The stall this week was drenched in sun, which was both very unusual and very welcome: six volunteers had turned up, expecting to be kept busy. It proved, however, to be a long two hours as active cases were thin on the ground – not that we are reading too much into this, as we have often experienced alternating weeks of relative calm and then frenetic activity, and fully expect next week’s stall to conform to that pattern.

Whilst cases were few and far between, this was no consolation to the folk who did have problems. Tim, who is homeless and had been camping in a local park until his tent and camping equipment had been stolen, was without any means of subsistence whatsoever and had emerged from the buroo very upset after being told that he could not be helped because he did not have a permanent address. The buroo had simply passed the problem onto the local council, and, as he was new to the town, one of our volunteers offered to chum him along to the council offices to get advice and help from the housing department. When the SUWN volunteer, Gary, returned he reported that Tim was in pieces and that he kept bursting into tears as they had walked towards the council offices. Gary left Tim at the housing department waiting to be seen, and we had provided him with our leaflet and contact details, just in case he required further help. So far, we have heard nothing, and we can only hope that this means Tim received the assistance he desperately needs – though if he can’t demonstrate a link with Dundee and has a link with somewhere else they could try and pass his case on, as Shelter explains here.

We also came across John who had emerged from twenty-four hours on remand only to find that his ESA claim had been shut down. We advised him to contact Welfare Rights immediately in order to get this ridiculous decision overturned, asap.

These cases proved to be exceptions, and we were greeting many of the folk emerging from the buroo with the observation that, ‘I can tell yir noa hivin problems by the smile oan yir coupon’. It was Friday, it was sunny, and these folk had got through another appointment without any problems, something remarked upon by a guy who stopped to have a crack. He shook his head, smiling, when asked if he was having any problems, and informed us that whilst he did not have any issues with his work coach, who was, he felt, pretty reasonable, this didn’t stop him from feeling nervous when going into appointments and from feeling relieved when the meeting had ended without difficulties – hence his smile.

And, although cases were thin on the ground, we did have a regular flow of folk approaching the stall asking for more general pieces of advice, picking up advice leaflets, and sharing their experiences. One woman sparked a fair amount of discussion and debate over problems that a friend of hers had encountered who had started to experience severe seizures, but who had found help difficult to come by as, following a whole battery of tests, she still had not had a firm diagnosis, although the woman feared that her friend may well be suffering from grand mal epilepsy.

As we have mentioned in previous blogs, we also field online and telephone inquiries, and one piece of good news was received from Nottingham concerning a PIP case that we had been dealing with for some months. Gerald describes himself as ‘a rather large black lad’ who has not had the best of luck with the DWP and local welfare services. He suffers from depression, but recently failed a PIP assessment. We advised him to appeal the decision, despite his local welfare officer advising against it, and he had just received word that he had qualified for the Daily Living component of PIP after gaining extra points at the appeal tribunal. He was delighted with the result, and grateful that we had taken his case up, remarking, ‘I wish you guys were down here, as if it’d been left to the local welfare organisations I wouldn’t even have bothered applying for PIP.’ The plight of Gerald and the other benefit claimants in England (and Wales) we deal with only underlines the fact that, as bad as things are up here, it is nothing compared with the situation down south, where there is very often little or no help and advice available – not even the limited Welfare Fund and advice services provided by the Scottish government – for English folk who get caught in the clutches of DWP numptydom.

Duncan, Jonathan, Katy, Gary, Norma and Tony were at this week’s stall.