Poverty Emergency! With Helen Greatorex

Food banks. Fuel poverty. Heating vs Eating. Why has poverty become the new normal in the UK, accepted as “just the way it is” in one of the world’s richest countries? Stigma, says sociologist Imogen Tyler, has been part of this normalisation: it’s dehumanised some of society’s vulnerable people, devaluing lives and destroying compassion to boot. 

Helen Greatorex, Chief Officer at North Lancashire Citizens Advice, tells Imogen what she’s seen working on the welfare frontline over the years. It’s a story of desperation – working families needing food and fuel help; reworked personal budgets still unable to cover essentials; people shut out from the most basic social life that makes existence bearable.

But Helen also shares a story of hope, as she describes how her CAB office is transforming how it helps people in need – and gives a rallying call to stay outraged at destitution, no matter how common it is.

Credits:

Host: Imogen Tyler
Guest: Helen Greatorex
Executive & Development Producer: Alice Bloch
Project Lead: Imogen Tyler
Project Officer: Danielle Galway
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music & Artwork: Bruce Bennett

Episode resources

• Changing life expectancy and why it matters An animation from Glasgow Centre for Population Health
• Danny Dorling’s work on austerity and excess deaths 
• Poverty propaganda: Exploring the myths  Tracey Shildrick (2018) 
• Benefits broods: The cultural and political crafting of anti-welfare commonsense Tracey Jensen & Imogen Tyler (2015)
• Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain Imogen Tyler (2013)
• The Violence of Austerity Vickie Cooper and David Whyte, eds. (2017)
• Crippled: austerity and the demonization of disabled people  Frances Ryan (2019)
• From disability to destitution  Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2022)
• The Care Manifesto : The Politics of Interdependence  The Care Collective (2020)
• Bread for all : the origins of the welfare state  Chris Renwick (2017)
• Good times, bad times : the welfare myth of them and us  John Hills (2015)

Find extended reading lists and learn more about The Stigma Conversations at  The Sociological Review

Take Action!

The Poverty Truth Network
North Lancashire Citizens Advice Bureau
Morecambe Bay foodbank
Joseph Rowntree Foundation  

Transcript

Imogen Tyler: 0:03

Welcome back to the Stigma Conversations with me, Imogen Tyler. If you're new here, you might be thinking what's left to say about stigma? Now I want to be really clear, it's great to see how many taboo busting conversations are happening today. That's the essential – life saving actually– in mental health, for example. But I think also at the same time as talking about how stigma makes us feel – how it plays with our psyches – shapes how we value ourselves and others. It's crucial also to ask big questions about how stigma is produced and why. Once we do that,– and look up at power, and back at history – we see how stigma is totally wrapped up in politics, economics, capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy. That means we can start to see stigma as a power, a practice, a kind of machinery – as something created to serve the powerful. And that means we can stop thinking "that's just the way it is", and ask for better. In this series and meeting inspirational academics, activists and frontline workers, to help me reflect – not only on how stigma works and where it comes from – but how we might resist stigma and change the conversation.

Geraldine Onek: 1:25

Is that proactivity Isn't it? Like actively having those discussions even though they make you feel uncomfortable?

Andy Knox: 1:31

Why the hell would you want to not be woke? Why wouldn't you want to be awake to the issues of injustice in the world, to the realities of stigmatisation and its effects in society? It's disgraceful that we should mock it.

Professor Alice Bloch: 1:44

We always have to understand history and the past to understand the present and the way in which stigma and labelling people and stigmatising people reproduces itself – be it a new way of doing it or the impact of an old way which carries on through generations.

