Tag: food banks

Mohammed and the night bus: A search for #asylum and hope

Mohammed and the night bus: A search for #asylum and hope
Mohammed's asylum application has been refused
Mohammed’s asylum application has been refused

Mohammed came into this  south-east London food bank in search of help. But he feels no sense of belonging here any more – and seems disconnected from the events taking place around him.

He’s a casualty of war. He made the journey from Iraq to the UK in 2005 as a stowaway on a lorry, when he was 22 years old. His father, one of Saddam Hussein’s policemen, had been killed. The terrible trip took three or four weeks. To this day he doesn’t know what happened to the rest of his Kurdish family. They ran away to Syria and he lost track of them after that.

He’s homeless now and his asylum case has been refused. He can’t work, because he hasn’t got the immigration status to do that. Feeling that he’s come to the end of the line here in England, he wants to return to Iraq. The UK Immigration Services won’t let him, given the ongoing insurgency. Now 33, Mohammed is drinking heavily and depressed.  Some days, when he doesn’t have a drink, he starts shaking. ‘I drink too much and I’m thinking about my family.’ He’s had enough of life on the streets of London, where he sleeps when he can’t find a place on the floor of a pub. Some nights he sleeps at the train station or at a homeless shelter. On a few occasions he is allowed  to stay at a friend’s flat.

It’s cold and he doesn’t feel it would be any more dangerous in Iraq than it is here. ‘I have no home – nowhere to go. Two weeks ago I saw someone stab a person with a knife on the streets. Sometimes you see very dangerous people. Three months ago someone attacked me. He punched me in the mouth and I lost a tooth.’ His health is deteriorating. ‘I went to the GP today and told him I can’t eat properly.’ He showed me some medicine he’s been given.

In 2008 Mohammed ended up in prison for a year, followed by a 17-month spell in a detention centre because of his immigration status. Mohammed says all he had done was to ask someone for a cigarette – ‘but the man said I robbed him’.  He says that he challenged the detention at High Court and ‘won the case – I should have got £60,000, but they gave me £5,000. His girlfriend at the time stood by him while he was in detention and offered good support. But the relationship foundered.

He was sent to hospital for help to overcome his addiction to alcohol, but the detox therapy would have cost £4,800 and the Immigration Services refused to fund it. He has to check in with the Immigration Services regularly to prove he’s still in the country. Because he is destitute he can’t afford the train ticket. So every time he travels by train he runs the risk of a fine he can’t pay – followed by a trip to court and potentially another conviction for a criminal offence.

This Trussell Trust food bank was able to give Mohammed a supply of three days non-perishable food. This food is long life, and much of it needs to be cooked or heated. That’s a problem, because Mohammed normally has nowhere to cook it. He’s homeless. On the night we met he was trying hard to contact a friend to see if he could sleep at his home. I spoke to one of  the volunteers at the food bank, who said how difficult it can be to ‘signpost’ people such as Mohammed, to try to get them some help. There don’t seem to be any avenues left for him.

Mohammed told me he often sleeps on the night buses that connect the centre of London to the outer suburbs. ‘It’s not just me – there are many people who do this. People without houses.’

You don’t have to be an asylum seeker to be at risk of  homelessness in the UK. A recent analysis of government data by the University of St Andrews on behalf of Shelter, found that one in 8 UK households are surviving on low incomes while paying unaffordable housing costs. This is putting them under huge financial pressure, and  ‘more than one in 10 working families in England have had to sell possessions to cover their housing costs’. A two-bedroom flat in London costs up to £1,470 in rent, with many remaining empty and unlet for months because many public sector workers and pensioners just can’t afford them.

Next time you’re in London on a night bus, try looking around to work out  how many people are there because they have nowhere else to go.  But you might find that everyone is staring at you.

Many thanks to Mohammed for sharing his experiences of  life as an asylum seeker in London.

 

Giving and Receiving at the #Londonfoodbank

 

Greenwich food bank volunteer Debbie Angel
Greenwich food bank volunteer Debbie Angel

This is the story of food bank volunteer Debbie Angel and her feelings about  both the work that she does and the clients who come to the food banks in this corner of  London. Debbie (pictured left) greets the people who come in here, helps them to feel more at ease, and provides a listening ear as well as a crisis package of food to those  in need.

They’re coming through her doors in increasing numbers. London  may be the best city in the world to move to for work,  according to a survey of over 200,000 people in 189 countries compiled by The Boston Consulting Group, recruiters The Network, and totaljobs.com.  But for many of  London’s existing residents – mainly those who are out of work, or on low incomes, or disabled and in ill-health – the city doesn’t seem nearly as attractive as this. It doesn’t seem quite the gleaming metropolis to the clients who arrive to see Debbie and the other volunteers each week.

When you take a closer look there’s a massive problem here and throughout the UK. The food banks here in the Royal Borough of Greenwich and across the UK come under the franchise of the Trussell Trust Network and the Trussell Trust’s statistics on food bank use are truly shocking. In 2013-14 913,138 people were given three days of emergency food and support, and the primary referral causes were benefit delays (31%) and low income (20%).  In 2012-13 the figure was 346,992. But as the chairman of the Trussell Trust Chris Mould says – these figures are merely the ‘tip of the iceberg’.  The charity has more than 420 food banks, but represents well under half of the total number of emergency food suppliers in the UK.  A  January 2014 report by Dr Eoin Clarke put the Trussell’s Trust’s share of the food bank sector at 43%.

