I have started a new job – my first paid work since my early 20s – and it has done wonders for my mental health. The food bank I’ve been volunteering at four days a week for the past few years offered me a part-time position and I was so happy to take it, even though it was daunting. I have been out of paid employment for so long that I’d lost a lot of confidence, but this job has made me feel a lot better about myself.
What hasn’t been great is dealing with the universal credit system. I have been on the benefit since it was introduced, and I tried to find out how much financial help I will be entitled to now that I’m in part-time work. I thought that should be quite easy, because the government supposedly wants people to get back into work, but I just hit brick walls.
Citizens Advice said they couldn’t give me any definite information, and I tried to use online benefit calculators but got different results on different sites – sometimes as much as £4,000 difference. How can I use that as a guide? I wrote to the Department for Work and Pensions through the “journal” you have on your online account, which is your record of everything you’ve done and your messages. They said they couldn’t tell me, that everything is done retrospectively and that I would just have to wait until it happened. I decided to take the job, even though it was a bit of a leap of faith, and I informed them on the day I started work.
I started at the end of August, and I still don’t know what universal credit I will get. The statement they sent me at the end of September hadn’t changed, and I wrote to say I thought they’d paid me too much, and asked them to check. I was told to fill in an online form, which I did, and within minutes of hitting the submit button, I had another message to say there was a letter for me to read. That letter said I had informed them too late – that they’d needed the information three days earlier – and that they might fine me, unless I had a good reason why I’d made this mistake.
But I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, and what information they wanted, because nobody had ever told me to do anything – it was only me contacting them, to check I hadn’t been overpaid, that prompted this chain of events. Next I was told I had to write to the “decision-makers”, even though the whole trail is in black and white on the journal. Then the person I was messaging said he had sent something to them, though he didn’t tell me what, and that I just had to wait. I got a message to say they can’t give me a time frame, that they work on a “priority basis” and not to ask when a decision might be made because they can’t tell me. Because of the assessment period timelines, it could be that I have to wait until the end of November to know how much money I will have coming in. I still have a potential fine hanging over me, but I’ll fight it because I’ve always been honest and done what I thought I needed to.
Not knowing about my total income means I’m being even more careful with money than I was before I started working because I don’t know how much will be going to my landlord and how much rent I’ll have to make up, or whether the DWP will deduct money from future payments if it turns out they’ve overpaid me. It’s still a case of lots of layers and no heating. I walked home from work today. I could have got the bus, but that was £2 that could go towards something else.
When universal credit was introduced, the government said it was to help people get back into work, but my experience has been incredibly frustrating and difficult. They told me I need to submit my earnings every month, but there was no correspondence to tell me – I’d had to ask them what I need to do. They said I would get a prompt to put my earnings in to the system, but I haven’t had it yet. From the start, I didn’t know whether I would be financially better off if I took the job. I took it anyway, thinking if I don’t do this now, I never would, but I did it on a cross-my-fingers-and-hope basis.
It was never just about the money for me. I’ve had my first wage slip, a new thing for me, and I felt a lot of pride and self-worth. I’m still glad I took the job, I’ve got no regrets. It has given me confidence, and I feel better about myself. I already knew what the job would be like and I love it. But I’m seeing people come through the door at the food bank who are already struggling with their mental health, and I don’t know if I would advise them to look for a job – which will probably be low-paid and stressful when they’re already having to count every penny – given they’d have to handle the pressure of navigating the universal credit system to work out what top-ups they could get. If my new job wasn’t something I enjoyed, would I have gone for it, knowing what I know now?
As told to Emine Saner. Sophie is in her 40s and lives in the north of England. Her name has been changed
The Trussell Trust is an anti-poverty charity that campaigns to end the need for food banks. Show your support at: trusselltrust.org/guardian
