Category Archives: Women

Homeless mothers: we feel the ever-present threat of social services and losing our kids. That’s how they keep people quiet

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Readers of this site will know that I’ve recently been interviewing Marsha, a homeless 30-year-old Newham woman who lives with her six-year-old daughter in a single room in a Newham homelessness hostel.

The two have been stuck in this temporary accommodation for over a year.

Marsha and her daughter in their one-room temporary homelessness hostel accommodation

In the last article, Marsha talked about a concern that many homeless mothers raise. Mothers worry that council social services will try to remove their children because they are homeless. Doesn’t matter what the council can, or can’t, actually do. The threat hangs in the air and that is enough. I’ve written about this before.

In that recent article, Marsha said that Newham social services said they could take her daughter and place the child in care while Marsha “sorted herself out”:

“Social services is telling me – “oh, we can provide a home for your daughter, but not for you.”

“So I am scared.”

There’s been more since then.

On Tuesday morning, Marsha sent an email to her housing officer (Marsha copied me in). She asked for an update on her housing situation and whether she and her child could be moved to a better place than the awful hostel that they’re stuck in.

Marsha is in the dreadful limbo that so many women in poverty are.

She’s facing eviction from the homelessness hostel she’s in.

She’s studying at a local college to try and improve her chances of work and better-paid work.

She doesn’t want to have to move to a flat miles away in Tilbury (which is where the council wants her to go), because Marsha relies on her mother for mental health support and childcare while she studies. If Marsha loses that support, she’ll sink.

Marsha has no-one else to help with childcare while she studies. The jobcentre certainly won’t. Her adviser already threatened to sanction her Universal Credit for spending some of her time studying rather than all of her time looking for work.

So, Marsha sent that email to the council asking about her application for better housing. There’d been earlier emails, too, as well as the stories posted here.

Enter social services.

The next thing Marsha knew was that social services was all over her – and asking questions about her daughter’s health and wellbeing.

Marsha said she felt extremely threatened by this. A woman asks a council questions about her housing application – and suddenly, social services is on the phone demanding meetings and firing off all sorts of questions about the woman and her child’s welfare.

You have to wonder.

Marsha says that first, she was contacted by someone from the local multi-agency safeguarding hub – one of the hubs set up to track children who could be “vulnerable”:

“I literally had to explain myself and my housing situation all over again. He [the MASH officer] was really like getting a bit personal… asking me questions about my doctor, my daughter, my wellbeing, [the] school that she [my daughter] attends, her attendance… just a lot of personal stuff…”

So, there was that.

Then on Thursday last week, Marsha got a call from Newham children’s services, demanding that she attend an appointment with them that very afternoon:

“Another lady called from the social services…she said to me that she’s been given instructions from her manager to call me to arrange a meeting with herself.

I said, “what is it in regards to, because I just spoke to somebody else in the department within the social services and they are saying something different to me…”

“[She said] that she has to do an assessment with me and my daughter to do with my housing issues, and I have to come and see her and I should bring my daughter…

“I said to her – “I’m in college until 4.15pm. Then, I have to pick up my daughter.”

“She was like, “this is important and you have to come and see me. You kind of just have to find time, basically.”

“So I said to her, “okay, well, I’ll grab my daughter from school early and I’ll come and see you.”

“I was really uncomfortable…”

At the meeting, the social worker questioned Marsha and her daughter about Marsha and the child’s wellbeing:

“It is… the stuff they were asking me, Kate, had nothing to do with my housing situation. They were asking my daughter if she sleeps well, how does she play, who helps her with her homework… It’s not relevant.

“It’s almost like I’m being investigated… do you know what I mean… everyone knows that my issues is strictly around housing. I feel so uncomfortable.”

“I feel like the council is just trying to use tactics to force me into a situation…I feel like I’m being punished. I’m trying to get my voice heard and I’m speaking to people and I’m raising issues. I feel like it’s a tactical to make me go away – like they are thinking, “let’s get social services to call around.”

