I've come late to this thread but I'd like to say that the situation is getting awful and I am appalled at how people are being treated in this country. We are a rich country by the world's standards and these things are happening every day. It's a disgrace.
I have myself been scraping by on a very low income for years due to ill-health. I have a medical condition which makes it very difficult to keep a job, but according to the DWP I'm perfectly fit to work (I am not. Believe me I'd love to work!). I have 2 children and have been sanctioned a few times, once for over 8 weeks! with no money. For some imagined thing. My condition relates to my bowel and until my consultants are prepared to give me a stoma (not yet), then I struggle to go the 3.5 mile trip to my local jobcentre, and also what employer is going to take on someone who needs loo break every 15-30 mins! Or someone who is tired from pain and sleepless nights.
I have resorted to prostitution to make my rent because my housing benefit claim keeps being delayed. I have paid £25 to the bank to get 12 months bank statements and sent everything asked for but apparently they need more documents. My landlord refused to give me a lease for 3 months and without a lease you get no housing benefit. I did know about prostitution before because I used to be homeless as a teenager so I started in order to survive basically. Now at least I can sometimes treat the DC. We are not all drug addicts, but drug addicts are people too, just doing it for perhaps a different, although still valid - reason. I don't like working in prostitution, I hate it, but short of an operation (they say too early, it may improve) being granted or me getting the help I am supposed to from the state, then it looks like this is what it's like for me - the only job I can do which I will not lose the job if I'm in the loo every 30 mins (I just go between punters or just pop out the room they rarely mind much) or take too much time off for illness. I don't know what I would have done without my family helping me out here and there too.
I'd just like to say also that prostitutes are not as we are portrayed by the media - bad mothers etc. I have to pay £60 every day I work to rent a room nearby but far enough away that it is not my own house - just so my children can never be exposed to my working as a prostitute. So my first punter or even first 2 punters in a day I don't actually earn anything - this is all to keep my kids safe. Sure I could work from home when they are at school, but I'll avoid it as much as I can, hopefully never have to.
Luckily I have half decent furniture and a fully equipped kitchen courtesy of my grandmother who was adamant that we all learn to cook. I shop at Lidl mostly (which is 15 min walk from home, luckily) and I make my children healthy and cheap meals from scratch. Porridge, sardines, seasonal fruit and veg sometimes fresh sometimes frozen, some fruit, rice, make own bread, those big bags of frozen fish, a little meat (beef shin is good for stew and casseroles and cheap). I have dreaded prepayment meters for gas and electric, I don't buy hardly any luxuries at all and stick to a strict budget - because I want to get to a point where I don't have to rely on prostitution to make up the shortfall where the "benefits" system has failed me and my children.
It's not just a few cases like mine - the government is directly causing many many people - the ill, disabled, elderly (my ex MIL sits in darkness frequently at least 1 day a week as she can't afford to feed the meter and lives off mainly rolls and chips and she worked her whole life), those with MH issues, carers. The list goes on and on. There are a lot of people slipping through the net.
I would hope that from this programme and this thread - things like this - that people who are comfortably off will really wake up to see the reality faced by many people today, and hopefully it will prompt the people of this country to demand more support where it's needed.