Imogen Tyler: 2:03

Last time I talked with sociologist Alice Bloch about the history of stigma power as a form of social control – about how stigma physically marks or otherwise marks out society's most vulnerable people. In fact, it works to make us vulnerable, to divide and dehumanise us. And today I want to bring that issue of stigma right into the present in the context of the current cost of living crisis in the UK– and the scandal of poverty in one of the world's richest nations. Now, there's a long history of stigma around welfare and social relief – from the badging of the poor in the 17th and 18th centuries, to the Victorian workhouse. Stigma has long been a way to ration resources and distinguish between the so called "deserving" and"undeserving" poor. When official austerity came in the UK in 2010, there was an explosion of stigma power from above. Those in power had to make the public feel that people receiving benefits were undeserving. And that didn't just mean stuff you might have thought about before – the sort of tabloid headlines, the idea that benefits claimants are scroungers and so on – I think this stigma also changed how we looked at each other – it eroded compassion. people queuing at food banks became "just how it is". This kind of massive production of stigma also strangely silenced people in poverty and enabled the denial, even, of poverty itself. So a commentary emerged that real poverty doesn't exist anymore – that somehow people claiming benefits were really living a life of luxury TVs, tattoos, fast food, lifestyles. In reality, life expectancy now is actually falling in many places in the UK for the first time since records began. And in 2020, social scientists show that austerity cuts have directly contributed so 330,000 excess deaths in the UK between 2012 and 2019. In short, poverty– and the lack of compassion that comes with the stigma optics – kills. I wanted to get a view from the frontline of the current poverty emergency and so back in November, I spoke with Helen Greatorex – who's Chief Cfficer at Citizens Advice North Lancashire. Helen's also a trustee on the Morecambe Bay Food Bank – and she and I met when we're both involved in the local Poverty Truth Commission. I asked Helen – as someone who's been at Citizens Advice through recent years – what's changed between the start of austerity and now? What has she seen happen – working on the frontline at systems advice?

Helen Greatorex: 5:00

What we've seen since 2010 is a sharp decline in people's well-being around finances money, and support in their communities. Never before, before 2010, did we give a food parcel out?

Imogen Tyler: 5:21

Yeah

Helen Greatorex: 5:22

Then we came to 2013. And then we saw the introduction of, or the ideas for the introduction of Universal Credit. And the anticipated problems from that were quite scary.

Imogen Tyler: 5:34

One thing that really strikes me just mentioning, like, emergency food aid there, and how that was a totally new phenomena from 2010– is how normalised that's become, because it's like, now, I mean – we've just become used to every single shop – you know, supermarket, mini mart – having like a food bank deposit area. We've become used to that. And we've become used to like food banks appearing more and more – opening up food clubs, etc. And it's become like a normal feature. But what we're currently seeing also is extension like food aid into workplaces – so into hospitals, into school – like it into the whole kind of infrastructure of like, public institutions, to feed workers. So I think it's like very hard to step back almost and say, like that – how did that happen in such a short time? You know, it's, it's actually seems really important to be able to be shocked about that.

Helen Greatorex: 6:43

And I think you're right. And I think that that's one of the strengths of the service that, that Citizens Advice is – or that certainly our service is and I'm sure it's replicated across the country – is that, yeah, we we began to see the provision of charitable aid – particularly around food – become part of the welfare state. There's absolutely no doubt about it. We... at the beginning, the DWP were instructed quite clearly not to suggest that clients go and get food parcels when they were approaching the DWP saying I can't live without any money for six weeks whilst away from my Universal Credit. And I think the strength of the service and the frontline services is that– not only do we get shocked by the numbers – but we also can see where the policy problems are. We can see the causes of the creation of the need for food banks. And a really important part of our service is to challenge that policy. And to point out exactly how those, those changes in the benefit system created abject poverty. Before, I think it's fair to say we probably were in a society that, that actually had enough provision around it – including the benefit system – to have that flexibility to give emergency payments to people, discretionary payments to people. They used to have community care grants, and budgeting loans and things like that. They were fairly much stripped back. So that, that did shock us and you're right – we did, I think we did get to a stage where it's like, oh, it's food bank Friday, the food banks open today – we know we're going to have a big crowd of people, how do we manage all those people who are coming in? But every single time you sit down with one person who needs food, and you see the tears in a big blokes eyes – and you see the fear of a mother – wondering how they're going to cook the food that we're going to give them from the food bank – it keeps you grounded – and it keeps you outraged. And that is really important in our service. Because if you're outraged about something, the chances are, it's linked to some sort of policy that could be changed – that could then improve people's lives. So I think although there was a little bit of complacency in terms of – this is now how society works in recent years, – and certainly in the last few years – we are now not only seeing really poor people coming into our service – who are not really managing – they've got really expensive rents, they're in really cold accommodation, it's... they're eating poorly. What we're now seeing is working families coming into us and saying I need food, I need fuel– help. In an extension of that, we've got people who work in our organisation who are coming to us and saying, I need food, I need electrical help. So it's a thing that we're all living with now. So yes – it, it did become a bit of a norm. But I think the changes in the last couple of years as well – and I don't really want to point a finger at any particular government – because we're not an organisation that's party political in any way – but experimental budgets that took place in 2022 – absolutely was was sort of the last nail in the coffin for some people. And as that happened – at the end of the summer, and coming into the autumn and winter months – it's actually quite terrifying how we are going to, how we're going to maintain the service, how we are going to continue to meet the needs of the numbers of people who are coming through to us – because they have spiked, for example, by 75%, From last August to this August – the need is great. The other thing that's really terrifying – for the third sector, for the voluntary sector – is that we're all facing huge funding cuts.

