Month: November 2013

Sick ‘Ashok’ walks miles to food bank after benefits stop

‘Ashok’ comes into this London food bank with his voucher, given to him by the Jobcentre. He wants me to use both his real name and the picture I took of him, but in the end I can’t. He’s too ill, upset, confused and generally vulnerable. He doesn’t seem to have been told precisely why the Jobcentre has taken the decision to stop his Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA). He’s finding his situation bewildering in the extreme.

It seems he opted to use a job club book to record his job search instead of  doing his hunting online. He thinks his decision to quote  the Yellow Pages as one of the  sources for job leads has triggered a benefit sanction. Ashok is originally from  Mauritius, but when I ask him about this, he can’t remember when he arrived in the UK. He thinks it might have been sometime during the eighties.  He’s is so anxious and unsteady that it takes over half an hour for him to be able to sign the food bank voucher given to him by that Jobcentre in the next borough that seems to be sending more and more people our way.

As the “recovery” we’re hearing so much about in the broadsheets takes off in some parallel universe, our local council is, thankfully, tuning into the growing level of desperation hitting this part of London. The council has done much behind the scenes to help support the food bank network here. I’ll write more about this. One food bank is open every day in this borough, so that people can always get to one when they’re in crisis. Assuming they’ve been given a voucher, of course.

The problem is that 58-year-old Ashok, who struggles to keep his balance and whose hands and legs are shaking, has had to walk miles to us. He had no money for his bus fare – and that is increasingly the case for those who have to get here. He is terribly upset and breaks down in tears as he asks me who is going to give him a job “at my age”. He shows me his anti-depressants and has made an appointment with his GP for a few days time. He asks me to write down a list of his symptoms that he can show to the doctor.  I write: “Hands shaking and painful, trembling legs, unsteady, not sleeping.” I suspect some kind of cognitive impairment, and he’s been unemployed for some time. His is not a life you would want for anyone….

He says he’s been expected, while on JSA, to apply for 20 jobs a week. He asks how he can do this. He was told to sign a form at the Jobcentre. He doesn’t know what it said and wasn’t given a copy.  He normally gets his money the day he came to us – but it didn’t arrive. We tell him to talk to his  GP about moving to employment and support allowance (ESA). This benefit, for those too sick to work, seems to be the right one for him. It’s unclear whether his Jobcentre has discussed this option with him and explained how to go about applying for it, before stopping his JSA.

The other food bank volunteers say that Jobcentre clients should get written confirmation of a sanction from higher up the system, once a local Jobcentre has broken the news that their money is being stopped. The way Ashok has been treated is shocking, and it’s left him broken. What lies ahead for a society that treats its most sick and vulnerable citizens in this cruel way?

A few days ago the Department of Work and Pensions launched  what it describes as an independent review of JSA sanctions. It’s led by Matthew Oakley, a member of the Social Services Advisory Committee. The review’s tight scope is to look at the clarity of information given to claimants who have had their benefits reduced for failing to take part in mandatory back to work schemes, and “what could be done to make the process clearer”.

As the void blog pointed out this week, the review, which is open until 10 January 2014, “doesn’t intend to consider whether sanctions are being misused, the impact of sanctions, or whether targets are being set for Jobcentre staff to sanction benefit claims”.

What kind of society puts thousands of ill and distressed people on unsuitable back to work schemes and then humiliates them by sanctioning their paltry JSA? Then launches a review into the way the humiliation is being explained?

Food bank mum is more positive, despite eviction notice

Elizabeth (not her real name) is looking better. She’s come back to this London food bank and  it’s wonderful to see her smiling face.  She has her head up and is keen to talk. When I first wrote about her here, she was so traumatised she couldn’t look at me and could hardly speak.  Her husband had been hospitalised following a suicide bid. He tried to hang himself, with their eight-year-old daughter a witness to all.  The youngster had to run to get a knife, then hand it to her mother. Elizabeth cut the rope and called the ambulance.

She brings me up to date.  Her young daughter has now begun therapy, and she and her brother have just started getting free school meals. People are now rallying to support this lovely mum and her three children – the youngest a baby boy of seven months. Elizabeth says: “The primary school was very helpful. They asked what they could do. The social worker has been visiting the children every week, and the kids have been eating better for the last few weeks.” Thankfully, some of the boroughs in this area are disturbed about the disgraceful fact that increasing numbers of families in this wealthy city are unable to feed their children.

Her husband is still in hospital being treated for severe depression, although he’s been shouting that he wants to go home. He and Elizabeth are Nigerian and have been in the UK for a few years. They’re applying for British Citizenship.  Her husband had been working part-time to help support his family while studying here to become an accountant. But he had to stop working because of a change in the student visa rules.

