Okay, Helen and Mark, could you tell me a little bit about how you've come to be here
today? You've come a long distance, I understand.
Yeah, Helen and me live about five and a half, maybe six miles from here, straight up that
road, up the Fosal Road. We live outside the city limits. We live in a place called Bedworth.
It's nearly six miles from here, and we walk in every Sunday to the food and soup hand
out, and we get a household bag, we're cooking at home.
We've been doing this about a year now, isn't it? My Helen is learning disabled, but it
took her a very long time to get any kind of benefits for social security, any kind
of recognition. Last year they took a younger school to offer to give to family because
she was 12 and she was looking after Helen and doing everything for her. Then the social
service, the job centre decided that she couldn't sign on because she wasn't capable, she had
no brain functions, no numeracy, literacy skills, any mobile abilities, but the incapacity
people and the disabled people wouldn't recognise them until she'd been fully diagnosed, which
meant month after month after month, the specialist. So basically we were caught in that 22 situation,
couldn't sign on, couldn't get the incapacity established, couldn't get the disability established,
so basically we're living on very little hand-to-mouth, and we got on as truth as we
basically survived on a lot of your food handouts because we live in the one room of our property,
obviously we can't afford all this heating and the mines 10 or 15, we can't afford to
do that. And we've got a big ring burner and we've got a heater in there, and what we do
is the food that we gather from your, the food that we gather here, we put into a big pot
and I keep one broth going continuously because your household bags give us lots of food and
veg and potatoes and there's a lot of bread here and that's what we do, and we really have
from week to week at times survived on what we've given us. Put it out in the shed, because
it's cooler in the shed, we don't have a fridge or a freezer, put it out in the shed and bring
in the piecemeal and add up the big broth pot, add to it as we go along, we did that for a
long, long time, I mean even now Helen's just got her benefits established but not fully
and that was from not August this year, August last year, and we're still fighting things
like we should get a bus pass and other things. Because it's not, she's not got a limb missing
and it's not an obvious physical disability, because it's brain disability, shut down the
fire functions and everything, it's a very hard thing to find. You know, even though,
as I say, when that pass 22, they won't let sign, also an important employer on the seeker
because she's not capable of employment, it's very hard then to prove your case for
incapacity. So what's that make you think about the system? You just think the system's
wrong, it doesn't seem to care? I think the system's very unkind because the social services
took Helen's 12-year-old daughter recognising that the daughter was looking after Helen,
and they said 12-year-old can't be looking after her, she must have a child or she must
have everything, and then the dole office turned around and said, and then everybody
else says, well, you can't have any of this. You can't have disability, you must prove
every inch of the way. We've lost count of the appeals, we've lost count, I mean, we
have stacked in the corner, we have reams of paperwork, fighting and fighting, the Citizens
Advice Bureau, independent advocates, you know, every sort of support agency that operates
on a charitable basis, on a funded basis is all for us, and that's the only reason we've
got through the aim, and obviously the food that you see is where, yeah, we really have
survived on your food as a broth. It just seems unfair that the system, can say a daughter
can't look after them, take the daughter, and say she can't look after the daughter's
wealth, and say she can't sign on because she's not capable of employment, but then
you have to fight tooth and nail, and all this. We finally won benefits, as in, we still
haven't completely won, but won a reasonable amount of benefits in October this year. Do
you think August to August is 12 months, September, I'll take 14 months, and still
that's got a best price you're entitled to, so we've walked back and forth six miles.
So six miles, six miles there, six miles back. The sun's going down now, it's getting cold
again, we'll probably leave here, three, five, three, it'll take us to five or five,
thirty to get home, and then I'll start chopping your food back up and putting it in the broth.
Right, and then, does the bag get you through a week on that?
It does, with the bread, yes, at times it has been the one and only thing, because they
have no problems with spending benefits. It's not an issue for them, because they just
put a tick in the box, or stroke of course, they fail to your lives, you know, which is
fundamentally unfair, but it's either those who have the power to do it to you, or those
of us who don't have the power to resist it. As I say, if it wasn't for people like
CAB, Independent Advocacy, other supportive advisory people, benefits people to help you,
if you stuck, people like yourself will actually come onto the street and give people, and
actually got the money to go into those supermarkets and buy their food.
So, give us the food. Give us the food. Give us the food. Really stuff. Really stuff.