Imogen Tyler: 11:06

That's quite the picture of the sort of crisis that we're in. I mean, one of the things I'm reflecting on as you're speaking, Helen – is about how poverty has become normalised over the last decade. And one of the things I've thought about my own work is how that normalisation of poverty and those cuts to the welfare state – that we sort of austerity and that are continuing – were accompanied by this massive explosion – from kind of, particularly from sort of 2010 to around 2016 – of poverty stigma. In the form of things like" Benefits Street", endless headlines about welfare cheats, etc, etc. So it was rolling news, you know, for about seven years – you couldn't kind of move for, you know, the amount of kind of – and then not in a way that top down – I would call it – that sort of orchestrated, political stigma reduction – if you want to call it – within the public sphere. It seemed to me that that was part of how poverty was... became more hidden at – the same time that it was increasing – it almost kind of distorted but also hid the experiences of people – partly because it, you know, is very stigmatising and shameful anyway– but it became more so when if you were going to be seen as one of these benefits cheats. So this normalisation that we talked about where poverty becomes a normalise – is happening in this sort of context where we've had this previous period of this massive escalation of benefits stigma and poverty stigma. Do you see that in the service that both that normalisation or that kind of, how that stigma impacted people?

Helen Greatorex: 12:59

Absolutely. You know, one day you'd be going to work and you'd be fine and dandy, and you could hold your head up high – because you were a worker, and you were a striver. And then you could go to work and be laid off – and then the next morning you became a scrounger and a shirker. And that message was really simple. It was grounded in bigotry, it was grounded in in hatred – for me, actually – and in a ridiculous assumption – that we had an economy that could employ everybody at a reasonable rate of pay, to enable people not to have to claim benefits, not to have to use any help that was out there. It was a really distressing time – because the most vulnerable in our society are some of the most poorest in our society. They don't have – necessarily – the ability to fight back and they did, certainly didn't, and still don't – in fact – have the platform to put their stories, to put the alternatives. And even if they do, it's not listened to. There's there's a really, really upsetting set of circumstances that that you know– that you can have, I don't know – you can have a working mom in the, in the building and, and she can tell you that she's no money to feed the kids and that although yeah, a food parcel would be great, she can't put the oven on to cook that food. That story should be shouted from the rooftops – just that one story. Nevermind, the fact that we're seeing hundreds and hundreds and 1000s of people in the same situation. And one of the things that bothers me is that people – people don't think like we do – they don't think IV is stigmatised. I'm being excluded, I'm being othered. They just struggle on day to day. It's up to us – in services like ours – to put the meat on the bones, to be really clear about the statistics and about the impact, and about the stories that people are experiencing. And to understand too, that if you – if you medicalized poverty like we do – it's one of the most upsetting things for me at the moment is that people go to the doctors, because they're anxious and they're not sleeping, and they're upset about things. And the reason they're doing that is because they're in poverty. They're not ill – they don't need to antidepressants – but they'll probably get them. They just need a better income. They need a society that does what it says on the tin, which is to look after the most vulnerable.

Imogen Tyler: 15:52

I think there's two things that I want to unpick in just thinking about medicalization that you, of poverty. And while that might mean... in one, you know, I hear what you're saying – that you can't live in poverty, and not feel distressed and for that not to create anxiety. And I think what you're trying to describe there, Helen, is that how that in a way poverty is become individualised. So it's almost like "there's something wrong with me".

