Tag: foodbanks

Rebecca’s story: Young Londoners’ lives are being ruined and relationships corrupted

Rebecca’s story: Young Londoners’ lives are being ruined and relationships corrupted
Rebecca is 22, and has a budget of less than £20 a month for food.
Rebecca is 22, and has a budget of less than £20 a month for food.

Rebecca (not her real name) has narrowly escaped eviction from a hostel. She tries to eat on less than £20 a month. That doesn’t work so well, so she called into this London food bank a few days ago for some support. This 22-year-old travels two to three hours each way by bus across London to work weekend shifts for a retailer, but only earns £56 a week. There’s no more work on offer there, so she has to stick with what she’s got. Her jobseeker’s allowance amounts to £2.57 a week. She’s glad she doesn’t have children, ‘because I’m struggling to feed myself, let alone kids’. Welcome to the wonderful neo-Dickensian world without prospects that we’ve created for a growing number of young adults in London.

Despite the frustration and drudgery she faces each day, this young woman is generous, thoughtful and enterprising. The resilience and dignity she displays in the face of scandalous adversity is impressive. Her first words when she was given her emergency supply of food, were: ‘When I get a proper job I’m going to donate food to the food bank. I know how it helps – even just to get a can of soup. For me, that lasts for two meals. The staff here are friendly and that makes me feel a lot better, especially after that uncomfortable feeling I get at the job centre.’

Rebecca lives in the same hostel as Sarah, a woman of 28. Sarah was given an eviction notice by the Changing Lives housing association, telling her to move out last Friday at the end of her two month probation period. The council and the housing association responded to Sarah’s account here. Rebecca says she was also given an eviction notice, telling her to leave on the same day – but that the housing association has now changed its mind. Rebecca says the evictions didn’t go ahead and that both of them have been told they can stay. At least both women have a roof over their heads now.

She had to move away from the part of London she was living and working in and move to this borough. Here, she was given a place in the hostel. The council is paying for her housing while she’s there, but Rebecca has to find the hostel’s separate £60 a month service charge. She also spends £40 on her travel to work each month, has a £45 bill for her mobile phone, and repays debts of £40 a month. She’s been told by a party plan company that she must pay for left-over kit it supplied to her. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has also been deducting payments from her JSA for money it says she owed . ‘The DWP said I owed them £200 from when I was claiming JSA four years ago – it was only for a two month period. I don’t know if I’ve paid it off now.’

The little that’s left over goes on everything elase, including food. What she does to survive is to spend £5 a week on vegetables to turn into soup that last days. She misses being able to buy meat, because it’s so expensive. Now and again she can buy chicken.

What does she think about her situation? ‘I can’t afford clothes or any luxuries. I’ve been applying for jobs constantly, but I’ve never been able to get a full-time job. I love working where I am – both the customers coming into the store and my colleagues, so I’ve decided that until I get a (full-time) job, I will keep this going. I went on benefits when I was 16 and started a part-time job at 19. But as soon as I got a full-time job they cut my hours down and said they couldn’t afford to keep me. It’s not work’s fault they don’t have enough hours. I really enjoy my work.’

All she wants to do is work, but she feels self esteem issues may also now be holding her back. ‘I hate people thinking I’m not trying hard enough. When you’re having confidence issues it’s harder to get jobs. Recently I was told I was suitable for a job, but because I’m not confident enough I wasn’t getting it.’

She says that as soon as she finds a job she’s going to get somewhere else to live straight away. The worse thing, she says, is ‘feeling like I have to rely on other people – at the age of 22 I don’t want to do that’. The way society treats the young also pollutes their closest relationships with parents and partners. She says that her boyfriend, ‘thinks I rely on him for everything, and I don’t.’ She adds: ‘He says he doesn’t want to live with me, because he doesn’t think I can finance myself. I haven’t told him I go to the food bank. He doesn’t even understand why I go to the job centre.’ Her situation is obviously taking its toll on their relationship.

Rebecca says she had more money to live on before, when she was 16. ‘Back then I went to college, got income support, and had housing benefit.’

Guardian writer Hannah Fearn wrote recently about the campaign led by Citizen’s Income Trust and Basic Income UK to replace the ‘costly, complex benefits system’, with a citizen’s income – an ‘unconditional payment granted to every individual as a right of citizenship’. The proposal is to set it below the minumum wage, but would give a basic income of £7,000 (more for pensioner and those with severe disabilities). The idea is gaining support with key figures, including Labour MP John McDonnell. The article says that when a pilot project funded by Unicef in eight villages in India introduced a basic income, the outcome was that work increased. The article adds: ‘The cash in pockets led to small scale investments, such as the creation of new businesses, and women gained more than men.’

Hannah Fearn points out that the principle of means testing – ‘that we should only get something from the state if we prove we definitely need it – stands intact and unscrutinised with politicians simply tinkering with the goalposts’. Could the principle of a citizen’s income be a way to transform the currently dismal outcomes for Rebecca and her struggling generation, and bring some real equity, and a degree of vital autonomy?

 

Mark: State welfare is failing our citizens and food banks aren’t the answer

Mark: State welfare is failing our citizens and food banks aren’t the answer
Mark Bothwell. Still in pain and waiting for the outcome of his employment and support allowance application.
Mark Bothwell. Still in pain and waiting for the outcome of his employment and support allowance application.

