Family's struggle to stay working

My family are struggling beyond belief. We have children, I work part-time, my husband was made redundant from his council job last year and is attending regular interviews but not getting anywhere.

As he is 50 he is starting to think there are ageist employers out there. We live off my part-time, 16-hour minimum wage and not a lot of child tax and working tax credit.

Because I work part-time, my husband could only claim JSA contributions based for 182 days, then he was cut off with nothing.

We are in debt with everything and are on the verge of losing our house, as our mortgage is over 600 a month which is all my wage and a huge amount of our tax credits.

We can’t get housing benefit but we can get 17 a month council tax credit, which really helps as we’re in debt with them too to the tune of over a grand. We can’t even get free school meals.

Yet a friend of mine and her husband, who are on benefits, have just gone on a Disneyland holiday which, yes they scrimped for, but we could only imagine even doing that!

It has been suggested to me that I go on the sick and then go on to income support and that we would be much better off for doing so... particularly as there is no incentive for us to not do this, not from this Government.

No wonder there is voter apathy.

Mrs Fletcher