Charities warn high number of young women working in low-paid and insecure jobs having ‘terrible impact’ on their wellbeing

Young women ‘significantly more likely’ to report symptoms of anxiety and depression than young men

Young women are “significantly more likely” to report they are suffering from anxiety or depression than their male counterparts, statistics have revealed, raising concerns that a high number of young women working in low-paid and insecure jobs is leading to a severe decline in mental health.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed worrying levels of mental illness in all young people, with one in five men and women aged 16-24 showing symptoms of anxiety and depression, an increase from 18 per cent in the period 2009 to 2010 to 21 per cent in 2013 to 2014.

Women stood out as being particularly affected, with the proportion of young women reporting anxiety and depression having climbed by four per cent within four years from 22 per cent in 2009 to 2010 to 26 per cent in 2013 to 2014. According to the latest statistics, one in four (25 per cent) young women reported such issues, compared with 15 per cent of young men.

read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/young-women-anxious-depression-mental-health-ons-young-womens-trust-a7683861.html

Paid one penny to survive next months unemployment because he earned £1109 last month. UniversalCalamity nightmare 4 zero hours agency work

This is from the Rev Paul Nicolson at Taxpayers Against Poverty,

 

 

 

 

Disability rights have regressed in nine areas, says the Equality and Human Rights Commission

Disabled people’s rights have regressed in at least nine areas since the coalition government assumed power in 2010, according to a new report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC).

The report concludes that disabled people are still being treated as “second-class citizens” and that rights have regressed in many areas of society, while in others progress has stalled.

read more here: http://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/disability-rights-have-regressed-in-nine-areas-says-ehrc/

Funeral poverty: The crisis for Britain’s poorest that begins the day your loved one dies

“I am still paying for it. Every time I pay it is a reminder”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/funeral-poverty-crisis-mass-graves-debt-cycles-big-death-loved-one-dies-undertakers-video-a7682151.html

 

By abandoning ‘hardworking families’ to poverty, have the Tories finally gone too far?

From child tax cut restrictions to universal credit, the government has crossed its own red lines. Soon millions more children will go hungry

Exactly four years since Britain’s first wave of cuts came into force – and as this month’s new measures begin to take hold – we’re entering what we may call the next stage of austerity. Where, at first, particular sections of the poor and marginalised – the disabled, people with mental health problems and the unemployed – were targeted, now it’s free rein on anyone who’s struggling.

While the policies of April 2013 – the bedroom tax, for example, or the original benefit cap pilot – were sold by politicians as protecting “hardworking” families, the policies of April 2017 – from child tax credit restrictions to the impact of universal credit – cross even the line the Conservatives themselves have spent years creating. This is no longer a case of “tough love” against the coalition’s so-called shirkers but, on top of further cuts to out-of-work disabled people, it is the gutting of support for the low paid and their children.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in the reduced aisle in supermarkets, 19p for spaghetti and 20p for chopped tomatoes,” says Cydney, 23, from Bournemouth. Six months ago, Cydney’s partner left her and their four-year-old boy, Oscar, and she’s since been struggling to afford regular meals. Cydney had a wage coming in – she worked part time in marketing for an insurance broker, as well as caring for Oscar – but 80% of it went on childcare alone. The rest had to stretch for all her bills: rent, utilities, phone, and council tax. Her £20 a week child benefit helped but barely made a dent. Often, after all her outlays, there’d only be £5 left for a whole week’s food shop.

To be able to feed her son, Cydney ate one or two meals a day: skipping breakfast, eating lunch at work, and then going without dinner. “I’d give Oscar baked beans on toast,” she says. “There were times I’d go to bed early because I was hungry.” With her mental health suffering and no way to pay the bills, Cydney’s only choice was to give up her job to move back in with her mum in Buckinghamshire.

Cydney’s is not a rare case of course, but rather a snapshot of reality for families all over the country. Research by the Young Women’s Trust last month found that half of young mums are now regularly skipping meals because they’re struggling to afford to feed their children. A quarter have had to use a food bank. This is even before this month’s benefit measures kick in. It is part of the same normalisation of hardship that means there are now 11 million people in this country who are not only living far below what the wider public view as “socially acceptable” living standards but who are on the precipice of what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation call “severe poverty”.

read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/13/cuts-hardworking-families-tories-child-tax-cut-universal-credit

Homeless Families and Social Cleansing: How Local Councils Are Forcing Vulnerable Households Out of London

Hundreds of homeless households across London are being forced to accept private rented tenancies outside the capital, Freedom of Information requests have revealed.

Last year, 341 vulnerable families were given no choice by local councils but to move to other regions, most often the West Midlands, away from their schools, jobs, and local communities.

