Benefit sanctions push people away from getting a job, study says

Last Updated: December 12, 2015By

homeless-man-dog

Benefit sanctions are forcing people to sleep rough, go hungry and push them further away from getting a job, according to one of the most extensive studies of homeless people in Britain.

Crisis, the national charity for single homeless people who commissioned the report, called for reform of a system it said is leaving vulnerable people who want to work destitute instead.

Their findings, based on a survey of more than 1,000 homeless people across 21 cities, revealed almost four in ten people subject to sanctions either had to sleep rough or had become homeless as a result.

The report also said three-quarters (77 per cent) of people had skipped meals, almost two-thirds (64 per cent) had gone without heating and six in every ten people found it harder to look for work. It also discovered 75 per cent of people suffered mental health issues as a result.

Source: Benefit sanctions force people to sleep rough and go hungry, study says | Home News | News | The Independent

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6 Comments

  1. AndyH December 12, 2015 at 3:17 pm - Reply

    Lack of food, water and adequate sleep make it very hard to function at all – let alone enable you to succeed in a job interview.

  2. jeffrey davies December 12, 2015 at 3:42 pm - Reply

    Benefit sanctions are forcing people to sleep rough, go hungry and push them further away from getting a job, according to one of the most extensive studies of homeless people in Britain. yet jobs are getting less and less to find or those jobs on starvation pays it makes a mockery of torys telling us they christians nah more like the devils they are jeff3

  3. Dez December 12, 2015 at 3:43 pm - Reply

    This report really does have its finger on the real pulse of what is going on the streets of this Country. The poorest and the most needy are being down trodden under the relentless jack boot of Herr Smiths storm troopers. The freely used sanctions in most cases are the single worst tipping point contributer to folk cracking up especially those without any family fall back positions. There is no buffer money to help prevent one solitary sanction just pushing a vulnerable into the abyss of despair and onto the streets. I predict if we have a harsh winter there will be more unnecessary deaths from those who are not street wise but have been pushed to just give up on life.

  4. mrmarcpc December 15, 2015 at 3:56 pm - Reply

    More and more these tory bastards are getting away with their tyranny, someone in this dump of a country needs to grow a pair and go head to head with them to stop them for what is going on now and for the past 5 years will only get worse!

  5. toocomplex4justice December 16, 2015 at 1:10 pm - Reply

    It took some sort of study to work that one out? I will never be homeless as I was lucky enough to be a high earner and pay off the mortgage, but since becoming disabled I have been hounded by the DWP to such an extent that I could not even consider looking for work. I have a full time job battling with Jobcentre staff who treat the denial of entitlement to benefit as a game. My old job is still open to me if I was capable but it is assumed that I prefer to subjugate myself and pretend to be sick in order to get my ESA rather than do less hours for 70k pa.
    my DLA to PIP transfer was assessed by a liar so my car was taken meaning there is not a hope in hell of my getting a job or seeking advice to reverse the PIP decision. I cannot think while I am cold and hungry so I am unlikely to achieve anything at all but when I was getting my DLA, incapacity benefit and income support I had to live a frugal life but I did play an active part in society. I had the time to hound corrupt councillors and executives. I exposed the local disability services manager for charging £60 for blue badges and having only 2 chairs in the waiting room so people would leave rather than make applications. I stopped the furniture industry from being able to claim that a crap plastic covered sacking material called bonded leather was “real leather” and I was half way through exposing a health executive for spending 6 million quid on a world tour for herself and her mates to produce some guidelines that were never implemented cos she had blown the budget. Nobody wants to be idle and I’m sure that everybody with the time worked for the community in their own way but as the big society has collapsed we are regressing to the survival of the fittest.
    Now I achieve nothing because my physical and mental health has deteriorated and all my confidence has gone, I may even have to resort to crime to survive. Moral values disappear when you have been hungry for a while and it’s a strategy that works because nobody goes hungry in prison.

    • Mike Sivier December 16, 2015 at 1:25 pm - Reply

      Just one note: The Big Society – if you’re referring to Cameron’s claimed initiative – never really existed.

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