Helen Greatorex: 16:20

Exactly. Exactly that. Yeah. And... Yeah,

Imogen Tyler: 16:22

That they've failed in some way. people feel a bit rubbish. They feel that there must be something they're doing that other people aren't doing that...

Helen Greatorex: 16:33

Yeah, that they failed in some way. And I think often the GP is the last port of call – its the desperation. I think.

Imogen Tyler: 16:42

Yeah.

Helen Greatorex: 16:43

When I was a kid, when I was a child, I always thought – if anything goes wrong, there's these structures in place – there's a health service, and there's a doctor surgery, and there's the police and the ambulance. And what you begin to realise in our society now is there's a real shortage of those services. That people don't proactively look to help people anymore. So the journeys – as people who try and get help, or who try and improve their own lives – is really difficult and unsupported. So there's a lot of... there's a lack of knowledge out there about rights and obligations and justice – and access to services that should be available for everybody.

Imogen Tyler: 17:32

Yeah. And poverty, poverty is disabling, isn't it? I mean, it literally is disabling and it makes it does make people physically ill as well as psychologically ill. But it's, you know, disabled people are incre... one of the most impacted groups by poverty at the moment – I think a third of all people living in poverty are disabled. I mean, 7 million people are on a waiting list for NHS Care at the moment. I mean, they'll be people becoming disabled, if they're not already.

Helen Greatorex: 18:06

It's exactly that. It's 50 year olds leaving the the jobs market. There's got to be a good number of those who are either suffering from long covid or waiting for waiting long term for health conditions to be treated. And as they wait, those conditions get worse and worse and worse. And so you create a workforce who can no longer work.

Imogen Tyler: 18:29

And it's just worth noting, you know, the

Helen Greatorex: 18:31

I think aswell, I think what's worrying me quite evidence that came out in 2022 that shows that austerity cuts directly contributed to 330,000 excess deaths in the UK between 2012 and 2019. So austerity is killing people slowly – in some a lot at the moment is the media message about austerity and the cases faster in others – but that's more people than died of Covid. So I can only imagine what it's like for you on the front line, seeing that people in need coming in. And I suppose for me – poverty is an issue of economic injustice, Helen. And it's like, how much can you, can you – It must be so hard for you – because there's so little that you can do except do temporary fixes in terms of referring someone to a food bank, referring somebody for housing support, etc? Because it's a bigger... this issue of economic justice and growing inequalities – it's so difficult. media message about the fuel crisis and all that sort of thing. We know, don't we – that there's a set of individuals in the community, maybe old people, older people, maybe quite vulnerable people, maybe people with learning difficulties – who was scared to death to put the heating on now. They could probably afford it, but they're frightened to do it. So there's, there are a number of really vulnerable people in our community who are self-regulating their heat, and who were not eating properly – because they feel they've got to save up for some time later on down the line,

Imogen Tyler: 20:19

And because of uncertainty that we all have about. No one's got any idea what's coming next. And in a way that uncertainty is very like the uncertainty of poverty more generally, isn't it?

Helen Greatorex: 20:32

It is, it is. It makes you pullback, it makes you put another blanket on, put another jumper on – which is you know, it's all great. But for elderly people and people who are disabled – who was stuck at home all day – that's not great. That causes pneumonia, and it causes all sorts of other problems. That's one worry I've got at the moment. The other worry is absolutely, Imogen – that there's a number of clients coming to us who – we can write off all the debts, that's not a problem – but what we're seeing now is when we're writing off people's debts – this is just one example of the work we do, which is the complex debt work – when we're writing off the debts, and we're doing a financial statement. And we're trying to give the client a budget of what now they can use every week. So we've cleared the debts – there's no further contractual payments, their income has gone up – but it still hasn't gone up to the extent that it can meet the essentials. So we're seeing deficit budgets all the time now. And that can be in people with benefits, or it can be people at work. Now if you've got if you've got a deficit budget – and you've got to choose between whether you feed your kids, or whether you put the heating on for your disabled auntie – it's a hell of a choice.