He got depressed, and has had to leave his course. You know what happened next.  He has been deemed a high risk patient, and will not be leaving his in-patient unit in the near future. Elizabeth says he is a good dad, who loves to see her and kids when they go to visit him in hospital. The family is now surviving on Elizabeth’s maternity pay of £278 a fortnight, from her job as a carer for the elderly. In addition, social services have got her to start claiming £47.10 a week (probably child benefit)  – the total for all three children.

Elizabeth rents privately, paying £700 a month for a one-bedroom flat. All five of them share the same bedroom. Her landlord has now served a notice on her to quit the flat. Amazingly – and this shows the incredible resilience demonstrated by many of our food bank clients – Elizabeth says “I feel more positive, though my landlord is still on my neck. He gave me two month’s notice to quit.”

He gave her a repossession order, which she passed to social services. Elizabeth says she became one month in arrears with the rent, and the landlord used her deposit to cover that. Social services have told her they can’t help until she’s evicted.

Neither will the Coalition’s “flagship” Help to Buy scheme  be able to offer any hope to Elizabeth. David Cameron says the scheme is helping first time buyers outside the south-east on an average house price of £163,000. London prices are much higher. Elizabeth has lost the battle to pay the  rent on the small flat that is totally unsuited to her family’s needs.

This London food bank – one of almost 400 in the UK run by the wonderful Trussell Trust in partnership with local churches and communities – has been able to give Elizabeth help of the most practical kind. But she’s now received her third supply of emergency food.  At this point Alan, the food bank manager, has to gently tell clients that it is now up to other agencies to solve the longer-term problems causing their inability to buy food. What will happen to Elizabeth next?

Gary’s benefit scrapped while universal credit wastes millions

Today the public accounts committee published a highly critical “early progress” assessment of  welfare and pensions minister Iain Duncan Smith’s “flagship” benefit reform. The universal credit scheme to roll up six means-tested benefits into one, has, according to the report, been overseen by extraordinarily weak management. Systems were so lax that a secretary authorised purchase orders worth £23m, the MPs found. They also doubted whether the project could be fully delivered by its deadline of 2017 and described the pilot programme for the scheme as “not a proper pilot” – inadequate and open to fraud.

The devastating report says that £425m has been spent so far on the programme, adding: “It is likely that much of this, including at least £140m worth of IT assets, will have to be written off.” The scope of the pilot programme, says the report, “is limited to only the simplest new claim of people who are single, have no dependents and would otherwise be seeking Jobseeker’s Allowance.”

While Iain Duncan Smith points the finger at the civil servants, and they in turn say ministers now feel able to “shrug off their responsibilities and blame staff”, people continue to arrive at this London food bank hungry and in need of immediate help. Many  are victims of a benefits system that is inadequate and failing to protect the most vulnerable of our citizens.

On the face of it, 54-year-old Gary Watson might seem to fit the  category of someone whose benefit needs are relatively “straightforward”. He’s a single man, and came into the food bank – one of nearly 400 in England run by the Trussell Trust in partnership with churches and communities –  because his benefit has  been stopped. He hadn’t received any Jobseeker’s Allowance for six weeks by the time he got to us recently. He says his benefit ceased because he hadn’t applied for the right number of jobs within the specified time frame. “I only applied for 20 jobs  in two weeks, and it’s supposed to be 42 jobs. I’m sending letters out, but not getting any feedback from the employer.”

Gary, a qualified glass cutter,  is broke and I believe he’s in danger of getting depressed too. He has the air of someone who’s giving up. I ask him what he’s been eating in the last few weeks:” All I’ve been eating is fried dumplings and beans. This is all really difficult to talk about. I need to stay calm about it. Some people would have cracked up or done something stupid. Because I haven’t been eating regularly I’ve got a lot of wind in my stomach.”

In the past Gary has also done some retail work and has worked as a bricklayer. He’s been unemployed for a couple of years now, and “in and out of programmes”. He’s too proud to let his friends and family know how bad his situation has got. “I’m appalled. I’ve got to a certain age and now the employers are only taking on youngsters. They know that at the job centre, but they still want to push you. It’s made my life hell. I don’t know how they can cut you off without giving any consideration to the individual.”

His mother is 87, and a “wise woman”. He said he used to “run to my mum, but I stopped asking her for help”. He adds: “When I go round there she asks if I’m alright for money, and I say yes. I just don’t want to take from her. Sometimes she has £10 in her hand and she says ‘take this’.”  She’s a good-hearted woman, but Gary says he doesn’t want to “feed on that”.

He adds that when he was young, he could just “walk into different jobs”. Now his life is much harder. He lives in a council flat, but when I meet him his electricity meter is just about to run out and then he won’t be able to heat food up. He has problems with his gas central heating, which has packed up.

If the current benefits system is leaving single middle-aged men such as Gary high and dry, what will the eventual toll be on individuals, families and society once these reforms work their way through? When will we decide that enough is enough? Millions will be thrown down the drain. Millions more people left hungry and in despair….