Marsha said the social worker told her that Marsha and her daughter would soon be evicted from their temporary accommodation. Marsha and her young daughter are facing street homelessness.

That was the first Marsha had heard about her impending eviction.

She said that the social worker was shocked to hear that the council’s housing team hadn’t told Marsha that eviction was nearing.

The bed Marsha shares with her daughter

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You see my point.

I talk to too many homeless mothers now who say they feel ever-threatened by social services.

They don’t know if councils can take their kids, but Can or Can’t is beside the point. The point is that the spectre of social services is raised at the drop of a hat. An implied threat is plenty good enough to shut homeless people up.

People worry about challenging a council offer of housing, or complaining about the dreadful state of temporary housing, or drawing attention to themselves by asking a council any questions about housing at all. I wonder how many homeless people are disenfranchised – bullied into silence – in this way.

Said Marsha:

“It’s the normal thing that I’ve been experiencing with council, with social services – bullying, threatening, saying that you have to do this now and you don’t have an option…she [the social worker] sat down yesterday and she said, “as you know there is no affordable housing, affordable properties [in Newham]… it’s just been like 18 months of ongoing like turmoil with them.”

Indeed.

I have more on this which I will publish this week.

The Newham council press office has blacklisted me and so won’t give a comment, but too bad for them. I’ll be emailing the mayor and the head of housing with this article and asking the council what the hell it is doing.

This is sick.

DWP: we don’t want you studying or improving your life. We want you in low paid work forever

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On Saturday, I interviewed Marsha, 30.

Marsha is homeless and lives with her young daughter in one room in a temporary accommodation hostel in Newham. (I’ll publish her full story soon).

Marsha signs on for Universal Credit at Stratford jobcentre.

Marsha told me that she wants to study to become a nurse.

To get things underway, she recently signed up to study a module in health.

Marsha said that she thought her jobcentre adviser would be pleased with this initiative.

He was not. He was furious about it.

The jobcentre adviser told Marsha off for prioritising study ahead of jobsearch. She was threatened with sanctions for putting study ahead of her jobsearch activities.

Her jobcentre adviser told Marsha that finding work – any work at any pay – had to be her priority.

Study and increasing her chances of better-paid work were not DWP priorities for her.

“He said to me “they [the DWP] want you looking for work.”

I said to him: “how can I get a better job with more money to look after my daughter if I never get qualifications?”

Precisely.

Two things:

  • this is an excellent way for the DWP to make sure that people in Marsha’s situation never get out of such situations – that they’re kept in low paid, unskilled work and subject to Universal Credit conditions forever
  • it’s extraordinary that instead of encouraging her to study, the DWP would rather that Marsha spend her time on useless jobsearch exercises such as sitting in front of a computer applying online for hundreds of jobs that she’ll never hear about again. There is no greater waste of time for people than this – sending of hundreds of online job applications that are never responded to. Still, people are forced to do this in exchange for their benefits. I’ve written about this a lot.

This government is not interested in helping people achieve economic independence.

This government wants to make very sure that people who have nothing are kept in their place forever – desperate, stuck permanently in low-paid work and trapped by the state on Universal Credit, because they never earn enough to get clear.

#UniversalCredit, sanctions, rent arrears, radiation therapy, 8 people living in one small flat…what the hell does this achieve?

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When will modern society work out that hating and bullying people in poverty doesn’t eradicate poverty?

Last Wednesday, I spent several hours at Oldham foodbank, speaking with people who’d come in for food parcels. I visit Oldham foodbank from time to time.

On Wednesday, I had a long talk with Mel (name changed), 47. There’s a full transcript from that interview at the end of this article.

I’m posting this interview for a specific reason.

Mel and her family were on the receiving end of a great deal of government and public bile.

I want to show you how that looks from Mel’s side of the fence:

Mel talked about being patronised by frontline officers and targeted by people in the neighbourhood.

Universal Credit officers dismissed Mel when she rang the helpline because her benefits weren’t paid: “He [the DWP officer] said, “there’s thousands like you. You’re not the only one.”