Imogen Tyler: 21:48

One thing that really strikes me about poverty and, and – what you're talking about is also including destitution, where people didn't come just can't, regularly can't meet their basic needs – is how it encloses and shrinks people's lives. So you know, and we we've got that's been compounded by the public transport fiasco – that is particularly enacting in the north at the moment. But you know, that you don't go out – you can't afford to go out you can't afford to go to your friend's party.

Helen Greatorex: 22:19

That is people's well-being.

Imogen Tyler: 22:21

That is shrinking, shrinking, shrinking people's lives. That seems to me that that's, marks a real, you know, the end – almost – of that kind of more utopian welfare state ideal. That idea that, you know, everybody could be aspirational, that narrative however problematic it is – but idea of social mobility, that idea of everybody having greater or at least greater opportunities – and you feel like this increase in profits just shrinking, shrinking, shrinking down.

Helen Greatorex: 22:57

And not only that, it's become acceptable. We've reached a point and a narrative in discourse, I suppose that – absolutely people should be living in in dire circumstances, if they're not working. There's no, there's no understanding that as human beings, we need social contact. We need to enjoy our lives. We need to laugh, we need to share and converse with with people. And that's, that's really upsetting, isn't it? The other morning, I woke up and it was freezing here. Then there was ice on the roofs and ice on the car. And I looked out it's a beautiful sunny day. The first thing I thought of was that young lads or young lass who was sat in a bedsit – on 70 odd pounds, 80 pounds a week –who literally had no life. It's not just they didn't have heating, they didn't have food, but they had absolutely no way to socialise with the outside world. Why do we say tha only people who have enough money are entitled to have social life effectively, and entitled to have relationships and build friendships.

Imogen Tyler: 24:09

Poverty, just makes me think how wasteful poverty is – as a society, it creates wasted lives, but it's also, it's such a waste of human potential, isn't it?

Helen Greatorex: 24:21

It really is...

Imogen Tyler: 24:22

That we, what we're doing to our, this this sort of, nation at the moment.

Helen Greatorex: 24:28

And we know – we know from our from our experience in the Poverty Truth Commission – that people in our community have got so much to offer, who can guide us – guide me certainly – in how we run our service. We need that – we need to hear that – we need to hear what they're doing. You know, from I don't know, from tiny little things like – how do you make your money last? What are you doing? What skills have you got that do make that money last if you're managing to do that? But all also to say, Where are the services going wrong? What aren't we doing that would help to improve your life? And one, one of the things that I feel really strongly about – and we're still not quite there yet– is that partnership work is the wraparound services for our communities. We know now, we sort of know now. that we can forget hoping that the welfare system is going to get more generous, we're probably actually going to see an effective cut in Universal Credit – because it's unlikely to be raised by the cost of living. So you've already got a set of circumstances where I'm saying people have deficit budgets – and come April is probably going to get worse – because all the hardship help that's been put into place. All that drops off a cliff, at the end of March. We're not going to see people's local housing allowance increased. And we're going to see landlords putting up the rent. And it for me, those voices of lived experience need to be sat around a table with the policymakers, with the Council's, with the County Council's, with the government. And with all us – all of us who run services. We know we haven't got the answers to everything. But if we work together and support each other and support our communities and do things like break bread together. Have people with lived experience on our trustee boards, have people with lived experience running our services – then that takes us some, some way towards giving power to people who don't have a voice. That's really important for me.

Imogen Tyler: 26:44

Well, it's about re - humanising services. Even if those services are stripped to the bone and extremely difficult to run at the moment – there is something about allowing live, people who've lived experience to be heard as experts – in a way that I think then can re-humanise the services themselves. And that reminds me, Helen, that I know you're doing something around, aren't you – how you're going to run your office? Is that right? To redesign it?

