When Honesty And Pride Cause You To Fall (From Swindon Advertiser)

When Honesty And Pride Cause You To Fall

12:12pm Saturday 19th July 2008

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It has been a terrible ten days here and initially I hadn’t intended to tell you about it, as it's all a bit personal and I am a girl of pride. But, I felt that I owed an explanation to all those who I have been a bit of a stroppy mare towards, over on the comments section. So I changed my mind deciding to “out with it and sod the pride.” Writing about it is therapy. In addition to that, explaining my worries may help people understand that not everybody on benefits wants to be there and it's not easy to get out of the benefits trap.

Back in April I was in a situation where I was claiming benefits for myself and my family. I was claiming incapacity benefit due to suffering from a condition that affects my joints. However, I decided that it was about time I learnt to work with my problem as many people out there do. So, I contacted the Dhss and told them I would like to try to work.

They arranged a medical for me which I attended. I was then taken off incapacity benefit and told I could look for work YAY :) I received a letter from Income Support at this time, telling me that I would still receive this benefit for myself and my family until myself or my husband got a job.

My husband completed his course at college and we both began to look for employment. We decided that we would both get jobs and juggle childcare between us.

In the meantime, hubby was going to the post office every week to get out our weekly money. We have always tried to be really careful with our money and had a small amount we left in the account, in case of any unforeseen emergencies which may occur.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to go to the local shops, so I offered to go to the Post Office as well. I got our weekly money out and then checked the balance, only to discover there was very little money left in the account. I panicked as I could not understand why this was the case.


We then made the discovery that despite the letter telling us we would still receive income support, they had actually stopped our claim and we had not been receiving any money for some time. We have since had to reclaim.

We are now in a situation where we only have a very small amount of money left and we have no idea how long the claim will take to come through, nobody will tell us.
I hate being in this situation and I have felt so bad for the children, like I have let them down. What does not help is the fact that we are looming up to the summer holidays.

In the meantime, my husband has applied for several jobs and I am going to be working at the school as a dinner lady from September :) I also hope to carry on doing my little bit at the Adver, as well as doing a journalism related course and of course doing the community work.

Today I cheered up a bit after going to tesco's and managing to get six bags of shopping (including fresh fruit and vedg) for £21.50 bargain! The children also got given free sweets, balloons and beach balls from the GWR stand in the town centre, so they were happy bunnies too.

If I had decided not to bother working and to continue claiming, none of this would of happened. I would not of lost the family's little bit of savings and our security. It was not much admittedly, but still. We would not be in this situation now, where I am worried sick that I am not going to be able to feed the children. New Labour helping you back to work! That is the biggest load of rubbish I ever heard. Labour have made escaping the benefits trap even harder.