To avoid turning on the heating, Sarah uses a hot water bottle to keep herself warm and tries hard to make the family emergency food parcel from her local food bank in Bristol last longer than a week.
She’s run out of jewellery and clothes to sell to raise money to pay essential bills and says it’s been impossible to secure another loan. Sarah has no idea where the extra cash is going to come from to meet higher heating and food costs this winter – let alone Christmas. “We are struggling to pay bills at the moment so how on earth are we going to manage?”
Registered disabled because of her epilepsy and a number of mental health conditions, Sarah, 41, and her family have been living below the poverty line since she lost her job in March. She failed her probationary period with the care company she was working for because the side effects of brain surgery to treat her epilepsy meant she could be forgetful. She is in dispute with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) over her entitlement to personal independence payment (Pip) – the benefit designed to pay for the extra living costs of being disabled – so in the meantime the family relies on her husband’s supermarket job salary, universal credit (UC) and employment and support allowance (ESA) to survive. “My husband works 33 hours a week but it’s still not enough. And even when he got extra hours the DWP docked my UC so in effect he was working for nothing,” she says. “The food bank has been a lifeline and it’s going to be absolutely critical this winter, but I feel very low that I have to use it – I feel like I’ve failed.”
Sarah’s story of debt and despair is not unique.
She is among the estimated 14 million people living in poverty in the UK, of which half are either disabled or have somebody in their household living with a disability. That figure is reflected in the number of disabled people who are forced to turn to food banks. The Trussell Trust says 62% of working age people who were referred to a food bank in its network in early 2020 were disabled – 41% of households were affected by multiple disabilities. Households affected by disability had greater levels of debt when compared with non-disabled households. For instance, 32% were in arrears with fuel bills, which is often attributed to having to spend more time at home or keep themselves warm because of their medical condition. And 41% of disabled households owed money to the DWP.
Emma Revie, chief executive of the Trussell Trust, says the 62% figure – the number of disabled people who use a food bank – is one of the statistics that keeps her up at night. “When first seeing it in black and white it is horrifying – it’s such a structural injustice,” she says. “In what ways is the system to support disabled people failing if they are three times more likely to be at a food bank [than somebody without a disability]?”
The solution, according to Revie, is threefold. There needs to be a change in policy to ensure that disabled people have enough money to pay essential bills, alongside an understanding about what the real additional costs are of living with a disability. And the public should use its voice. “What I have seen more so than ever before in the pandemic, is that when the British people speak out on things they think are unjust and just not right, change is possible.”
The link between extreme poverty and disability came as no surprise to the campaigning group Disability Rights UK, but the 62% figure was a shock. Its head of policy Fazilet Hadi says: “That figure did shock me – it’s such a high usage by disabled people – and I think everybody was shocked to be honest.”
Look behind the figures and it is clear why such a high number of disabled people are living in poverty and left with no choice but to use a food bank to feed themselves and their families.
Although approximately 81% of adults of working age in the UK are in employment, the figure drops to 52% for disabled people – creating a nearly 30% employment gap. “People born with a disability have an educational attainment gap and they probably never catch up,” says Hadi. “Then you have people who become disabled when older, who have to learn to adjust to their disability and often they will fall out of the labour market.”
People living with a disability are also more likely to be paid less than a non-disabled person. The Trades Union Congress estimates this pay gap to be around 16.5%. Kept out of employment, disabled people have to rely heavily on the benefits system to keep above the poverty line. Many missed out on the £20 a week uplift to UC because they had opted to stay on ESA instead. And, according to campaigners, the Pip benefit fails to meet the extra living costs of being disabled, such as the need for extra heating or taxi fares to get around.
“On the one side you have the employment challenges and on the other the increased costs of being disabled,” says Hadi. “I think the whole thing is shocking in such a rich society like ours. It’s almost like disabled people are back in the 19th century – they are just trapped in a cycle of poverty.” And does she expect their use of food banks to fall in the next 12 months? “I don’t think this position is going to change: there is nothing that the government is doing which will make these Trussell Trust figures any better next year.”