When they reach the food banks here, people are desperate and at the end of a road. They can’t feed themselves or any dependents they may have.

If that happened to you, how would you feel about it? Maybe you’d be angry, depressed, frustrated or powerless? Would you feel somewhat bitter and resentful of  others in this rich capital that people from all over the world seem to want to move to for work?

Well here’s the thing.

While people do want to share their experiences and explain the life circumstances that have led them here, people don’t tend to leave the food bank steeped in those emotions.

The accounts that people often share of their lives are ‘very heavy and very difficult’, says Debbie. But she believes that the common thread linking together the people she meets is gratitude and a desire to give something back to the organisation that has helped them through one of the hardest times in their lives. She says: ‘They are so grateful that we care about them. It’s the fact that you’ve listened to them. They encourage me as much as I encourage them. Giving them the food is the least of what happens. That’s the hardest thing for them to take away. Giving them some loving care and kindness and being here and hearing them speak is the important bit. They want to give things back when they are able.’

She adds: ‘This is not a one-sided thing – I love speaking to people here.’

I see people leaving with their heads held higher than when they came in, thanks to people such as Debbie.

 

Kestna’s #WCA and other reasons not to be cheerful

 

Kestna Marsh is disabled. He was forced to the foodbank after a tribunal upheld a DWP decision to stop his benefit.
Kestna Marsh is disabled. He was forced to the foodbank after a tribunal upheld a DWP decision to stop his benefit.

Kestna Marsh was 62 this week. At the moment he probably feels he has little cause for celebration.

This former construction worker struggles to walk  as he has arthritis in his right knee,  left leg and left shoulder.  He can’t lift anything with his left arm. On the day he came into this London food bank with his voucher, his mobility was obviously restricted and he struggled with his walking stick  to move from room to room. Because of his mobility issues I felt hesitant about asking him to move even a few steps into a quieter room. Kestna walked that distance because he wanted to share his experience of Work Capability Assessment (WCA).

He was left without the money to buy adequate food after a tribunal hearing at the beginning of  last month (September) upheld the outcome  of his 2013 face-to-face ATOS WCA. He attended the tribunal on his own, without the support of a legal or welfare expert, and there were two people on the panel – a doctor and a solicitor.  The WCA awarded him zero points for his health issues, and Kestna immediately challenged this. But following the outcome of the appeal his employment and support allowance (ESA) claim was closed on September 13th. He thinks that as a result he ceased getting housing benefit on the same date. He now has to reapply for housing benefit. He’s been told by Jobcentre Plus to apply for Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA), but he says he has been told by Jobcentre Plus that any claim for JSA wouldn’t be processed until October 17th.

He explains here how his health problems affect his life and how he feels about losing his tribunal appeal (apologies for the unconventional presentation of the video – camera operator in training!).

His Disability Living Allowance (DLA) of about £215 is paid monthly, but the payment in mid-September of about £50 a week has gone mainly on bills. What about food?  “I’ve been eating salad, beans, cheese and the odd sandwich here and there. I can’t do a proper food shop. If you gave me stuff to cook my gas is more or less onto nil. I haven’t got a penny to my name.”

Kestna added: “They expect me to go back to work. They’ve told me that if another illness emerges then I can apply for ESA again. Since my original assessment (in 2013) my problems have got worse. I can’t use a computer and I can’t sit too much or walk too far for too long. What sort of job do they expect me to do? I previously worked in construction and I know that for me to sit in an office would require retraining.”

The serious difficulties he faces because of his obvious ill-health and the stopping of his ESA are compounded by his council housing situation and the difficulties in building up a relationship with a GP at his new surgery who can get to know him properly.

He lives on his own, and has recently moved from one part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich  to another. He wanted to move to a ground floor flat, so he was offered one. But this new flat hasn’t been adapted to meet his mobility needs, so he is not entitled to the rent rebate that would accompany such an adaptation. He says that because the council moved him into a two bedroom flat instead of the one bedroom flat he wanted, the council has classed the flat as under-occupied. So because he’s been deemed as having an extra room, he’s having to pay an extra £12 a week towards the bedroom tax – for a flat that hasn’t even been adapted to meet his physical needs.

Kestna also says that there is apparently some discrepancy arising from his move from another flat in the borough, meaning that the council may have been paying him housing benefit for both flats. He also has council tax arrears of £112.

He left the food bank with contact details for welfare and housing rights experts.

He also left promising that he would make an appointment with his GP. “I’ve just moved into the area, so I don’t have a relationship with the GP yet. I must have had at least four or five appointments with different doctors.”

How did the tribunal decision leave him feeling? “I was really angry. I’ve never been through the food bank stuff. I always stuck to relying on my doctor. I got the certificate and sent it in on time. To find that they closed my claim without even informing me they were doing it, in my circumstances –  I feel quite disgusted really.”

Many thanks to Kestna for speaking up.