Wednesday

I am talking to a woman from an African country, who has five children and is sharing a friend's flat until she can get her own council home. She has been here for three days, and is applying for benefits, and then going to see about schools for her children. The family have Dutch passports, as that is where they claimed asylum, have a home there, and were claiming the Dutch equivilent of Social Security benefits. So why has she come to this country? After much discussion with her friend, who is translating, I find out that she has fled domestic violence. What I don't see is why it was necessary to flee so far. Could she not have gone somewhere else in the Netherlands? This question seems impossible for the friend to translate, so I produce the HRT form, and the three of us set about filling it in. Now can she have a letter from me stating that she is on benefits to enable her children to get free school meals? I tell her that she is not on benefits yet, (and if I have my way, she never will be) and she and her friend march off together to the local council. The friend is the same one with whom she is sharing a flat, and I think she is rather keen to get her and her children into their own place. The Chinese have a saying: 'Guests, like fish, begin to stink after three days,' and I think that is very well put. I wonder if the reason she has come here has anything to do with the fact that the Dutch expect you to do some work if you are on benefit there for any length of time?

Next comes a young woman who has a bandage over her left eye and the left side of her head. When I ask her what has happened, she tells me that she had an argument with a pellet gun. What did the police say? Oh, she didn't bother to call them, she and her boyfriend have made it up now, and he won't do it again. Being fory-something, I don't have much contact with young people except when I am at work, for which I am devoutly thankful.

A social worker rings, (they are as much of a pain as the average solicitor). She is ringing on behalf of a woman with eight children, who made a claim for benefit three weeks ago, and has not yet been paid. When checking, I find that the woman has previously made fraudulent claims, such as claiming for herself and eight children, when five of them are in her country of origin with her husband. No benefit is to be paid to her, until a visiting officer has been to her home, and seen all the children and all their passports, at the same time. A visiting officer is due to visit the house in three days time. I tell the social worker this, and she wants to know how the woman is going to keep herself and her children until benefit is paid. I am tempted to reply that she could always try being honest, but think I had better not. Social workers hane a nasty habit of ringing managers and making complaints. I enjoy saying that I am only obliged to answer questions about the benefits we pay.

My next interview is with a forty five year old man who has been made redundant from his job in a warehouse where he has worked for nearly thirty years. I do have a vacancy for a warehouse manager, but he lacks the self confidence to apply for it (his words), and goes off to an interview for a hospital porter job.