Julie (not her real name) is a 49-year-old single lady living in a housing association property. She lives there on her own now that her children have grown up and moved on. Julie is disabled following a serious motorbike accident in 2017. As well as physical disabilities that arose as a result of the accident, she was also severely traumatised and this has left her with depression and extreme anxiety.  Prior to the accident Julie had always worked.   

Julie was feeling completely overwhelmed by her situation and came to Centre 70 for help. We arranged for her to have an appointment first with Helen, a Debt Adviser, who later referred Julie on for more specialist benefits advice from Michael, one of our Benefits Advisers and also for help with housing, from Martina our Housing Disrepair Solicitor.   

Debt support

Julie had council tax arrears of around £1,700. Bailiffs had been instructed to collect the arrears, and Julie was very stressed and anxious about this. We negotiated with the council to instead have her council tax arrears deducted from her Universal Credit. This meant a deduction of £19.64 monthly, whereas had the debt remained with bailiffs, they would have demanded a far higher (and unsustainable) payment amount, and in addition would have added their own fees. 

When carrying out a benefits check with Sandra to make sure she was accessing everything she was entitled to, we noticed she was having £78 deducted monthly from her Universal Credit for rent arrears, even though her rent arrears had actually been cleared some four months previously. We contacted Lambeth Housing and asked them to stop the deduction for rent arrears, which they duly did.  

Income maximisation  

We assisted Julie to apply for the Thames Water Help discount which means her bill has been reduced by 50%, and she is now managing to keep up payments on this.  

We have also been able to assist our client with food and fuel vouchers as needed, via the local Foodbank, and successfully applied for a grant for a new fridge freezer because her old one was broken.

Wellbeing

As Julie's mental health was being affected, we helped Julie to self-refer for our counselling service and she has subsequently attended some of our wellbeing events, whilst she waits for counselling to start.  

Benefits

Our client applied for Personal Independent Payments (PIP) in November 2022 but was refused this in February 2023.  We assisted her to submit a Mandatory Reconsideration request in June 2023, and she received a further negative decision in July 2023.  

Our client was suffering from extreme anxiety and depression and felt unable to challenge this, but we convinced her to go forwards with an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal in October 2023.  

In July 2024 the tribunal subsequently decided that she was entitled to both the enhanced rate of the daily living component and the enhanced rate for the mobility component of PIP. She was therefore awarded £183.30 a week PIP, along with a £15,554.39 backdated payment from Department of Work and Pensions for the period when she should have been receiving PIP following her original application.

This has helped to ease her financial burden and means that she is not faced with a choice between eating, or putting her heating on this winter. 

Housing 

Julie has severe disrepair in her property, and she is now being assisted by our Housing Team with a disrepair claim. 

The reality is that many clients come back to us as and when needed, checking in when receiving a debt letter or when they have benefits issues. This is a tricky balance as funders like the idea of people being advised and then flying free, fully confident to make their own way in the world. I think the phrase is ‘enabling’.

Realistically some clients will always need to know that we are here, available and accessible. I would rather that they checked things with us than not opening letters or getting themselves in a total tizz over something that is often nothing to worry about.