A study presented earlier this week to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger and Food Poverty says the rise in food banks and charity food is a clear sign of the inadequate nature of social security provision and the way it is delivered. As reported in the Guardian, the report by Sheffield University researcher Hannah Lambie-Mumford warns of the danger of charity food becoming a fundamental part of, or even replacement for, formerly state-funded welfare.

As shown by Eoin Clarke here, by January this year the number of food banks in the UK had grown to more than 1,080. Give that number a bit more consideration. There are more food banks now in the UK than there are branches of Sainsbury’s. The experience of Mark Bothwell (pictured above), here at the London food bank, serves to illustrate the effect of our inadequate welfare system on real lives. Individuals with multiple, deep-set problems are being let down, and food banks can do nothing more for them than provide short-term food. Crisis packs of long life food are not, and can’t be, a solution for people who are being left month upon month with inadequate, delayed, or downright non-existent welfare payments.

Mark, who injured his right shoulder back in October, is on jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), but is still waiting to hear the outcome of his application for employment and support allowance (ESA). He tells me: ‘They say it will take a while’. He won’t be able to work for the foreseeable future, while he waits for his shoulder to heal. In the meantime, he’s trying to pay off some old debts ( a doorstep loan and a payment to Brighthouse) at the usual extortionate rates, in addition to the repayments on a crisis loan. That doesn’t leave any sensible amount of money left for food out of the current JSA rate of between £125 and £145 a fortnight (depending on whether the crisis loan repayment amount has been deducted).

He’s in a terrible way – in constant pain every day. His GP has put him back on the drug tramadol, and he says that some days ‘it literally feels like my flesh is on fire’. He’s struggling to keep his spirits up: ‘If I allowed myself to feel all the bad feelings I wouldn’t be able to function. There are people who are worse off.’ There are days when he goes without food, but he adds: ‘I heard a family in Afganistan talk on the news. The man had lost his younger son in a bombing, and the elder son was injured. A couple of days without food seems like nothing. My situation pales to nothing in comparison.’

Earlier in the year, Benefit Tales highlighted that the European Committee of Social Rights declared in a report that minimum levels of benefits – short-term and long-term incapacity benefit, state pension and jobseeker’s allowance – in Great Britain were ‘manifestly inadequate’.

The Coalition government should be deeply shamed by these comments from international observers. Maybe here at home we’ve got so used to the inequities that the burden on individuals and families isn’t registering any more. John Glen, parliamentary aide to Eric Pickles, said recently that partisan politics needs to be taken out of the food bank debate. He also said he hoped the all-party parliamentary inquiry would examine the underlying causes of the use of food banks. This is the same man who suggested in 2011 that everyone in work should have enough money for food.

Would he like food banks to quietly yet relentlessly continue transforming into an industrially-scaled charitably-funded rescuer of failing state provision? It’s easier to hand out food bank vouchers that you’re not paying for than to make sure your citizens get decent and humane levels of social security, paid on time.

While this shameful situation gets worse by the week it seems Mr Glen would prefer us not to get political about it.

Sweeter tales from the food bank

Sweeter tales from the food bank
Generous brownie pack gives 35 Easter eggs to the food bank
Generous brownie pack gives 35 Easter eggs to the food bank

Often the accounts of the people who use this food bank in the London suburbs are harrowing. No-one comes here unless they’ve exhausted other options. There’s been a crisis – often it’s because benefits have been delayed. One young woman who came in last week – Sarah – had her employment and support allowance (ESA) held up before Christmas because she’d received some expenses for volunteering work done in the autumn. Often, food bank users are struggling with the repayments on doorstep loans and can’t afford to buy food. Often they’re on jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) but are endlessly waiting for decisions on their claim for ESA. This is the case for Mark, whom I’ve written about recently.

So when good and life-enhancing things happened today, I felt the need to share. Femi, who was so distressed when I last saw him. came in with a food bank voucher, and told us the news that his family has been rehoused. Femi (not his real name), who tried to take his own life last September when he heard that his immigration appeal had been rejected, has been found a home by the Royal Borough of Greenwich. He’s moved in, along with his wife and three young children. A new baby is due next month. Femi, from Nigeria, had been studying for an accountancy degree here – he has only got two modules left to finish – but had got increasingly depressed towards the time he received the immigration decision last autumn. Their private landlord was also threatening them with eviction. Now they’ve been housed, things have eased. ‘It’s a big help for us, and it has helped me to concentrate on my recovery. The only thing left to sort out now is the immigration issue.’

When I last saw him back in February, he told me that he was still crying every day. Today, helped by months of intensive therapy, he was smiling and held his head high. He says that now, whenever he wants to ‘be harsh to himself’, he takes a step back and says ‘be kind’. He’s also speaking positively about the future. He has a solicitor, who is helping him apply for leave to remain in the UK. If that works out, he wants to get a job so that he can support his family. In the meantime, as a part-qualified accountant, he is very keen to volunteer and get work experience, particularly in the field of accountancy. He’s prepared to do an internship, so if your firm is interested in speaking to Femi, please get in touch.

Finally, another story from the food bank today: A local Brownie pack were given an Easter egg each by their leaders a few days ago and told they could either take them home or leave them to the borough’s food banks. The generous girls left 35 Easter eggs for the needy families who come for help. Surrounded as we often are by evidence of a less caring, more judgemental society, it’s heartening to see that some councils – despite their slashed budgets – are still doing what they can to protect the poor and vulnerable. It’s also good to see how many London children have that instinct to reach out to poorer families this Easter.