Tag: ESA

Two friends tackle the future together at the London food bank

Two  impressive women came to the London food bank for help on Friday. It’s inspiring to see how their supportive  friendship is helping them deal with the most adverse circumstances.

Julie and Bev (not their real names) crossed paths at an addiction treatment programme at a London clinic just over a month ago.  Julie is 36 and I think Bev is in her early 40s. Not a long- established friendship, but they’ve both been through so much in a short time. Sharing deeply about their lives while on the (continuing) programme has brought them close and cemented their relationship. The events that led them to meet were traumatic.

A victim of domestic violence, Julie had to leave her home quickly at the beginning of this year. She says: “I moved from pillar to post, sofa surfing and staying with friends. I then had a crisis about five weeks ago, when I hit rock bottom. I started binge drinking to black it all out….to  the point of being at a station trying to go under a fast train. I was staying with my cousin and she’d been worried about me because of the way I’d been talking before I left. She went to the train station, got me from the platform and took me to accident and emergency.”

Julie had been staying  on the coast at the time, and she says the hospital there looked after her brilliantly. They kept her for 24 hours, then transferred her to the specialist addiction treatment unit. That’s where she met Bev, who was there because of her problems with alcohol and binge drinking. Bev separated from her husband a year ago, and she began losing control of her life at that point.

Both women were able to receive treatment every day – a year’s worth of detox therapy condensed into three weeks. Both have high praise for the care they’re receiving. They left the in-patient element of the treatment last week, but both have a full programme of aftercare, including AA meetings twice a week. They’re undergoing the whole 12 step AA programme – along with three other people they met in the specialist unit. All of them are supporting each other,  says Bev. The five of them – men and women – have formed a tight friendship network to help each other through the challenging weeks and months ahead.

Now comes more of  the serendipity that seems to be mitigating some of the steep challenges they’re facing. It so happens that Julie has been given a temporary room in shared accommodation (shared bathroom and kitchen) by the  homelessness unit in our neighboring borough. Those facilities  in our borough may not include heating or hot water – but by chance she’s ended up  just round the corner from Bev’s father’s house. Bev couldn’t go back to the family home, as her three children are young and still wary.  She’s moved in with her dad, who won’t give her money, but will put petrol in her car. He’s supportive, but cautious. When she hit her lowest with the drinking he locked her in a bedroom for three days to get her away from the booze.

Julie has been supporting Bev too. Bev is trying to make sense of the new reality of life without her husband and, for the time being without being able to share her home with her kids.  Once she separated, she didn’t know she was able to claim benefits. She’s just been to the Jobcentre with her friend to sort that out.  They’re helping each other so much – just by sharing and working together to solve problems large and smaller.  Julie has now applied for employment and support allowance (ESA), While she waits for her application to be dealt with,  she had to spend a couple of days with only a tiny bit of food. A GP gave her a prescription for a few replacement meals, while Bev brought along some cake and biscuits to share with her at an AA meeting.  Julie says: “Yesterday I did feel ready to go back into hospital, as I’d had nothing to eat or drink for 24 hours.”

This is a woman struggling to feed herself in 21st century London. Luckily, the Jobcentre gave her a voucher allowing her to access crisis help at this Trussell Trust food bank. We shouldn’t require  food banks in this well-off Western European country. But the inequalities here are growing. The Trussell Trust and others know that basic needs have to be met somehow, while we wait endlessly for the politicians to acknowledge the scale of  need and to address it.

Eventually, if Julie gets stronger and moves from ESA to a job,  she’ll be trying to get some sort of  more permanent home.  How will she fare with that in this bit of the capital just a few miles  from Canary Wharf? Over there, property experts say homes in the planned new 74-storey, 714-apartment Hertsmere Tower could start at £1m. The project will target overseas buyers, who a Guardian article says are currently picking up four out of every five prime London properties. Green party member of the London assembly Darren Johnson said in the article that this was the last thing Tower Hamlets – an area with 23,000 people on housing waiting lists –  needed.

Social solidarity  – the binding together of people from all classes – is becoming less and less  a feature of life in London. It was  interesting to note that an estate agency firm (Savills) was quoted in the Guardian article warning that developers in London are focusing on high-ticket properties at the expense of the biggest need – for affordable homes.  When estate agents rather than Coalition politicians are making it clear that London has to change, it’s time to get worried.

People have an instinctive awareness that positive changes are more quickly achieved when people collaborate and care about those around them. Julie and Bev show us that we’re all in it together.

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?

Penny (not her real name), the mother of five who was so appreciative on Friday when she received help from our London food bank, tells us that she had escaped from an abusive relationship. As a result she has had to move house 11 times, with her older children attending three different secondary schools so far. She has mental health issues – made worse by the stress of trying to feed her girls, who range in age from 14 to four months. Penny was referred to us by her community psychiatric nurse.

She receives £120 every two weeks in Employment Support Allowance (ESA), and £240 in child tax credit a week. But by the time she pays her private landlord £200 a week (which also includes rent arrears) by standing order, she only had £40 left this week to cover gas, electricity and food.

Penny, whose says her ex-husband “hasn’t given me anything”,  believes single parents with larger families are being particularly affected by policies towards claimants: “I’ve been trying to get the council to help for the last six months. I know another mum with five children who can’t afford to feed them.”

Despite all the setbacks, Penny is obviously a loving mother, who does her best for the children. She’s someone who puts her youngsters’ welfare first. “I’m doing a brilliant job. My children are being brought up well. They say please and thank you. All they (the government) want to do is to bring us down. There’s no help when you have babies.” The facts back up her view. Back in 2011, the £500 per child Sure Start maternity grant was restricted to the first child in a family, and crisis loans are no longer available to those on Jobseeker’s Allowance or other low income benefits.

The food bank  – set up by local churches in this borough in partnership with the Trussell Trust – may have been able to ensure that this is a better week for Penny and her children. But her new baby and her older sisters will not thrive unless the family’s future prospects improve quickly.