A Dundee woman contemplated suicide after she was hit by benefits sanctions despite securing a job.
Faced with the choice between heating and eating, Shauna Rothery’s weight dropped to just six and a half stone as dark thoughts entered her mind.
Despite having secured a job in a care facility and the Jobcentre initially agreeing to continue paying benefits until the appropriate background checks were carried out, her payments were suspended because she was no longer actively looking for work.
The Dundee woman’s plight was highlighted after a group of MPs recommended a review of benefit sanctions.
Following an extended stay with her father in South Africa, the 28-year-old returned home with her old job at a bookmaker filled.
She signed on for Jobseeker’s Allowance, which took almost a month to be processed and ended up at the Lily Walker homeless centre as her relationship with her mother deteriorated.
She has since secured a tenancy in Lochee, where she has been living for the past four years.
The benefit sanction came despite a written confirmation of employment and Shauna was prescribed medication after experiencing feelings of depression.
“The problem is, when you have been sanctioned you are absolutely terrified it is going to happen again,” she said. “It drives you to despair and in my case, to feeling suicidal.”
Shauna added: “The first time using the foodbank I volunteered for was really humiliating. I was too ashamed to ask for help as well.
“So feeling that guilt and feeling that shame, you just don’t know what to do and you feel very weak as a result, as you don’t necessarily want people to take sympathy on you.”
Although she successfully appealed the decision, Shauna was only remunerated for one week, despite the sanction lasting more than a month.
In a new report, Westminster’s Work and Pensions Select Committee suggested that in some cases sanctions were causing food poverty and “severe financial hardship”.
MPs said hardship payments should be available from day one of a sanction coming into force and called for the Department for Work and Pensions to improve communication with claimants.
A DWP spokesman said: “As the report recognises, sanctions are a vital backstop in the welfare system and are only used in a small minority of cases where claimants don’t do all they can to look for work.”
More than 80% of Trussell Trust foodbanks surveyed last November said benefit sanctions were causing people to turn to them for emergency food.
Scotland network manager Ewan Gurr said: “We consistently hear people describe the current approach as imposing, confusing or one where individuals have, in the words of the report, been ‘set up to fail.’”