A couple of weeks ago going to a meeting at One Smithfield, the large and locally controversial office complex built by the council in my home town of Stoke-on-Trent, I met a man our society pretends isn’t there.
He was one of the 1.5million people in the UK who are, according to a report published recently by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, classed as destitute. This means that at some point in the past year they have been unable to afford the basics necessary to have food, clothing and shelter.
The number of people in the UK classed as being destitute fell between 2015 and 2017 thanks to changes to the way benefit sanctions are enforced. It is feared that the introduction of Universal Credit will drive levels back up again.
Destitution is most prevalent in North and the Midlands in cities like Stoke-on-Trent that have been hit hard by the loss of their traditional industries, and the poorer London boroughs. Almost all the people experiencing destitution live in rented, temporary or shared accommodation and single men under 35 face the highest risk.
The causes are complex and multiple, they include delays to benefit payments, high housing and utility costs and harsh debt collection practices on the part of public agencies including councils.
Despite the last point in this instance it wasn’t a government agency that was the villain of the piece. In fact, a woman employed by the local health authority was going above and beyond her role to find him a bed for the night.
The story this man bent out of shape by hardship and bad luck told was one of falling through the widening cracks in our society. Raised by alcoholic parents and abused in the care system he had followed the well trodden route to the streets via prison.
For two years since being released he had made determined, if not entirely successful, efforts to stay clean whilst living on the streets. In the worst of the past winter, he told us, he had had to cycle around the streets to keep from freezing, despite having painfully swollen legs.
A significant proportion of the 1.5million destitute people in the UK, some 364,000, are children, potentially setting up more stories where misery us handed on from one generation to the next.
Research carried out in 2017 for the Child Poverty Action Group found that GPs felt child poverty was a growing cause of I’ll health amongst their parents, with poor diet and inadequate housing being major contributors.
A further survey carried out by the charity in conjunction with the National Education Union found that 87%of the teachers questioned said living in a low-income home affects children’s ability to learn.
In their report the Joseph Rowntree Foundation call for an end to the freeze on working age benefits and changes to how sanctions are imposed under Universal Credit. They also call for reforms to how councils and the DWP collect debts.
In an article written for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website earlier this year Claire Ainsley said the ‘nature’ of poverty had changed and so the means by which it is challenged ‘must change too'.
Adding that the current approaches to the problem placed too much reliance on the ability of the market to provide a solution and were, as a result, ‘running out of steam'.
She used her article to advocate for the creation of a more inclusive economy, a ‘living rent' linked to local earnings and for social security and employment services to work harder to get claimants into good jobs rather than just any job.
She also called for more people with ‘lived experience’ of poverty to be involved in making policy.
People like the lost man made old before his time I met outside Smithfield, where he went I do not know. Although she made superhuman efforts the woman from the health authority was unable to find him a bed for the night, he wandered away to another night on the streets followed by a day that would surely bring fresh troubles.
That a million and a half people live lives of similar hardship in a rich country with pretensions to status as a world power should shame policy makers and everyone else.
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