Your donations allow us to continue to help people such as those written about below. Please consider sharing our blog entries, or our Twitter posts to help get the word out so we can reach more people that might want to support the work we do. Thank you.
A young mum who after experiencing domestic violence ended up losing custody of her two children a few years ago. This has led to extreme depression and she has fallen seriously into debt. She leaves her home once a week and then only if her sister is with her. She is in a very distressed state and has not been taking her medication, so our agents are encouraging her to make an appointment with her doctor and also assisting her with a DRO application. We agreed to cover the cost of that and sent a small £30 boost on top.
We sent £30 to a man who only has the clothes that he is wearing. He does receive Employment Support Allowance but doesn’t have enough money to purchase a change of clothing.
We sent some money to a woman who lost her job earlier this year when she injured her shoulder. Depression followed and she attempted suicide a few times. Her housing association gave her an ultimatum, she pays the small amount owing or they apply for eviction. She has a new job which starts very soon and just needed some help to get her over this bump in the road.
A lady has been rehoused with some help from SSAFA, the armed forces charity, following domestic abuse from her husband. She and her daughter are now living elsewhere and she is receiving debt advice, following the revelation that she had taken out loans in her name for her husband who has a gambling addiction. She needs medical evidence to support her application for PIP and is unable to pay the required £30 fee, we agreed to pay this and sent a small amount on top as a boost.
We sent £120 to a single mum and her two children. The mum is in receipt of Universal Credit but there are deductions being taken off for bills she owes on. She has recently had to purchase school uniforms for both the girls and one of them needs to catch a bus each day as she is outside the catchment area, which costs £3 per day.
A family that between them have seven children had privately rented their home for 16 years found themselves evicted when their landlord decided to sell up. They have been living in bed and breakfast accommodation since then and are currently in two rooms in a local B&B. They do not have any facilities to cook food so eating takeaways is expensive. Our agents are unable to give them a food voucher as they have no way of preparing the food. They are a high priority to be housed and have said they would accept a smaller house in order to have a home, but the local authority won’t agree to that on health and safety grounds. Both parents work, but their jobs are paid minimum wage so they are quite limited in what they can achieve without some kind of help.