Category Archives: Housing crisis

Interview with a Homerton paediatric doctor: Hackney council’s housing team is putting a disabled boy at grave risk

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In my latest podcast episode, I speak with Hannah Caller.

She’s a paediatric doctor who recently made a formal safeguarding referral to Hackney council social services to try and stop Hackney’s housing team from evicting a disabled and autistic boy from his council home.

I’ve been podcasting about Hackney council’s aggression towards this family for a couple of months.

What is a safeguarding referral?

A safeguarding referral is a formal alert sent to a council’s social services team.

Referrals are usually made by doctors and other professionals who believe that a vulnerable person like a disabled child is at risk of harm and abuse and so forth.

Social services must put together a team of professionals to investigate safeguarding referrals. They have a legal duty to investigate.

But what was the first thing the council did when it received this referral?

It closed the referral down.

How is Hackney council putting this boy at grave risk?

In this case, the boy is believed to be at risk of harm from the housing department of his own council. You could say that Hackney council is the abuser. That’s because the council insists that this family must be evicted and the boy must be torn from his home and school, and put into temporary housing.

The boy can’t cope with change or stress. He melts down on public transport – and he’d have to get public transport to travel from temporary housing to his school.

At the moment, his school is just across the road from the council house that Hackney wants to evict the family from. The boy has 1-2-1 specialist support at the school and an EHCP.

He is familiar with his school, his teachers, his neighbourhood and his routines there. If the family is evicted, he may be out of school for some time, because of his problems with travelling.

The council could grant the family a tenancy and let them stay, but the council refuses to do that.

This is not the only case I’m dealing with where professionals are making safeguarding referrals to raise the alarm about council and housing association behaviour towards disabled children. Interesting times.

Proving an autistic boy has meltdowns by prodding him into one

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Update Sunday 15 March: my story re: this young disabled and autistic boy being forced to get public transport has been picked up here.

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Today, my podcast returns to the ongoing story about Hackney council’s attempts to evict a disabled and autistic boy and his family from their council home.

Bailiffs were due again to evict the boy and his family on Friday just gone, but fortunately, a court saw sense and suspended the bailiff’s eviction warrant for 8 weeks because of the risk to the boy’s health.

In the meantime, the council has come up with a gross idea to test the boy’s behaviour on public transport.

The council’s proposal is to stick this boy and his family in temporary housing 10km* away from the school where he is settled. He’ll have to get public transport from the temporary housing to this school.

The boy’s teachers and medical supporters all say that the boy can’t cope with public transport and has bad meltdowns on it.

The council doesn’t believe them. It is proposing that an assessor of some sort takes the boy on public transport to get “direct observational evidence” of what happens.

In other words, the council wants to put the boy in an environment that he can’t cope with to record him not coping with it.

Is this actual abuse?

*Had 10k and missed off the m. It’s 10km.

Hackney council will evict a disabled child this Friday. This is why progressives hate Labour.

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Update 6 March: the baliff’s warrant has been suspended for 8 weeks – good news and finally some common sense after weeks of rubbish. More soon.

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My latest podcast episode, which is about Hackney council’s plan to evict a disabled and autistic 8 year old boy and his family from their council home this Friday – March 6 at 10am.

The council is getting court bailiffs in to evict the family, which is charming.

As I’ve said in previous podcast episodes – the council does not have to evict this family. The problem is just a tenancy issue and the council could choose to grant the family a secure tenancy to stay in their home. The council simply refuses to.

Instead, it’s the bailiffs on Friday, at which point the boy and his family will be chucked into temporary housing miles from the boy’s school where he is settled with 1-2-1 support.

The boy won’t be able to cope with the stress and he can’t cope with public transport. The council has been sent pages of medical and school evidence which makes this very clear.

This, my friends, is a classic example of reasons why so-called progressives cannot bear the Labour party.

Here’s hoping voters in the upcoming local elections in Hackney put a very big boot in.