Helen Greatorex: 27:14

Yeah, so we've,we want to redesign our offices so they're a space – a community space. You'll all recognise the description of Citizens Advice as all a bit behind closed doors– you have to sit in a waiting room and yet to sit for ages and ages and ages. And then you might get to see somebody or you might not get to see somebody. I want to put an end to that. I want to have services where people feel they own our service, – where they can come in, and they can use the computer and they can find their own information, we don't have to do that. There's a lot of people out there who are very capable of finding their own advice – providing we can provide the resources to do that. That's one of the things we want to do. But one of the other things that is, that is really important to me is – every time a client walks out of our office, they have – hopefully a letter in the hand that details all the advice we've given. But as an advisor – it takes a hell of a long time to learn how to be an advisor – and to learn how to negotiate systems. So one of the things that I want to do – and we started to do now – is to call clients back. So after the advice – about six weeks after they've had the advice – we give them a call back – and we call it a welfare callback. And we compare a set of questions that we asked at the outset of the advice session. And then we ask them the same questions again. And it's all around – did you understand our advice? Could you follow it? Has it worked? But then it's all about – are you sleeping better? Are you feeling, how are you feeling now, what that does is tell people that we're an organisation that actually does care. But what it's also done is given us the evidence to show that good advice does actually improve people's health and well-being.

Imogen Tyler: 29:02

I really like that idea that in redesigning your offices in this open plan way and providing the resources people need – rather than assuming they need to be told by somebody X or Y – I like, I like the idea that that kind of also, sort of, take some of those principles that we both experienced, Helen – in Poverty Truth – of trying to undo like the the you and them. You know, and that which is a kind of anti stigma practice effectively, isn't it?

Helen Greatorex: 29:31

It is, yeah.

Imogen Tyler: 29:33

This could be any of us that's needing help.

Helen Greatorex: 29:35

Its saying... and one of the things I keep reminding us all of – including our teams – is we are all members of that community. We are all members. So if I go into a Citizens Advice service and need some information – and they've got a computer there and that's brilliant –then I can have a go. But if I don't, if I don't understand it, I can ask the community member – who's one of our volunteers – to sit next to me, and help me make sense sense of it. There's nothing better than that. Because that, that creates relationships, it creates friendships. And one of the joys about that is seeing people just start to chat and just start to talk to the advisor and start to get involved with, with realising that you have got rights. Yes, you've got obligations – but there are rights that you have and it's up to, it's up to all of us to try and help people make the best of what they've got. And at the same time as lobbying for what they need.

Imogen Tyler: 30:41

Helen Greatorex, Chief Officer of Citizens Advice North Lancashire. You know, it was both inspiring and upsetting to hear from Helen, about how the poverty crisis affecting both those in poverty – but also welfare workers and volunteers – and how those groups aren't even mutually exclusive. As we heard, you know, Helens account of staff and volunteers themselves falling into poverty. One takeaway from today was hearing about the cumulative impact of living in a society where welfare is being so relentlessly stigmatised – how poverty has become normalised as a result of this. The cultivation of stigma has always played a huge role in the rationing of welfare – by which I mean it's been used to win consent for a tax on social provision, for branding, some is more deserving than others. One takeaway from today was hearing about the cumulative impact of living in a society where welfare has been so relentlessly stigmatised. How poverty has become normalised as a result. Now we're living in this period of deep recession, stagnating wages and insecure work – a time when benefits have been diminishing, and poverty is rising – including among groups once seen as deserving such as children, disabled people. Another takeaway is that to re-humanise our social and welfare systems, we have to destigmatise welfare. That means work in solidarity with those with real lived experience of poverty. Having conversations about the kind of social movements we urgently need to help rebuild the welfare state and tackle injustice. And after today's conversation, I'm also reminded of how we also need to consider today's poverty crisis and the dismantling of the welfare state in the context of Britain's deeper history – including the aftermath of empire wellbores post industrial decline. We should remember that modern Britain was forged through colonialism and post colonial struggle and shaped by histories of migration. The legacies of these histories are so visible in the uneven geographies of poverty in Britain today – both in terms of the disproportionate impact of poverty in black and ethnic minority communities and in the clustering of poverty in areas like Northern England and the Midlands – areas that suffered most from post industrial decline, and from subsequent cuts and under investment. Next time, I'll be talking with two community activists about Black Lives Matter, the legacies of slavery and colonialism, and how we can use education to confront our past and change our future. You can read more in the episode notes for this podcast. Just scroll down in the app you're using to hear this and also on the podcast page at the sociologicalreview.org. And the power of stigma affects us all so please share the stigma conversations far and wide. You never know who'll end up listening. My producer was Alice Bloch. Our sound engineer was Dave Crackles. Thanks for listening.