MY CHILD AND ME THROWN HOMELESS ONTO STREETS BY SOCIAL SERVICES

email to my MP dated August 1st 2011

My thirteen year old son and I have been deliberately made homeless and thrown out onto the streets today by Social Services.  There was no warning whatever. Both of us will be sleeping in a shop doorway or similar tonight or certainly by tomorrow night.

My local Council illegally  & wrongly described me as ‘intentionally homeless’ after I was evicted from my home in March this year by a vicious sub-prime mortgage lender (Lehmans Bros subsidiary SPML).

This meant the Council could deny they had any legal obligations under law to re-house my son & I. They had announced about three years ago they intended to do this and describe me as ‘intentionally homeless’ . It seemed obvious to me the Council official concerned was being deliberately spiteful for some unknown reason.

Frankly, they seemed to me to be sadists who had an opportunity to ‘get at’ a professional ‘middle class’ person and kick the hell out of him by the inappropriate exercise of the power they had over me. There is simply no other way of putting it. They seemed to be making that very clear to me – although of course they will deny that.

Without any meaningful warning I was therefore consequently thrown out of the B&B the Council had originally put me in immediately after I had been evicted .

The Council then told me to contact Social Services who now had a legal duty to ensure my child was adequately housed and not homeless & on the streets.

Social Services duly housed my son & me in bed & breakfast accommodation for five weeks until today, August 1st, constantly telling me various arrangements to obtain permanent accommodation would be pursued, including my legal appeal against the wrongful  & illegal behaviour of the Council who had wrongfully ‘dumped’ me on social services instead of fulfilling their legal obligation  of re-housing as statute clearly states.

But today, August 1st 2011, with no warning at all, not even just one hour, I am told by Social Services that they are no longer funding Bed & Breakfast  accommodation for my son & me and I must leave it with immediate effect. They told me to go and ask ‘one of my son’s friends to put him up’ – presumably expecting me to sleep on the streets !

I have spent the entire day (Aug 1st) telephoning Social Services, being roundly abused by them and with them putting the phone down on me with every call for no reason other than they did not want to hear me asking them how I was expected to find and pay for or otherwise find accommodation when I have no means of any kind to do so.

I informed them repeatedly that I did not know a single person who would be able to accommodate my son & I and their constant response to this was to repeat to me their demand that I simply perform a conjuring trick and ‘go and find my own accommodation today’ by ‘asking someone to put my son up’.

This is why they always put the telephone down on  me so they could avoid further discussion. They were completely, unbelievably,  abusive. It was extra-ordinary and surreal talking to them.

They made various threats to me, the principle one being they expected me to properly look after my son and that meant providing accommodation for him & if I could not do that then they would take him into care.

The implication was that they were threatening me  with their intention to place my son in care when they had evidence of him being homeless on the streets with me, despite the fact it would be a situation of their own deliberate making.

My son has already informed them he will  not allow himself to be so wantonly and wrongly parted from me or taken into care without any proper justification when he is of the opinion Social Services have simply taken leave of their senses.

I need   legal advice which I cannot get at all as all my attempts to find a lawyer have resulted in the same result of me being told the legal aid system is so derelict that it is no longer possible to get legally aided for ‘civil cases’, although dead  easy for criminal issues. Many actual solicitors themselves have told me this.

Another bit of spite the council have come up with is their announcement they intend ‘disposing of all my possessions’ which they announced they had ‘seized’ from the storage they had been placed in.

So my whole life time of domestic and personal chattels and possessions are being effectively stolen by my local Council. Some have already  been stolen during the eviction process.

The whole thing is an incredible story and frankly, almost defies belief. But it is all absolutely true.

Just to help in putting all this in perspective, I am  sixty three years old, a single parent with sole care of my son , and all my possessions are being viciously trashed by the council, leaving me with nothing. No photos etc of my kids, no mementos of my sixty three years alive, and no domestic goods necessary for functionality when I am eventually properly accommodated in my own home – no nothing –  because these wicked council vandals tell me they have ‘seized’ them and intend ‘disposing’ of them just because they want to do so.

You couldn’t really make all this up, could you ?

This is not really a story about me at all but about the utterly venal behaviour of the local council and subsequently social services. It simply takes my breath away.

I have  focussed only on the current issue and left out the fact I was also conned mercilessly by  a Housing Association who fraudulently dreamt up £27 000 of imaginary works required for my house to be of a standard acceptable for the government mortgage rescue scheme which I had been accepted for.

The specific  purpose of  the housing association dreaming up a false list of repairs with very, very inflated costings was specifically to give them the excuse my house was too ‘expensive’ to accept for the rescue scheme.

This was a provable lie and I was told by the rescue scheme administrator that it was just because the housing association were dreaming up an excuse to refuse me the scheme simply because they no longer had any funding. The full details are just more pure shock horror venal bureaucrats at work, breaking the law and making up their own rules as they go along.

If the housing association had done what the government intended and completed the mortgage rescue scheme process, I would not have been made homeless at all. My homelessness is a direct product of the housing association fraudulent maladministration inflicted on me.

Tags: bureaucracy, child poverty, Children, family, Homelessness, Single parents, Social Services