A neighbour had dobbed Mel in with authorities – I think for housing extra family members in her flat.

A secretary at a local school had called Mel’s children and grandchildren dirty: “I didn’t actually punch her…I’m not a violent person but…yeah.”

The list went on. It usually does.

That’s the point I want to focus on here.

I know precisely what government and a judgmental electorate would say about Mel’s family. They would call Mel and her family scroungers. They would hate on the family and think – “Job Done. That’ll Learn Them.” (It’s only a pity that bailed-out bankers aren’t punished as thoroughly for their money-handling problems). Such is our era. The general view is that all that people in Mel’s situation need to sort things out is a kick in the head.

I don’t believe that bashing people when they’re already down is a brilliant social policy tactic. What I do know is that Mel and her family were being crushed by the dysfunctional and abusive public sector bureaucracies that they relied on. That part was absolutely not Mel’s fault. That part was society’s fault. Society approves of institutional aggression towards the worst off and likes to describe people in poverty as barbaric if they respond badly to that aggression. That’s how things roll for the Mels of the modern world.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Mel was ill. She said that she was having radiation therapy. She looked sick. She was tiny and gaunt, and her hair was thinning. She kept saying that she looked old. She was upset about it.

“I’ve got two weeks left of radiation… two weeks left of treatment, three times a week. I look old.”

There were other problems, too – like Mel needed them.

One problem was that Mel was receiving Universal Credit. Universal Credit’s defective payment systems had caused Mel no end of grief. For example: Mel had rent arrears. She couldn’t understand why, because the housing costs component of her Universal Credit was paid straight to her landlord. Her rent should have been covered. It hadn’t been at one point or another, and she didn’t know why. Mel kept getting letters from First Choice Homes about the arrears. She couldn’t repay the money. She would never be able to repay the money. The demand letters kept coming. This happens too often to mention. The threats roll in and roll in. There’s no respite. The debts never end.

So, there was that.

Another problem was that Mel’s flat was overcrowded. Her children and grandchildren were staying with her, because they had nowhere else to go.

Mel said she had seven (sometimes eight) people living in her two-bedroom flat. There was Mel, her five-year-old daughter, her 26-year-old daughter, the daughter’s partner and their three kids (and sometimes another daughter, I think Mel said). The 26-year-old daughter and her family had recently been evicted from their flat, because the landlord had wanted to sell.

There was more.

At the moment, the family relied on Mel’s benefit money to pay for food and clothes. Mel’s daughter had applied for Universal Credit, but had only received one payment in ten months. Continue reading →

Worried about being moved to the same borough as your violent ex-partner’s family? Tough. Get going.

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Here’s a paragraph from a council letter which dismisses a homeless woman’s concerns about being moved to the same borough as members of her violent ex-partner’s family.

You need to see this. It is a common example of the sort of thing that homeless households are told when they challenge a council decision to send them out of borough:

The letter from the council officer says:

“You advised me that your ex partner who you fled whilst residing at [word removed] due to domestic violence. His [word removed] lives in [word removed], but you could not provide me with details such as address or full name but you were confident that [word removed] lives in [word removed]. I looked at your previous notes on file, your housing officer at that time made enquiries with the police, police confirmed that they did not state that you were not safe in the borough of…. were [sic] you fled from, neither did they exclude [word removed] as a risk area and your last reported incident was July 2016…Based on all the information this would suggest that the incidents are historic…”

Really.

I’m seeing more and more letters where every single one of a homeless family’s reasons for wanting to stay in the area that they know are dismissed out of hand by their council.

People tell their council that they want to stay in their borough for their children’s schools, for important health services, for local networks they rely on, and even for safety. They’re entitled to ask their councils to consider these circumstances when councils are looking at where to house them.

Unfortunately, none of the points that homeless families raise seem to rate. People are perfectly entitled to ask a council to review its choice of home for them, but they might as well not bother. I get the distinct feeling that decisions to send homeless people away are made before people even walk through a council’s doors.

