Cruel cuts
If anyone didn’t think the government’s welfare benefit sanctions regime is unjust then they should consider the vindictive and humiliating letter sent to a Loughborough claimant.
Mr Gaskin, a wheelchair-bound man suffering from multiple sclerosis who can only communicate by blinking his eye, was written to demanding that he attend a Jobcentre to prove he should still receive welfare payments. The letter said he would be discussed with about “the possibility of going into paid work, training for work, or looking for work in the future”!
Presumably this is part of Prime Minister’s David Cameron’s plan to end welfare claimants’ “dependency” on benefits.
Cost of living
A lone parent with one child needs to earn more than £27,100 this year to have an ‘adequate’ standard of living, according to new research from Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
This figure is more than double the £12,000 deemed necessary in 2008.
College closure
One of the first austerity cuts of the new government is funding for the College of Social Work, which has now closed. The college was established as a main recommendation of an official taskforce in the wake of the death of Baby P and a series of child protection incidents, and with social workers having to cope with increasing workloads.
The chair of British Association of Social Workers said: “Children, families and adults that we work with are going to experience ever increasing hardship and the college closure is yet another blow for our social work colleagues and for service users.”
Unaffordable housing
The average house price in London is now £498,000 – 33% higher than in 2007.
A first time house buyer now needs a minimum salary of £77,000.
Rough sleepers
According to outreach workers the numbers sleeping rough in the capital, almost 7,600, rose by 19% compared to a year ago. The housing crisis was a factor with 1,665 rough sleepers reporting they had previously lived in long-term accommodation, including 1,115 from private rented homes.
Nursing barrier
The government’s anti-immigrant plans will wreck the NHS says the Royal College of Nursing. Non-European Union migrant workers will have to leave the UK after six years if they are not earning £35,000 a year under the government’s minimum earnings threshold. Yet most nurses only earn between £21,000 and £28,000 a year.
Some 3,300 nurses could be affected by 2017 under this new immigration law at a time of nursing shortages due to cuts to nurse-training places.
