A pregnant woman was left facing the choice between heating and eating in the town set to ‘star’ in Benefits Street.
Dr Kayleigh Garthwaite has been volunteering at a foodbank as part of a five-year study on health and wellbeing in Stockton - where the next series of the controversial Channel 4 series has been filmed.
There she saw first hand the impact benefits sanctions had on residents.
She said: “We’ve found men in the most affluent areas of Stockton can live 16 years longer than the most deprived areas.
“I’ve been volunteering at the food bank for the last 16 months - which is a good way of getting involved and seeing what’s going on.
“I’ve spent hundreds of hours there.
“People are coming with health problems but they are embarrassed and they might not say anything so they end up eating food that they know might make them ill.
“Imposing sanctions when people are already ill can make it worse.
“If they told me about their problems I would tailor their parcel.”
Dr Garthwaite met a number of residents who had been taken off disability living allowance as a sanction, and told to apply for job seeker’s allowance during their investigation.
Many told her of their fear that should they accept JSA they would find themselves physically unable to keep up with the requirement to apply for 40 jobs every fortnight.
Despite being entitled to the benefits some would-be claimants were so concerned of becoming ‘stuck’ on JSA they would instead go without any income, relying on friends, family and the foodbank to get by.
Though uncommon, Dr Garthwaite said the claims were far from the most shocking thing she discovered through the study.
She said: “There was a pregnant woman came to the foodbank and she didn’t have any family, she was 22 weeks pregnant.
“She’d had a stillborn child eight months earlier, she knew she was not eating right and not being able to feed herself properly was adding to her anxiety.
“She’d walked to the foodbank, which was over two miles because she couldn’t afford the bus fare.
“For her it was literally a choice between heat or eat.”
Dr Garthwaite said both she and Prof Bambra have hopes their study will be listened to and she has already given evidence to a Commons select committee on the impact of sanctions.
She added: “Benefits Street is really poverty porn and an exaggeration of life on benefits. From what we’ve seen on this project, it’s just not like that.
“It’s going to be a shame for Stockton.
“There definitely should be more understanding in terms of sanctions - they can have a massive impact on peoples lives - relationship problems, arguments.
“It’s not just three weeks - for the people affected it can carry on after that.”
No comments:
Post a Comment