a significant amount of effort and resources will be committed to each case to ensure that the requirements of the CRF are followed:

Authorities should adopt a person-centred and needs-based approach that recognises the varied circumstances that individuals may experience, to direct support towards those most in need. In adopting a person-centred approach, Authorities should ensure that the preferences, needs and values of the individual applying for crisis support stays central to professional decisions, providing support to the individual that is respectful to them. Through a needs-based approach that seeks to understand and meet the individual's underlying needs, not just the crisis symptoms presented, the Authority can support the individual to build financial resilience (DWP, 2026: 10).

To reiterate, generally speaking this is a positive approach. Crises are rarely focused on one specific problem, even if there may be a single trigger; arrears are seldom caused by one event, for example, but rather a complex series of events and circumstances. And here, the autonomy of the individual is respected. This approach is also not incompatible with the framing of (financial) resilience, given the significant focus on positive agency in the face of hardship seen in resilience thinking. Thus, there is a trade-off between embracing the person-centred approach, and conforming to the resilience thinking paradigm outlined in this commentary that suggests anyone who needs crisis support also needs intervention to conform to the specific configuration of the financialised, resilient citizen. This is further confirmed by the guidance in that ‘[a]uthorities should seek to support applicants who are ineligible for Crisis Payments through Resilience Services’ (DWP, 2026: 9). In other words, if one seeks support through the crisis fund, whether eligibility is met for support or not, every claimant will be referred to resilience services.

Conclusions

The introduction of the CRF represents the outcome of a need to make all social security ‘value for money’ with tangible social returns on investment, on the one hand, while also providing a framework to expand the development of financialised ‘social’ citizens that are able to cope and get by in times of hardship without falling to recourse from local funds. Despite a language that acknowledges the importance of person-centred solutions for people who are experiencing complex and multifaceted problems, the solution is invariably centred on individual behaviour change and individual agency. The focus is on increasing knowledge of budgeting, saving and financial literacy – yet knowledge cannot pay the bills. This is compounded by the irony that those facing hardship are often excellent at budgeting out of necessity to make ends meet.

The CRF is designed in such a way that facilitates the transfer of everyone who comes into contact with crisis mechanisms on to a ‘resilience pathway’, whether or not they are able to receive support from crisis funds in the first place. As this commentary has outlined, this revolves around a resilience paradox – people must demonstrate they are trying to be independent to get support, but failing to do so justifies intervention. This is the continuation of the moral economy of welfare ‘that determines who deserves the long-arm of state intervention – in other words, who needs to be reformed’ (Montgomerie, 2016: 428).

Perhaps the most important development of the CRF will be to see how resilience is implemented and how it is defined in practice. I contend that in line with the available evidence so far, the embedding of financial resilience as a response to crisis is more about creating citizens and subjects more conducive to the requirements of the post-industrial financialised economy than it is about supporting people to be self-sufficient. These forms of resilience often do not increase prosperity or economic stability, but rather facilitate a risk shift from the state on to the individual or indeed the third sector. People will still face crisis, will still struggle to make ends meet, but will instead need to find ways to address these crises in the spheres of family, charity, the labour market or through financial activities such as debt. Ultimately, whether this financialised (rather than financial) resilience will support or hinder long-term economic stability and ultimately ontological security, will become evident over the coming years.