Joanne Stafford, 32, is Projects and Events Leader, at the charity Emmaus. She tells Claire Donnelly how Universal Credit is plunging more people into poverty - and making them feel worthless.
Universal Credit is problematic. If you’re someone who’s leading a chaotic life and you’ve suddenly got a month’s money it can be hard to manage.
Many people get into rent arrears, lose their tenancy and become homeless.
The system dehumanises people, makes them feel they aren’t valued.
Part of my job is to make people feel valued again. Give people a reason to get up in the morning, give people a job, self-respect, companionship and a social life, all the things we all need.
We meet a lot of older men. They might have been through some kind of crisis, lost their job, had a relationship breakdown, and they are often too proud to ask for help.
They’re less connected to sources of support than women.
A lot of the support that’s out there seems to be quite short-term. So people might be given accommodation but they aren’t ready to live independently and it doesn’t work out.
We need more long-term support, ways of helping build people back up again - people who have often been broken by life or the benefits system or a crisis.
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We are retracing the journey George Orwell made in his book, The Road to Wigan Pier, throughout 2018 to tell modern stories of working and unemployed poverty.
They'll appear in a regular series in the Daily Mirror newspaper and here, on our special anniversary website.