Harassment by councils when you’re trying keep a disabled boy housed

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In my latest podcast episode, we hear about the ways that councils drive people in housing need to the brink. DWP does the same sort of thing with people who claim benefits.

This episode is the fourth about a family with a disabled and autistic 8 year old boy. Hackney council is trying to evict this family – with bailiffs – from their council home of 18 years.

The boy’s paediatric doctor is so concerned about the threat this eviction poses to the boy’s health that she’s making a safeguarding referral – ie she feels that the boy needs protecting from the council.

Meanwhile Kyla, the boy’s mother, says she is feeling suicidal because the council won’t stop calling and emailing to tell her to get out of her home of 18 years and to move her family into temporary housing.

Her daughter talks about her mother’s deteriorating mental health in this episode.

Harassment by bureaucracy, innit. Councils and the DWP are masters of it.

If you don’t succeed at evicting a disabled autistic boy from his council home…

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… try again!

Last week, Hackney council tried to evict an 8 year old disabled and autistic boy and his family from their council home – an eviction by bailiffs. High point for civilisation, that was.

The London Renters’ union and other supporters and neighbours stopped the eviction, but needless to say, a letter has been received to say that the bailiffs will be sent again.

In this latest podcast episode, the boy’s 18 year old sister explains what that is like. She lives in the home, so she’ll be evicted too.

This is a council actively making a disabled autistic boy homeless when he and his family could be granted a tenancy in their council home. Instead, the family will be put in temporary housing in Newham – miles away from his school and support, and the routine he relies on.

And this at a time when we’re hearing story after story about the terrible effects of temporary housing on SEND kids.

I’ll be back.

Tomorrow Hackney council evicts a disabled child and his family

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Update 12:30 10 Feb: Eviction resisted! Bailiffs turned up and left when they saw the London Renters’ union and Focus E15 people there. Very good work. Pity it comes to this. More soon

Update 10:30am 10 Feb: the bailiffs were supposed to turn up at 8am this morning. They’re over 2 hours late, so dragging that out painfully for the family.

Update 9 Feb: the court did not suspend the bailiff’s warrant, so this family will be evicted tomorrow. Another hanging judge for you there. This system is loaded.

I mean – for god’s sake.

My latest podcast episode below is about a family that is being evicted by bailiffs tomorrow.

They are being evicted by their own council – Hackney. So, that’s a council actively making a family homeless and threatening them with temporary housing.

The family hasn’t actually done anything hugely wrong. The mother’s name is not on the tenancy agreement and there are reasons for that, as I explain in today’s episode and last week’s one.

Hackney council could show discretion and grant the family a tenancy, or at least withdraw the bailiff’s warrant to give the family more time to sort things out – and even for the council to work with the family to sort things out. But no. Out they go.

There’s no excuse for this kind of aggression from councils. Lack of council resources is certainly no excuse. I’m sick of that one being trotted out.

The mother, Kyla, has a court hearing this afternoon to try and get the warrant suspended and the bailiffs stopped. If that doesn’t happen, they’re out of their home of 18 years and into the wonderful world of temporary housing.

You want to know why people hate Labour? Well, here’s another reason, in case you needed more. Which you probably do not.

Great week for bastards.

Why put a disabled kid in costly temporary housing when his family could stay in their council house?

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My latest podcast episode.

I talk to Kyla, who has an autistic and disabled son aged 8.

Kyla, her son and her daughter live in a council flat in Hackney. Kyla has been there for 18 years.

Next week, the family will be evicted by bailiffs, because Kyla’s name is not on the tenancy. She thought it was, because she’s been paying the council rent in her name. Turns out that was a use and occupation charge. She didn’t understand what that was. Who does.

Question is: why won’t the council just grant her a tenancy at the council place? Making the family homeless and then sticking them in some temp  housing hellhole will be ridiculously expensive for the council. Council costs for temporary housing are already out of control.

Why can’t the council negotiate with the family and come up with a solution that makes life as easy as possible for the family and the little boy? He will find a house move and a school move impossible to tolerate.