Thousands more were made to move out of their borough.

If families refused out of borough, or out of London, offers, they faced being deemed ‘intentionally homeless’, evicted from their temporary accommodation and left with little further assistance, research by Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth found.

by Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth

read more here: http://novaramedia.com/2017/04/12/homeless-families-and-social-cleansing-how-local-councils-are-forcing-vulnerable-households-out-of-london/

Benefit sanctions hit one in seven single parents, research shows

‘Single parents increasingly feel punished for being unable to juggle seeking work and looking after their children’, charity says.

One in seven single parents in receipt of benefits have been hit by the Government’s “inflexible” sanctions regime, while even more are at risk of having their benefit payments slashed in the future, according to shocking new research from the Gingerbread charity.

read more here: http://www.welfareweekly.com/benefit-sanctions-hit-one-in-seven-single-parents-research-shows/

People are exhausted by the cuts and hard-up mums will be hit next: My Wigan Pier Story

Sarah Honeysett, 53, is a benefits specialist from Stoke-on-Trent and has been supporting families in the city since 2003. As she explains to Claire Donnelly, struggling mums are about to be hit again.

People really are exhausted – and terrified – by all this change, especially disabled people and particularly people with poor mental health.

I fear the next group to be very badly hit – with the cut in the benefit cap and the ‘two child’ tax credit limit – will be hard-up mums with young children.

There has been a definite change in the way people who are in the receipt of benefit are viewed.

There used to a lot of sympathy towards people who were out of work for example. The general public seemed less likely to blame them – it was seen as the fault of the government.

Now that has shifted and this idea that people are to blame for what’s happening to them is becoming more the norm.

Apart from the lack of empathy, what shocks me the most is when I hear fellow professionals talking about people in this way, buying into this demonisation of people.

read more here: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/people-exhausted-cuts-hard-up-10172622

PIP MOBILITY CHANGES

With many thanks to Benefits And Work. The DWP is continuing to do its best to ignore the law when it comes to PIP mobility criteria. As readers will know, the law relating to PIP mobility was changed on 16th March to make it harder for claimants with mental health problems to get an […]

via PIP MOBILITY CHANGES — Same Difference

Eight things you should know about the benefit cap

‘Fairness’ was the word Lord Freud used to justify the lowering of the benefit cap. But there is no fairness to be found in a policy that ignores assessed need, mostly affects people who can’t work to increase their income, and hits households with children in 94 per cent of cases.

Here’s what you need to know about the benefit cap:

1. The cap breaks the link between what you need and what you get. People are assessed for social security support according to need, but if that help goes above the – arbitrary – level of the benefit cap, it is restricted. In other words, the needier you are, the more likely you’ll be hit by the cap.
2. When the cap was originally set, the amount (£26,000) was based on the premise that non-working households shouldn’t receive more than the average earnings of working households. But this isn’t comparing like for like: it’s comparing incomes with earnings. A working family on £26,000 could also receive a range of benefits and tax credits.
3. The new – lower – amount (£20,000, or £23,000 in London) does not have a rationale. And it has come in at a time when the cost of living is going up.
4. One of the stated aims of the cap is to incentivise people to move into work. But only 13 per cent of people affected by the benefit cap are on Jobseeker’s Allowance – i.e. expected to be actively trying to get a job. The vast majority of people affected by the cap are not expected to work because of disability or ill-health, or because they have very young children.
5. Ministers claim people capped are 41 per cent more likely to move into work. That sounds big, but actually the effect is relatively small. The government’s own evaluation showed about 16 per cent of people moved into work shortly after being capped and that 11 per cent of people would have moved into work anyway. That difference in rates (4.4 percentage points to be precise) is where the 41 per cent figure comes from. About 75 per cent of people move off JSA after 6 months, 90 per cent by 12 months.
6. More than 116,000 families will be affected by this new cap – and more than 319,000 children. It’s not just larger families either. Most families affected by the lower cap have two or three children.
7. The Supreme Court has said that the benefit cap breaches the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and that ‘it cannot possibly be in the best interests of the children affected by the cap to deprive them of the means to provide them with adequate food, clothing, warmth and housing, the basic necessities of life’.
8. The only other way to become uncapped is to move house somewhere cheaper. Yet a family with two young children will not be able to find a cheap enough home in 60 per cent of the country to escape the cap – including the entire southeast and southwest regions.

Families with very young children and people with disabilities – who are most likely to be affected by the cap – ought to be given the strongest possible protection against the deprivation this policy leads to. That would be fair.

read more here: http://www.cpag.org.uk/content/eight-things-you-should-know-about-benefit-cap