So.

The recipient of this letter, Christine (named changed), is a young homeless Newham mother.

Christine and her children live in a single room temporary accommodation flat. They’ve been there for a year. Christine says Newham council told Christine that the accommodation would be short term. She and the kids are still there – all living in one tiny room together.

In its letter, Newham council says that Christine’s only option for longer-term housing is a privately rented flat in another borough (I’m withholding the name of the borough, because of Christine’s safety concerns).

Christine says the council has told her that she risks making herself intentionally homeless if she refuses to go.

But Christine has good reasons for not wanting to go.

As we’ve seen, one of those good reasons is that Christine doesn’t want to move to the area that the council proposes because a member of her violent ex-partner’s family lives there.

Christine’s problem is that she has not been able to prove that easily. Christine says she isn’t even sure where to start.

This problem comes up time and time again when homeless people ask for housing help from councils (and for benefits help from the DWP).

People can’t always give councils or the DWP the evidence and/or paperwork that the excessively bureaucratic public sector demands. Not everyone who has spent years moving from one crappy rental to another has a tidy and up-to-date filing cabinet or contacts book.

Nonetheless, public sector bureaucracies demand paperwork and evidence, evidence, evidence. I’ve sat in meetings with people who’ve been denied crucial rent money because the officer in front of them has decided that another piece of paper is required. Forcing stressed people to chase and present pieces of paper and official letters so that they can get benefits and housing is one of austerity’s special tortures. Continue reading →

Osteoarthritis, can’t walk up 4 flights to the flat – and no lift. How many disabled people are trapped like this?

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Update Monday 6 August:

Am a little tired of being ignored by councils, so I tweeted the Islington council leader and the member for housing, and asked them to look into Ann’s situation:

The member for housing said he would:

I understand that the council has called Ann today. That’s a start, at least. We push on.

I am still waiting for responses to other questions I asked – for example, I want to know how many disabled people are stuck in flats they can’t easily leave and are waiting for accessible housing.

More updates soon.

Original post (Friday 3 August):

Islington woman Ann Sparling, 47, is trapped in her fourth floor council flat.

Ann has serious osteoarthritis in both of her knees. There is no lift in her building. She must walk down and up four flights of stairs if she wants to leave her flat.

Ann says that she finds climbing the steps impossible. So, she is trapped.

She lives in fear of fire. Ann says the fire alarm in the building went off recently, and “I was terrified about not being able to get out.”

Ann’s been asking the council to move her to an accessible flat for three years. Nothing’s happened. I asked the council for comment on this situation on Monday. Nothing’s happened there either.

The council hasn’t even sent me a general statement.

I want to know how many sick or disabled people are trapped in this potentially lethal way and what is going to be done.

Ann relies on her two adolescent children to bring the shopping and run other chores. I guess it will be up to them to get Ann out if there’s a fire.

Ann’s own doctors insist that she be moved. They say she can’t cope with the stairs and must be rehoused. Her surgeons even delayed knee surgery last year, because Ann didn’t want to return to her fourth floor flat to recuperate.

Here’s an excerpt from a letter written by Ann’s doctor this year:Letter advising of required flat move

Ann reports that the council has told her there are no suitable properties available.

Ann also says communicating with the council is a pain. Emails go unrecorded and calls to housing options go unanswered.

I know that feeling. I asked the council about Ann’s situation and council communications on Monday. I’d heard nothing by Wednesday, so called the press office again. An officer said the council had to check that Ann would permit the council to discuss her details with me. The officer said a general statement might be forthcoming. It hasn’t been. I’ve heard nothing.

I am sick of this.

I say it again.

How many disabled people around the country are stuck and isolated in unpleasant and downright dangerous situations like this?

Have we learned nothing from fire disasters such as Grenfell – you know, making sure that people are safely housed and can get out?

Why do councils refuse to respond?

Somebody at Islington council needs to get in touch with me.

