Tag: Jobseeker’s Allowance

Inequality, one London church and the impact of universal credit

kings church exterior
In case you’ve forgotten, London is one of the wealthiest cities on earth, the capital of one of the world’s richest countries. Only a few weeks ago Prime Minister David Cameron told us: “We are a wealthy country.” Let’s take a walk down one street in south-east London, call into a church, and see how effectively all this wealth is trickling down.

It’s not dropping into the laps of the large crowd of people packed into King’s church in Catford on a Wednesday night. There’s a hundred or so sitting around tables (and on some Wednesdays there are 150 people). They’re there for companionship, support with their problems, and a free three course meal. There’s a warm, welcoming buzz, and it’s definitely not just food that’s on offer at this truly wonderful project. They get access to a wide range of help – anything from debt advice to counselling and support with mental health and addiction issues. They can also volunteer to help out with the meal. Many are here tonight preparing food, cooking, serving, clearing up and chatting to diners. People also get support with looking for paid work.

Fundamentally, it’s about providing a community for adults of all ages who feel marginalised by politicians and by society and showing them that they belong – that they are valued for who they are and not what they do or don’t earn. It offers them a firm place in the world. This project wants to empower people to have functioning lives.

The church prioritises helping rough sleepers. There were 16 of them here last week, and this winter the church has had more rough sleepers than ever before. The rough sleepers were heading to a car park in Catford that night. The upward trend in the number of rough sleepers locally reflects the national picture. An estimated 2,414 people were sleeping rough in England on any one night in 2013, an increase of 37 per cent on 2010.

The project also provides 24 (soon to go up to 31)spaces in low support housing at a reasonable rent, and draws up care plans to help individuals find work. It also helps people address health issues and supports those fighting appeals against decisions to withdraw benefits such as employment and support allowance (ESA).

Low support housing (c) King’s Church London

Marvellous work is going on here, and despite the horrendous pressures on the local Labour-led authority’s (Lewisham’s ) budgets, it is working hard to forge connections with the King’s Church project. On Thursday morning one of the project’s key co-ordinators Simon Allen was due to meet with the council to discuss the rough sleeping issue and how to get the large group of people sleeping rough in Catford off the streets.

Simon, who talked to me at length last week, couldn’t be more gentle towards, and supportive of, the people who come along here. But he’s angry about the way current Coalition polices including the reinvention of the benefits system are impacting on the least well off. Benefit stoppages are “horrendous”, he says – telling me about one man at tonight’s meal whose benefits have been completely stopped.”He’s been without benefits for about six months. These are the most vulnerable people in society and since the stoppage he has spent a month in a mental health unit and a month in prison.”

He can’t believe that people with mental health issues who are challenging decisions to withdraw ESA are being assessed by people with no knowledge of mental health. The project team helps such clients with the appeal process and wins most cases.

The project has a problem if people are dependent on the Wednesday night meal alone. “I don’t want people to be dependent. Our key philosophy is that everyone who comes here can contribute. People can come here and help out.” He recommends a book outlining his church’s approach to social action. “The book’s called Toxic Charity, and it’s an essential read. You can keep people in their poverty or you can treat them as powerful. It’s about building community, friendship, relationship and connection. It includes a sense of hope.”

Simon is “a little cautious” about the food bank model of providing help, which he sees as meeting people’s immediate needs but not able to lift them out of poverty. “It’s all very well going to a food bank and getting a parcel for a few weeks (clients are only meant to use a Trussell Trust food bank a maximum of three times), but we have some people here who have been without benefit for six months.” He believes the holistic model based around community and friendship, and the project’s “fantastic” working connections with the local authority makes it ultimately a more sustainable long-term approach.

Let’s be clear: the Trussell Trust itself says that food banks aren’t a sustainable response to food poverty. Back at the London food bank, the manager Alan reminds me that “most of the people who come to us are referred by people who should be providing mainstream help. If we start providing mainstream help it gives them no urgency to solve the problem. There’s also the issue of individual’s motivation. Where’s the motivation to drive a solution from their point of view?”

Alan also believes that something of a myth is circulating about people becoming “dependent” on food banks. “We see nine out of 10 people on three or fewer occasions.” The few he sees more than that are mostly experiencing very exceptional circumstances.

Undoubtedly, this debate about the longer-term role and strategic direction of food banks is going to intensify here in London and elsewhere as more and more people are forced to use them. A London Assembly Labour report by member Fiona Twycross quoted food bank use in London as having increased by 393 per cent in the past two years. It said that in 2011 there were 12,839 visits to food banks in London, increasing to 63,367 in the first nine months of the current financial year – including 24,500 children. The expanding chasm between rich and poor in London is starting to echo that world painted so vividly by Charles Dickens. Who would have thought it?

Simon is particularly furious about the planned move towards Universal Credit (UC), which he predicts will have a terrible impact on those with the most complex problems. UC is the new single payment for people looking for work or on a low income. It will replace housing benefit, income based jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), income related ESA, income support, child tax credits and working tax credits.

The new payment, which will be paid monthly direct to the claimant and will include support for housing costs, will be an unmitigated disaster for many, particularly those with alcohol and gambling addictions, says Simon: “Some people will be given figures such as £1,500 a month in their pockets. We’ve got one man here who is a gambler who is almost crying and saying he doesn’t want this. Why are they obsessed with paying people monthly?.”

He’s approached the DWP about this issue, and they’ve tried to reassure him by telling him about something called “jamjar accounts”, which are starting to emerge as a way of allowing people to ring-fence money to pay specific bills such as gas and electricity. “The DWP also says they will have advisers who will come out and help people. Are there really going to be hundreds of thousands of advisers giving advice to people they don’t know?”

This experienced person sees the evolving system as a disaster starting to unfold. I’ll be returning to the project over the next few weeks to find out more about the individuals involved and how their lives are being affected by the apparent dismantling of the welfare state in London.

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….

Abdul, his wife and family

The sheer tension of trying to survive from day to day leads to arguments at home for many of the clients who come to this London food bank. Abdul and his wife Rahma have been rowing, and the police got involved. They in turn referred him to a social worker, who gave him a food bank voucher.

The only money this family of four has coming in at the moment is child benefit for the two children.  Abdul’s wife has depression, and is not able to work.  This has been confirmed by her GP,  so she applied for Employment Support Allowance (ESA). She is appealing the decision by the Department of Work and Pensions to refuse her ESA.

His wife is Spanish, and the couple have been in the UK for six years. They live in a privately-rented home. Before she got ill she had been working on and off as an assistant chef in an Italian restaurant. Abdul, who also worked in a restaurant, has also been a self-employed market trader. But with his wife unwell and unable to cope with the children, he has been at home looking after the youngsters of two and three.

He tells me: “Going back 10 weeks, she had been receiving  Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) for about seven months. They said she’s not a UK national or Irish, but she had been working and she’s paid taxes. The JSA was £114 for a couple per week, but we’ve now had 10 weeks without any money at all.”

Abdul, who is 37, has now had to borrow £200 from his wife’s cousin, but doesn’t  know when he can repay him. He applied for child tax credit five weeks ago, but still hasn’t heard back about it.  He has now applied to the council for a crisis loan. I’ll follow up Abdul’s progress in a few weeks…..