Benefits after redundancy

CBarney86

My 61 year old mother has just been made redundant after working at the same company for 15 years. She has just been to her first meetings with the Housing Association and Job Centre and neither of us can believe how little she will have to live on. After her bills (not inc food) and thebedroom tax she will have less than 30GBP to live on a month – impossible! The little redundancy my mother did get hasbeen spent on an existing loan

n.b. She has been trying to move for 4+ years however the council will not provide her with any suitable accommodation because she isn’t a priority, even though she is currently taking up a family home. Makes no sense to me!

It seems no one is helping her at all. She has worked all ofher life and I cannot believe how she is being treated. The people at the JS are rude and make her feel like a scrounger. She feels very ashamed to be on benefits (generational thing I guess) therefore doesn’t have the strength to fight them.

So my question is, What can I do? What are we missing? An old school friend of mine who has never worked, is currently living rent free, in a 3 bedroom house, driving a 25k car and has monthly shopping sprees – just because she has 3 kids. Why does there seem to be two extremes to life on benefits?

pmlindyloo

Just a few ideas to throw into the pot.

Has she applied for a Discretionary Housing payment to help with the rent?

Has she tried to do a house swap?

Has she tried to find private accommodation? Sheltered accommodation? (May not be appropriate)

Has she tried to find a job at one of the supermarkets/B&Q? She only need to do 16 hours a week to be entitled to working tax credits if she finds a part time job?

Can she take in a lodger/boarder? This would help with rent. She would then be entitled to the 2 bed rate of HB and although some of it would be counted as income she should still be better off. (She should offer breakfast and then lodger changes to boarder and less income is deducted)

Has she checked that all her utilities are with the cheapest provider/ Has she got a water metre?

Post her income and expenditure on the debtfree wannabe forum for further ideas and have a good read of all the money saving ideas on this website.

p00hsticks

What benefits has she applied for ?

If she lives alone, check that she's getting the 25% single person discount for her council tax.

Buying food should be a priority over repaying loans - too late now if it's done, but if one of the reasons she only has so little left for food is because the 'bills' include loan and credit card payments she should consider making only token payments/ setting up a debt management plan - the Debt FRee Wannabee board will have more advice in this area ..