Newham council tries to deny a homeless woman the right to appeal a terrible housing decision. WHY?

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I recently wrote about Sara Abdalla, 30. Sara is a Newham woman who is homeless. She has two young children. The eldest is in school in Newham. Sara has a job in Newham as well.

Newham council recently told Sara that she would have to move to Birmingham for permanent housing. Sara requested a review of that decision. A review officer upheld the council’s decision to send Sara to Birmingham. You can read that letter (and the dreadful tone of it) here.

Today, the council took Sara to court to try and deny her the right to appeal that decision. The council said Sara was out of time to make an appeal.

Sara – like so many homeless people I deal with – missed the appeal deadline because she found the bureaucracy so confusing and overwhelming. We all do. Council and DWP bureaucracies are literally designed to exclude anyone who isn’t an administrative genius. Sara was (and is) also dealing with a multitude of issues to do trying to secure housing while holding down a job and organising a young family. She also thought at one stage that an appeal had been filed by a lawyer who represented her – after a fashion – for a time. It hardly matters. The point is that the complexity regarding who was and is meant to do what and when was impossible. It so often is.

The thing is – I’ve been copied into emails with Rokhsana Fiaz, the new Newham mayor. She’s been promising to sort this mess out. So much for that. Sara has been trying to get hold of a housing officer who has apparently gone on holiday. She’s no closer to a solution to her housing problems than she ever was.

Meanwhile, Sara gets threatening courts summons and papers in which the council tries to deny her an appeal. It’s no wonder people lose it when they have to try and navigate all of this.

I have questions (I can’t put them to Newham Council sadly, because I’m on the council’s blacklist):

  1. Why did the council make such an enormous damn effort to stop a homeless woman appealing a decision to send her to a part of the country where she knows nobody and has no work? She was threatened with intentional homelessness if she did no go to Birmingham. So what if she was out of time to make an appeal. Why wouldn’t the council let it go?
  2. Why has the mayor been saying that Sara’s case will be looked at again by the council – at the exact same time that the council is dragging Sara to court to deny her the right to appeal housing decisions?

What a mess. Thousands of homeless people have to put up with this multilayered crap.

Oh yes – there’s is also this: The council was late with its own notice to the courts regarding Sara’s right to appeal.

Says the council in its letter to the court:

“A (Sara) seeks permission to appeal out of time… R (the council as Respondent) was required to file and serve notice in writing indicating whether that application was opposed by 4pm 25th April 2018.

On 26th April 2018, R wrote both to the Court and to A indicating that A’s application was opposed and apologised for the late provision of notice.”

Oh the irony. Council gets to miss deadlines. Sara doesn’t. That’s how things roll today.

I’ve got more so will come back. Sara won today anyway. I presume she now has the right to make that appeal.

Oh yes – there is something else. The council sought costs from Sara for today’s effort:

Says the letter from the council to the courts:

…”the Court is invited to dismiss A’s (Sara’s) application for permission to appeal out
of time and to grant an order for costs in R’s (the council’s) favour.”

That’s charming, that is – an attempt to pile debt on a low paid woman who has nowhere to live. Lovely. Sara was very upset indeed when she saw that.

You can’t have this job because you’re too old. We also deduct £200 from wages because these jobs are apprenticeships. What.

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This one is for anyone out there who thinks that people who sign on have it easy. They don’t.

Have posted the recording below to demonstrate again the (often costly) obstacles that are planted in the way of people who look for low-paid work while signing on.

Some of the treatment by employers experienced by the woman in the recording is downright discriminatory and probably illegal. Certainly should be illegal.

I leafleted outside Stockport jobcentre this Wednesday with Stockport United Against Austerity.

I spoke at length with J, a woman I’ve spoken with before.

The recording below is from that interview. J has a son with autism (he’s in his early 20s) and a ten-year-old daughter. Her son’s PIP was stopped recently. J lost her carer’s allowance. She signs on for JSA and is looking for work.

J has been to six job interviews in the last few months.

