Universal Credit and parenting woes

Wrapping up the week, we closed off a few requests we received in the last couple of days.  

A lady who due to some work she did 6 months ago is having issues with getting an advanced payment on her Universal Credit payments, and has to wait until September when her UC is paid.  In the meantime there is her and her 16 year old son and they are without food or unable to top up their energy meters, so we sent them £100 to allow them to do this.

Another family we helped is because the household is overcrowded in a tiny first floor flat.  They have two children, ages 7 and 12 and there is a lot of tension and arguments between the children, so the parents have given over their bedroom so they can have a room each.  This means the parents are sleeping in the living room and via our client asked for some help to purchase a sofabed so they can get a decent nights sleep.  They have been trying to save despite the fact that they work, but they are living such a hand to mouth existence that this is proving impossible.  We agreed to help them out with some money to go towards it.