Universal credit makes you jump through so many hoops, you just want to give up

theguardian.com:

Everybody’s got to do a side hustle, get another job. I do youth work and I’m a youth offending supervisor at the weekend. And then I have my full-time job as a project support worker with adults in supported housing. I assist with varying needs, from wellbeing to benefits applications. I have a three-month contract. Overall, I work six days a week, sometimes seven.

Everything’s gone up. Food’s gone up, rent’s gone up, Netflix has gone up. Pasta, rice, your deodorants, soft drinks. We know that energy is due to go up again in October and I feel that the government is not doing enough to support us. To get to some of my service users in the community, I need a car, and right now petrol is at 191p per litre. Now I’m thinking, “I need to conserve my petrol.”

I do reward myself because I don’t want to just work to pay rent. But before, I’d spend £20 on a Chinese takeaway each week. Now it’s down to maybe £11, £15 max, and I only have a treat like that once a month.

I’ve spoken to friends and colleagues who say they turned off their heating when it was cold. Somebody else I spoke to recently said they don’t put the light on. He said, “The electric, it’s too much.” I’m frightened of the dark. When I was growing up, it was very chaotic. Sometimes my parents would leave us and the electric would go. Now, at night I have to have a lamp on. That’s one of my things to do with post-traumatic stress disorder, which I was diagnosed with in 2014.

I was working as an administrator in the City in 2019, alongside running my theatre company and putting on productions, but when my six-month contract ended, I couldn’t find another job. I used up all my favours, I had no money left, and I had no choice but to apply for universal credit. Because