Guest post: "I had to use a foodbank - many families aren't 'just about managing'"

[MumsnetGuestPosts]

Last week, I reached crisis point.

It feels like this has been looming since I was sanctioned in 2013. Following my sanction, I struggled with depression and agoraphobia brought on by anxiety. I started overeating and put on weight. It’s been a long road back to work and full health - I now work part-time, but my income is not always enough to pay my bills. Bit by bit, I have been sliding into debt.

Then a delayed benefit payment due to a computer error led to bank charges, which put me overdrawn. When it came to going shopping I had no money for food. With no opportunity to get help from family I turned to my housing association. I was given a voucher for the local foodbank, but it didn't open for a few days so I had to wait. That afternoon, my electric ran out so I sat there in the dark, feeling very alone, with no food to eat, and memories of my sanction filling my mind.

I was sanctioned for not looking for work. Fair punishment you might think, but the reason I wasn’t job hunting was because I was doing a two-week training course in a neighbouring town, leaving home at 7am and returning home at 7pm. I had been instructed not to jobsearch or sign on during that time, but later another adviser disagreed. I lost my £71 a week Jobseekers Allowance for four weeks.

I went without electricity, heating and food for most of the sanction. It climaxed on Christmas day. I spent it watching happy families walk past my window, while I sat silently, dealing with diarrhoea and waiting for it to get dark so I could try to sleep. It wasn’t until I received a Christmas card from a relative with £20 in it that I was able to eat and buy electric for the meter.

Less than two weeks later, I was told by the same Jobcentre adviser that I needed to learn a ‘work ethic’ - something clearly not demonstrated by my 20-year work history. She put me on mandatory work activity – workfare – which meant working full-time for free for four weeks in order to receive my benefits. Effectively, I was being punished for being sanctioned. I didn’t argue with her. Instead I went home, emptied the bathroom cabinet of the various pills I had stored away and tried to end my life. Less than a year before I had been earning £35k at a university in London.

In the run-up to the Autumn Statement, the papers were filled with news about so-called JAMs. These six million families who are 'just about managing' will no doubt be hoping that the government will fulfil its promise to make their lives better. But there is another group of families who have lost that hope. They are the ones who have been on the receiving end of harsh cuts to their income, through austere welfare cuts. Most of them also work but live in fear that the government will make their lives even harder.

I am not alone in receiving a sanction. Since the Conservatives were elected in 2010 until June this year around three million individuals have received eight million sanctions. Some may have been able to overturn the decision, but more wouldn't. The 3m figure doesn't include family members – mostly children – who are also affected by sanctions. For children living in sanctioned households, schools and foodbanks have become a lifeline, with teachers reportedly using money meant for education to buy food and clothing.

Some people whose benefit entitlement has been cut turn to social media for support. When Lauren got a letter from the council to inform her that housing benefit was being cut by £103.99 a week because of changes to the benefit cap, she went online to seek help. However, what she got was hate from people who are themselves 'just about managing'. Too many people now see single mums who rely on benefits as unworthy of respect and are instead treated as ‘breeders’ who are responsible for their own misery.

I was lucky to receive a more positive response when I turned to social media last week. After a period of feeling sorry for myself, I wrote a blog post using my phone and wi-fi from a neighbour and was able to get enough support to overcome my immediate problem. But there are many people out there who don't have this luxury. Over Christmas last year 23,901 jobseekers and a further 3031 sick or disabled people were sanctioned, with many of those potentially spending that time living without food and heating. Others will not have a home at all and will have been sleeping rough.

Many families will be concerned about facing the biggest squeeze to their pay in 70 years, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies recently predicted - but another group will be worried about not having an income at all. Last week during a debate on cuts to Employment and Support Allowance, MP Ian Mearns highlighted a constituent who had been forced to heat soup tins with a tea light following redundancy. Debbie Abrahams MP recently brought attention to one of her constituents who suffered a heart attack during his work capability assessment, and was sanctioned for not completing the assessment. Benefit sanctions and austerity have forced many households into undignified situations in order to feed themselves and their loved ones. These families are not just about managing - it is much worse than that.