Only one organisation ever bothered to get back to her about the job she was interviewed for. That was a nursery job.

Here’s the audio – J describing the experience (there’s a transcript at the end of this post):

The woman who called J about the nursery job told her three things:

  • J didn’t get the job
  • J didn’t get the job because she was too old
  • If J had been given the job, the company would have deducted £200 from her (minimum) wage over several months to pay back apprenticeship costs, because the job was an apprenticeship. I thought that any apprenticeship cost or levy was supposed to be paid by employers. I’ll be doing more work on this, but feel free to comment if this is an area you’re familiar with.

J was also told that she would have to pay for a DBS check. Last time I posted about this, people tweeted to say that employers should pay for such checks. I find mixed advice on that one.

The point is that I keep meeting people at jobcentres who can’t get their employer or their jobcentre or pay for DBS checks. The cost – between about £50 and £70 – lands on the newly-employed person. That is no joke for someone who only gets £70 or so a week in JSA or Universal Credit. The jobcentre says No and the employer says No and the person concerned begins to worry that they’ll never be able to start work, because nobody will help pay for the DBS check that the person can’t afford. Continue reading →

Newham council tells homeless mother to move to Birmingham. Council says friends and family are not essential to her welfare

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Update 27 June:

New mayor of Newham Rokhsana Fiaz has emailed Sara to say that she will look into Sara’s housing problems asap. I will post any updates.

There’s a bigger issue here for Labour, though. When are Labour councils going to start telling government that they simply refuse to house people away from jobs and support networks? How are Labour councils going to stand up to LHA caps and prohibitive market rents? What’s the strategy? Where’s the militancy? When will Labour councils get stuck in?

—————

Original post:

I want to show you the sort of letter that councils send to homeless people who are desperate for local housing. I want you to see where things are at.

The excerpts below are taken from a letter sent by Newham Council to Sara Abdalla, 30.

Sara is homeless. She has two children. The eldest is six and the youngest is just 18 months. The family lives in temporary accommodation in a Newham hostel.

The letter is from an officer who reviewed Sara’s decision to decline a council offer of accommodation in Birmingham. The officer upheld the council’s decision to send Sara to Birmingham.

Sara turned down the Birmingham flat, because she was and is desperate to stay in London.

She has good reason for that. Her son is settled in school in Newham. She has a local job. The review letter was written before she got that job – but Sara says the council won’t factor her employment into her case. She has vital support in Newham – the friends and contacts that women with young children rely on.

This whole situation is the usual poisonous mess. I’d ask Newham council to comment on it, but the press office has blacklisted me. Nothing doing there.

This letter gives some insight into council justifications for sending homeless people away – insight, if you like, into council interpretations of homelessness guidance in this era of intolerable pressure on housing. You’ll see where some of the bars are set.

Here’s the first excerpt. This stuff really is cold-blooded.

The excerpt says that Sara’s support networks of family and friends Newham are not key to the family’s wellbeing.

The officer writes:

“I accept that it would be disruptive for any family to have to move away from an area where they have established social links over a number of years and away from their family, and that this may be more disruptive for a family with young children like yours. However, I do not accept that the support of your family, friends or local community is essential to your household’s welfare.” (My emphasis).

There’s more.

The council concedes the move to Birmingham would be a wrench, but says that Sara’s family and friends could visit – for all the world as though occasional sightings of friends make up for the loss of daily contact and support. No mention is made of prohibitive travel costs, or the difficulties that some people would have travelling that distance:

“Google maps has confirmed that the distance from the Housing Needs Service in Newham to the accommodation… is 136 miles, clearly a distance likely to prevent you travelling back to Newham on a frequent basis. However, you can always commute by train to London and your relatives and friends could also in turn come to visit.” (My emphasis).

The state as we have it really is vile. Continue reading →

Don’t care if you have to pick your child up from school. You must attend the jobcentre so we can watch you apply for jobs you won’t get

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Another story from recent leafleting outside Stockport jobcentre with Stockport United Against Austerity:

JSA and Universal Credit claimants say the jobcentre is presently forcing claimants to attend the jobcentre at least once a week to sit at computers and apply online for job after job. Jobcentre advisers watch while they do this.

