Tag: immigration

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?

Feeding a baby on benefits

What would you do if you and your partner were young, jobless, struggling to buy enough food and had a baby with allergies? You could end up shouting at each other – a lot. That’s what happened to John and Marie (not their real names), a couple in their early 20s who came to the Trussell Trust centre last week for a supply of emergency food. They brought their subdued little girl of 15 months, who sat in her pram and was unsettled until given some baby rice.

Their baby is tiny – she  looks no more than nine or 10 months. She’s come to the attention of  local authority child protection staff, who are concerned that she’s already being emotionally damaged by her parents’ constant arguments.

Marie is from the Philippines and is trying to sort out her UK immigration papers. The fee for preparing her papers was £578. She doesn’t receive any public funds, so John is trying to pay the immigration fee, while attempting to spread the £113 Employment Support Allowance (ESA) he receives once a fortnight between the three of them.  John says he had to survive for 16 months without any benefits before he started getting ESA. Marie is still awaiting the immigration decision.

They’re used to making a little money go a long way when it comes to food: John says: ‘We were shopping at Morrison’s, and we can make a meal for under £5. We mostly buy things like tins of spaghetti and ravioli. But the real shock was finding out that she (the baby) had allergies. So we had to change our food. But social services is saying that a family of three could survive on £51 a week.’ Although their rent is paid by a neighbouring local authority, the benefit money has to stretch to cover council tax, electricity and travel, as well as food. John is bitter about the way they have to live. ‘They are making all these cuts, but does Mr Cameron see the other side of it? It’s very difficult for people who are applying for immigration.’

They want to know if they can access a centre closer to their flat next time, as affording travel is a big problem. Alan, who manages the foodbanks in the borough, says: ‘We’ve had people come here who’ve had to walk huge distances to collect the food, and walk huge distances back.’

He gently explains to the couple that the supply of food they’re being given is meant to be an emergency response to an immediate crisis rather than an ongoing solution. You can tell he hates having to say this to people who are clearly going to find it almost impossible to improve their circumstances in the near future. But he remains as positive as he can, saying: ‘We are a charity run by churches in the borough. A lot of people are being put in difficult positions, and our job is to do what we can to help.’

Note: The first post published on 22 September says Tim the ex-scaffolder cycles about 16 miles to the hospital and back for blood and eyesight tests. The round trip is 10/11 miles.