Tag: JSA

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.

Mark and the Jobseeker’s Allowance/Payday Loan Diet

House prices aren’t the only thing taking off in London. There’s been a big spike recently in the numbers using this Trussell Trust food bank. Last week  13 clients came in with their vouchers during the three-hour weekly slot that  we’re open. That’s a significant increase on before Christmas. I’ll be trying to collate numbers this week to see if that  January increase is reflected at the other food banks in the borough.

One of the clients who came in just before the weekend was Mark, an endearing  man of 29, who had used another food bank at the start of the week. That supply would have seen him through for a minimum of three days. This time he didn’t have a voucher (the worker from the job centre who usually allocates them wasn’t available), but he decided to call in with us anyway. He brought us a box of biscuits he’d received from the food bank to say thanks for the earlier help. We weren’t able to give him a nutritionally balanced package of food without a voucher, but we gave him some bits and pieces that were still in date, and a loaf of bread that had been brought in that morning.

Mark has been receiving  jobseeker’s allowance (JSA) for some time. His last job was agency work as a barman and waiter. The company got bought out, and Mark ended up being paid two weeks after he did a shift. He told me: “I could be called up on the day, and I had to pay out £40 a week for my travel card, as the work took me all over London. I just couldn’t afford it.”

He tells me that he normally sets aside a small amount (£18-40) a fortnight for food. He carefully juggled all this and it was tricky. But recently things got harder, as he started paying off a hire purchase agreement to BrightHouse for a PC. He uses the PC (which he describes as his lifeline)  to prepare and send off job applications. Being poor is expensive. A typical BrightHouse HP agreement involves an APR of 70 per cent. He’s also paying off another loan from The Money Shop, where short-term loans of up £1,000 typically have an APR of 2961.4 per cent. He says his problems were also made worse (probably before Christmas) by bills coming out of his account earlier than he expected.

To make matters worse he got ill in October, when he hurt his right shoulder and arm, and the right side of his neck. This really affected his original  food budget (which assumed one to two meals a day), as the painkillers he’s taking require him to eat more regularly. It got to the point where he has needed to pay out £4.40 a week more than is paid in – and that’s before buying food. The injury is in danger of turning into a chronic health problem. Mark is also paying a Sky subscription. Some will point a finger here and say he shouldn’t be doing this if he can’t afford food. But try standing his shoes (size nines – needing superglue as the soles have come off) for a while…

Mark has a kind heart. On the day he was in he put his name down to become a volunteer at the food bank. He also helps his neighbour (in her 80s) to carry her heavy shopping. That won’t be doing his arm much good. What does he think will happen next, and what would he like from life in the future? I tell him I see him as very good with people and extremely thoughtful.  “In the short term I’m going to keep struggling to feed myself. A nice steady job would help and somewhere of my own to live (he has slept on a friend’s sofa for more than six years).” I suggest he goes back to see his GP and asks for better medication, some physiotherapy and help with applying  for employment and support allowance (ESA). The higher rate of ESA would make a difference until his health improves.

He looks gaunt, and says that he’s lost substantial amounts of weight over the last few years – about three stones, he thinks. Being on JSA is not good for your health. The Council of Europe in Strasbourg has recently said that welfare payments in the UK , including JSA (£67 a week) are manifestly inadequate. Our Government doesn’t agree.

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?