Last week, I spoke to Milly. She is a benefit claimant in receipt of Universal Credit and has used her local foodbank twice in the last month.
However, she does not conform to any of the preconceived – and largely false – caricatures associated with people experiencing poverty because she has an extensive CV and is highly-educated.
All of us have the potential to be scathed by the hammer and chisel of circumstance and it is often just one thing.
What scathed Milly, 46, was a relationship that turned violent.
To her credit, she managed to free herself, and her son, from the relationship and experienced excellent care via a women’s refuge. Having experienced trauma, she finds the intensive work search under Universal Credit stressful.
She recently had an anxiety attack and collapsed outside the JobCentre, making her seven minutes late for an appointment where she was told that, should it happen again, she may be sanctioned.
Milly also feels let down by slick anti-poverty charities run by middle-class people who do not understand what poverty feels like.
One campaign is about the five-week wait for Universal Credit.
She said: “That is not the problem. The problem is the long-term state of being ground down by a cruel system that views you as an inconvenience.”
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