People say they weren’t told why they had to attend these sessions in the first instance. They were just instructed to get to the jobcentre at a set time, or else.

Such regimes are not new. Most people who sign on are forced into these compulsory attendance activities. I interviewed people at North Kensington jobcentre who had to attend the jobcentre every single day to sign on. It really is Big Brother stuff – the DWP forcing claimants to a location where they can be seen. Can’t be long until government decides that people who sign on should be tagged.

None of this is about helping people find work, of course. It’s about a government department standing over people who are already trapped.

At these compulsory onsite jobsearch sessions, people just sit at computers and send off one job application after another. They literally never hear back about any of them. Often, they don’t know if the jobs they’ve applied for actually exist. People have to engage in this perfectly meaningless activity on work programmes and at work courses as well. I’ve sat with people as they’ve done it.

“Petty tyranny” is the phrase.

The depth of this pettiness (if there is such a thing as deep pettiness) never ceases to amaze. Jobcentres find any excuse for it at any level.

At Stockport recently, I spoke with one woman who’d just started these compulsory attendances.

She was on edge as it was. Her son had autism. His ESA had been stopped. So had her carer’s allowance and housing benefit. She was signing on for JSA to try for some income.

Now, she had another problem.

Her jobcentre adviser had set her next mandatory jobsearch-at-the-jobcentre session at exactly the time when she had to collect her ten-year-old daughter from school.

She said the jobcentre knew perfectly well that she had a schoolage daughter, but refused to change the time for the compulsory session:

“I’ve got to come here at three o’clock – but how am I supposed to pick my daughter up? They [the jobcentre] don’t care.

This is the only jobcentre [in Stockport]. If I walk, it will take me about 45 minutes. It took me an hour today on the bus, because of the traffic. What I’m going to have to do is take my daughter out of school early to come here. She’s missing out on her education.”

I’ll have to make some excuse up [to tell the school].”

I have a great many conversations like this with benefit claimants: stories about the DWP making already difficult situations even more difficult for people in agonising ways. Still, the DWP gets away with it.

This woman had problems enough. She was appealing the DWP’s decision to stop her son’s ESA. She was trying to sort out problems with his PIP and carer’s allowance.

Now, she had to drag her child out of school, and lie to the school about the reasons why, to get to a jobsearch session that in itself was pure charade. Non-attendance at that session would very likely mean a sanction.

This incident may sound small, but it absolutely wasn’t. It was part of a picture. Once the DWP has people, it never stops putting the boot in. Every part of their lives is fair game.

“[MPs] don’t worry about money. They don’t worry about where the next electricity is coming from. You never see anyone like that knocking down at foodbank.” #UniversalCredit

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Have posted below a longer transcript from recent interviews at Oldham foodbank with Michelle, 38, and Jeanette, 53 (I published excerpts earlier here and here).

Like so many interviews I post on this site, this transcript highlights two important points:

1) Political and press obsessions such as government, voting and Brexit barely register in many lives.

I asked both woman for their views on government and Brexit.

Michelle said:

“I ain’t got a clue me, I don’t understand it. I really don’t.”

Jeanette said:

“Neither me…You never see anyone like that knocking down at foodbank…They don’t worry about where the next electricity coming from.”

2) The benefit systems that people in poverty rely on are in tatters, but that fact is ignored. Nobody cares.

Politics refuses to intervene, or to offer constructive answers. Mainstream politics is fixated on Brexit and central politics to the exclusion of everything. Meanwhile, people in poverty are being dragged down by failing state bureaucracies. Online benefit application forms fail. Helplines are hopeless. Claimants go months without money, which makes debt inevitable. The idea is, of course, that anyone who has ever received a state benefit deserves the worst. Dependence on the state justifies aggression from the state.