[AndNowItsSeven]

Not being able to donate formula is ridiculous. If you aren't breastfeeding you can't just start because your benefits have been cut!

[PausingFlatly]

Today's news: Tax credit benefit removals criticised by MPs

A "cut first, think later" attitude plunged tax credit claimants into humiliating hardship and debt, a group of MPs has said.
HM Revenue and Customs and contractor Concentrix were criticised by the Work and Pensions Committee for decision-making "stacked against claimants".
The committee found that 90% of moves to remove benefits were overturned on first appeal.
...
In many cases people lost benefits for months and were forced to borrow money and use food banks to survive, said the MPs.

[PausingFlatly]

So these are people who the government agrees are entitled to benefits, many of whom are in work, who were using foodbanks because of the actions of HMRC.

(Concentrix may have been the agent, but HMRC agreed the contract that incentivised their behaviour.)

[OFFFS]

Andnowitsseven - I think provision to supply formula is separate and done through HV - it certainly was when I was on benefits when I had my first. I was given tokens - but that's going back a few years so may well have been snatched away.

[OFFFS]

All of this is happening, it's increasing, and it's being ignored. I, Daniel Blake should have been an embarrassment to the Government. This thread should be causing uproar.

But it's all kept very quiet and I think it's large because the media is run by Murdoch and his agenda is sucked up by the government and Great British public who trust the red tops over their elected (and un-elected) politicians) to inform their decisions. No one trusts the ones in charge, not do they trust the ones who should be questioning them.

There should be uproar that Brexit was based on lies.

There should be uproar that austerity measures implemented by the government disproportionately affect women, low paid women.

If they took the politics, the self-serving businessmen and untrustworthy politicians out of running the country we could probably make things a whole heap better.

Damn this makes me angry.

[AndNowItsSeven]

OFFFS yes milk/fruit/veg tokens still exist however the are only given families not in receipt of wtc.
If you are on receipt of wtc and find yourself needing foodbank support where would you get formula from?

[OFFFS]

No idea whatsoever but I think you raise an excellent point. .

[myoriginal3]

You beg for money on the street or resort to prostitution.

[hmcAsWas]

I'll ask about the formula milk next time I am at Trussell Trust (I volunteer there)

[MrsC45]

So sorry for your experience. It does feel like society is moving backwards. Also re formula v BF , I can't imagine you could keep up breastfeeding if you couldn't feed yourself. Certainly it would be difficult. I do hope formula is still available to those in need. All very sad.

[Bluesrunthegame]

Very sad to read this, hope things get better soon. The people who sanctioned your benefits sound almost sadistic, telling an adult with a 20-year work history that she 'needs to learn a work ethic' smacks of the people who ran the workhouses.

The blog writer had to work for 4 weeks to get her benefit money, which suggests there are jobs around but employers know they can get JSA claimants who will work for nothing so why employ anyone. Makes me feel so angry.

[MariamaMay]

This is awful and very scary. So sorry you had to go through this. Wish all people making policies/dishing out the judgements HAD to spend some time living within the confines of the system.

Really hope 2017 is a better year for you

[feellikeanalien]

Just had to post here. My DP had the misfortune to be on JSA for a few months. He was treated like an imbecile and patronised every time he attended the job centre (he's 46!).

Luckily he wasn't sanctioned but if he had been on JSA for much longer I have no doubt it would have happened (he has an unfortunate tendency to say what he thinks without regard for the consequences).

I do feel that anyone who claims any kind of benefit is automatically demonised by certain sections of society even though the majority of them are trying their hardest to provide for their families. I find this terribly sad and of course it is made worse by programmes like Benefits Street and regular Daily Fail articles.

