Reblogged from Kate Belgrave:
Joe
Halewood has posted a very interesting article: it’s about a letter from the
Knowsley Housing Trust which says that the recipient may be considered to have
intentionally made themselves homeless if they’re evicted because of rent
arrears. The
letter also says that social services will be advised if there are children in
the home:
People have read this as “pay your rent, or we’ll come for your kids,” as
well they might.
As Joe says:
“Knowsley Housing Trust (KHT) are sending out a standard letter which tenants
are reading as “pay your rent or social services will come and take your
children off you”..and you thought social landlords couldn’t get any more
incompetent!
“The prior paragraph sees KHT assume that any tenant evicted for arrears will
be declared intentionally homeless by the council – that not paying your rent
means you WILL be found intentionally homeless and that is a huge assumption and
an overt scare tactic in itself by KHT and this predicates the threat of your
children being taken into care. Councils have to look at the individual
circumstances of each case under homeless legislation and eviction for arrears
does NOT equate with being found intentionally homeless as KHT strongly allude
it does.”
So.
I’m posting this, because I know that this fear of losing your kids if you
can’t pay the bedroom tax looms large in many minds. I know this because people
have told me about it. They
certainly told me about it when I was travelling around in the northwest for
this recent article about the bedroom tax. I wrote then:
“The other concern people have is that social services will remove children
from parents who are found to be struggling due to the extra cost. People say
this a lot. “Nobody wants social services butting their noses into people’s
business, because it’s a danger game when a mother hasn’t got enough money to
feed her kids properly,” Jill says [at the West Everton Community Centre].
“She’s going to starve herself to make sure her kids are fed. You’re hearing
about kids being taken away when they shouldn’t be.””
A similar point was raised on at least two more occasions by people I met at
the bedroom tax campaign meetings I attended during that trip. One man I was
speaking with said that the campaign groups wanted to get more young people
involved. “They’re probably worried about social services coming round,” a woman
at our table said. I had a similar conversation with two women after a meeting
in central Liverpool.
This all put me in mind of a conversation I had a couple of years ago with a
Wisconsin woman called Pat Gowens. I’d rung Pat in the first instance to talk
about Wisconsin’s appalling workfare programme, which she had some experience
of. She and other women had set up Welfare Warriors – a member-led campaign made up of
people who were directly affected by that punitive W2 workfare scheme. We
talked about that for some time and then our conversation moved onto other work
the group was involved in. That work, it transpired, included representing women
whose children had been removed by social services. “They come into your homes,”
Pat said, “usually on an anonymous call, or [a call from] your husband. They
decide you’re a bit crazy, or your house isn’t clean enough – a mother didn’t
vacuum her carpets, or just swept them [or something like that]. Then, they take
your kids away. You used to get them back in six months. Now it can be six
years. If you want them back you have to do parenting classes, therapy, anger
management, domestic violence therapy.”
The group is still active – you can see their facebook page
here – and they’re still running articles with titles like Give
Us Back Our Children.
The fear of losing your children is an appalling one. Most people ought to
know that. And it is very bad to know that people fear losing their children
because they can’t pay a tax that they should never have had to pay in the first
place.
Joe Halewood is absolutely right when he says:
“Social landlords are in a position of authority when it comes to housing
matters. Tenants assume that landlords know housing law and good practice
therein and tenants in large part have to trust social landlords.”
He’s also right when he says that anybody who is abusing that power needs to
be named and shamed. There is something very unpleasant going on here. Talk
about a nasty way to keep people who don’t have money in line. Pure evil.
Update:
info here on this situation from the Shelter site
(h-t Mr Bogbrush on
facebook):
“Can social services take children away because the family is found to be
intentionally homeless?
No. Social services can only forcibly take a child away from her/his parents
if there is clear evidence of a risk of abuse and a court order has been
obtained. If social services offer to house the children but not the rest of the
family, the parents are not normally obliged to accept this option.
If social services offer to house the child alone, you should get specialist
advice from a local Shelter advice centre or other housing advice agency
immediately.”