Michelle had rent arrears, because the DWP took ten weeks to make her first Universal Credit payment. She was also repaying a tax credit debt that she disputed and an advance loan that she took out to buy food during that ten-week wait for her Universal Credit:

“Oh God – it were a nightmare signing on for Universal Credit. You have to do it online and I had to [keep] ringing the jobcentre. I had to keep ringing them, because it were so hard.”

Jeanette had had a stroke in 2009. She struggled with balance and speech. She’d recently applied for Personal Independence Payment application, but missed an award by five points. She’d decided not to appeal that decision, because the appeals process was too complex and wearing:

“Too stressful. I’ve got to think of my health. Just rely on family and friends to get me around.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: no part of this mess helps people find stability, or work. Quite the reverse. Any stability people had has been torpedoed. Prevailing government theory is that destabilising people by throwing them off benefits motivates them (whatever “motivates” means). It does not. These broken, maddening public sector bureaucracies mire people in debt. Unfortunately, that fact is below the radar.

Transcript: Oldham foodbank, 7 March 2018.

Michelle:

It hasn’t been this bad before. [They] moved me over [from Employment and Support Allowance to Universal Credit] in October last year. They made me do it, yeah.

They told me… I applied for ESA again, but they said because I was in the catchment area for Universal Credit, that I have to have that instead…but I went for [an ESA face-to-face] assessment on 25th of October [2017] and I’ve still heard nothing…nearly six months. [The assessment was at] Albert Bridge House, yeah.

I don’t sign on. I just have to go and see my advisor at the jobcentre every few weeks.

Oh God – it were a nightmare signing on for Universal Credit. You have to do it online and I had to [keep] ringing the jobcentre. I had to keep ringing them, because it were so hard.

[I] could do one bit of it, where they told you to do your details, but then it told you to do something else – a separate thing which is a new ID thing what they’ve set up. You’ve got to do that to prove your identity. You’ve got to choose which company to do it with.

I did mine with the Post Office. Got to set that account up and then go back to Universal Credit [with the registered identity details] Oh, it is horrible. Then, you’ve got to get an appointment to go up to the jobcentre to do the rest of it there…

You just do it [the identity proof] online while you’re filling your form out. It just takes you to another site and it tells you choose which one you want to use, so I clicked Post Office. Then you have to like create an account with them just to prove your identity, because they’ve got more information on you then – so that they know that it is you, because there are a lot of people trying to claim benefits under different names, so to try and stop that basically.

Had to give my passport, yeah, because it was online…

I had no money for about eight, ten weeks. They let me have an advance payments, but it were only for £200. I’ve got two kids and got behind on all me payments and everything. It were horrible…

Jeanette: It puts you behind with your rent.

Michelle: Yeah, I’ve been having to pay extra each month, because of my rent was in arrears and it wasn’t my fault. It was horrible. [I] rent with First Choice Homes…arrears, about two months, about £700 I think. I have to pay about £20 every month on top of the rent, because the rent’s £330.

They [the DWP] are deducting [money from my monthly Universal Credit payments] for advance loan – about £40 a month. They are taking [repayments for a] child tax credit [overpayment], because when I went onto Universal Credit, the child tax credit stopped, because it all goes in with that. Then after I had been on Universal Credit for a few months, [the DWP] decided to say that they had overpaid me [tax credits] and I owed £300. So now, they’re taking £49 a month off me for that as well.

[So that’s] £49 [taken out each month] for child tax credit debt, £40 for advance payment and £20 for arrears. Not much left at the end of the month once I’ve paid my bills and gone shopping. Only have a little bit left. If my girls need anything, I can’t…do it. Once that little bit of money has gone, I’ve got to wait another month again. The only other thing I get is child benefit, but that is £34 a week. That goes on the stuff like I need like the gas and electric. I can’t give it to my girls. Girls are [aged] 17 coming up and nearly 13.

[The DWP never contacted me to negotiate deduction amounts I could afford]. Oh, no, no, no. They just tell you. They don’t ask. They don’t discuss it with you. They just tell you.

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