My first outing on the Sentinel news blog:
Homeless mother of two Alicia Phillips explains how the housing crisis and an expensive commute from Boundary House – an isolated temporary accommodation hostel in Welwyn Garden City – are destroying her work and training options.
Alicia says that Waltham Forest Council told her she’d have to give up her job as a nursery nurse in London if the commute from Boundary House was too expensive and difficult.
This is how single mothers are punished in austerity. They’re actively relegated to a poverty trap. So much for Stephen Crabb’s fantasies about the government’s commitment to getting women out of that trap.
To become a nursery nurse as opposed to being a ‘childcare worker’ is a very exacting process involving loads of study an actually working closely with vulnerable children, as I recall from my investigations into taking what Preschool Playgroups Association under-fives childcare training I had 25 years ago before a very unhelpful jobcentre worker stymied my progress with her biased assertion that I was an ‘overstayer’ on the dole queue.
I would argue that Alicia has perhaps a very good case for taking Waltham Forest Council to court for ‘restraint of trade’. Maybe Public Interest Lawyers could assist her in taking up the case?