Why do councils have the nuclear option as their default? A council actively making a family with a disabled child homeless is pretty terrible.

Fit for work? The DWP sure isn’t.

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Latest podcast episode – in which we look again at a benefits system in terminal shambles.

New DWP head Pat McFadden says he’s going to put jobcentre advisers into GP surgeries to target sick and disabled people for work. Righto, Pat.

That idea in itself is cack, but another important point is that the DWP will screw it up whatever happens, because things already go amazingly wrong. They mix up people’s files, lose their medical evidence, scan it upside down, lose sick notes – the works.

In this episode, we hear from Michelle Cardno who is a benefits lawyer at Fightback for Justice in Bury.

Michelle tells an interesting story about the DWP scanning people’s medical evidence the wrong way up, so that a tribunal judge at appeal only had blank pages to look at.

She also talks about the way that the DWP randomly allocates PIP – ie, awarding PIP to one individual, then taking it away from that exact same person even though their situation hadn’t changed at all.

There’s also a covert recording from a meeting between a social worker and a homeless woman where the social worker reads from the wrong file entirely – it’s another family’s file altogether.

Public sector systems have been decimated by years of cuts. McFadden needs to look at that and make that work before he gets into his other big ideas.

ANOTHER leaked email telling support workers not to help disabled housing and benefits claimants

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In my latest podcast episode:

Another professional has leaked an outrageous email to me – the second in as many weeks.

In this email, a Hackney council officer tells an education specialist to stop writing support letters for families with disabled children who need to be moved out of terrible housing.

This officer works with autistic and SEND children. Their families need these support letters to tell their councils why they must be rehoused. Some letters say that children are at high risk of death in their current housing.

Pat McFadden – the new fibbing head of the DWP

I also talk about Pat McFadden, newly-minted secretary of state for the DWP.

I’m intrigued by the lies Pat McFadden is telling about people being able to declare themselves longterm sick to claim benefits. This is rot. People cannot declare themselves long term sick to claim benefits. They have to go through a humiliating work capability assessment and then wait for the DWP to decide if they should get benefits. Often, the DWP decides they should not.

I talk with Latoya Wray in this episode. She works 3 minimum wage jobs and claims a bit of universal credit to stay afloat.

When she’s not doing that, she’s living in fear of her 8 year old autistic son falling to his death from their flat in a Hackney highrise council block. She has medical and education reports saying that her son is at high risk of death and that the family urgently needs rehousing.

Unfortunately, as seen in the leaked email, education specialists have been told not to write letters to tell that council to rehouse families with autistic and disabled children who are at high risk of death in their housing.

Pat McFadden needs to take his fingers out of his ears and pull out the one he has in his butt, and listen to Latoya. This is what life is really like when you need to claim benefits and help with housing.

Leaked email: Council tells NHS staff to stop writing rehousing support letters for families with disabled children

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My latest podcast episode is about an extraordinary email that a senior health professional leaked to me.

The email says that a Hackney council officer told health and medical staff to stop writing supporting letters for families who need to be moved out of terrible housing – that’s families with disabled children.

The email was circulated in this consultant’s NHS workplace.

This is outrageous. Families want and NEED these supporting letters to give to the council. The letters are medical evidence that a child’s health issues and disabilities are made worse by their awful housing. They prove that the family must be moved. Some of these letters say that disabled children are at risk of death in their homes.

But this email tells NHS staff to stop writing them.

The email is full of other rubbish. It says that families of disabled children can find a place to rent in the private sector in one month – implication being that they don’t need to get on the council housing waiting list or ask for a transfer somewhere better. A month for low income families to find a place to rent in the private sector? That’s just fantasy. We might even call that a lie.

The email also says that the council has a robust system in place “to identify need and allocate housing.”

That’s rubbish. There are families in the podcast who have letters and reports which say that their disabled children are at high risk of death because of the state of their current housing – but they still haven’t been moved.

So. I have a few theories on why a council might want to shut medical staff up on the topic of potential council failures to keep disabled children safe.