We certainly seem to be becoming less empathetic as a society and people are very quick to stick their heads in the sand and say that stories of sanctions are exaggerated and "they must have done something to deserve it".

I don't know what the solution is but I just wish that we could all pull together a bit more and care for the more vulnerable members of our society who seem to be easy targets for the government when they want to make a public statement about saving money.

Reading your post made me so angry OP. Those who judge really should walk a mile in the other person's shoes before making their (usually uninformed) comments.

I wish you all the best and thank you so much for sharing your experiences.

[TheRollingCrone]

Thank you OP fir sharing your experience. Sometimes when I think about food banks(and the huge growth in their use)

I can hardly believe this is the UK in 2016. The Government set the scene beautifully, workers and shirkers troubled families

that along with benefit porn t.v and now have free reign to treat people in this way. Fucking awful.

Can anyone confirm my understanding that UC will cost more, as claiments will automatically be assigned benefits that they are

entitled to, but previously hadn't claimed?

What will it take for this particular policy to be reversed? We are so economically divided as a nation, but there is such acceptan ce

[catewainwright1]

Check out Momentum. The only group supporting politicians wanting to put a stop to this. Xx

[sportinguista]

I think people do actually get angry about the super rich too (I know I do, who NEEDS to be super rich? How much money does one person NEED). The problem is that although there are talk of prosecutions etc, they are often seen to get away with it.

DH is now seeing many of his colleagues (working full time or on these flexible shifts/agency) having to use food banks too, so now it's not just benefit claimants. What is even more galling is that they are being asked to bring things in for a local foodbank, knowing that the people working beside them are needing to use them and it's the company doing this to 'look good' over Christmas.

We manage now and are perhaps in a better position than most and certainly than we have been in the past. We often sat without light or heat years ago because the emergency had run out and we weren't paid until the next day or more. It's miserable especially when there's not much to eat either.

Many people in this position do work hard, but sometimes you can only work so much. I don't know if there is acceptance as such, more that we wonder if those at the top hold so many of the cards that it may be impossible to change.

[haloumi]

Thank you for writing these words....

I have to admit, I opened the post thinking... "Here we go, another lazy benefit scrounger moaning about their sanctions" ...

However, your post completely engaged me.

The biggest problem with our current situation, (apart from the fact that people keep on voting for the nasty party) is that the system is HEAVILLY loaded against the less well off.... The word SPIRAL is a key problem, for people who are just managing, just a few pounds less, whether its a sanction, cut in benefit, bank charge, is all it takes to set off this catastrophic chain of events that sends people rapidly downwards. THIS is where the powers that be need to understand, the impact of their descisions... "If you cut me £5 now, I will be £20 in debt by Friday" ...

Hopefully things work out for you, and you can start looking upwards in 2017. because nobody in a country like ours should be in this position while the rich and entitled are skimming the cream from everyone else.

[Richdebtomdom]

My stepson has had no money-housing benefit or JSA for 14-months... he was sanctioned... he's back at home now as he can't afford to live in a flat... without us he'd be homeless and foodbanking... this government is the most unfeeling and vile group at war with its own citizens...I hate them.

[scaryclown]

I fucking hate this nasty repositioning of horrible things to sound positive.

minimum.wage is NOT living wage
Just about managing is NOT ABLE TO LIVE or POVERTY.
next well have homelessness described as 'occasibally damp living conditions'.

Amazing that the energy goes on rebranding instead of sorting

[scaryclown]

The employment market is so badly organised that the hardest working people can laradoxically be out of work.the lomgest. Employment Service exasverbate this as they compell people to apply for lowest common denominator jobs because the system itself is dumb. the poor thinking of policy around employmemt service is astonisjimg..but those doing it are paid six-figures. i have been unemployed and offered to do free work getting people bavk to work at the jobcemtre..they said i had to get a £1000 accreditation. .from a serco company to do so...mental.