I’ve been writing about benefit sanctions for years but I thought that I’d write a timely reminder of the harmful affects that imposed sanctions cause.

Here’s a list including and not excluding others:

Harm to mental health
Harm to relationships
Increased debt and reliance on credit cards and loans
Food poverty and fuel poverty
Survival crime
Increased risk of domestic violence

Also increased risk of homelessness, suicide and harm to physical health.

Not to mention that being sanctioned has a large detrimental effect on actually being able to actively look for work.

When a person is cold and hungry their priority becomes keeping warm and survival which doesn’t leave much time for job searching.

Combined with the cost of living and energy crisis it’s a complete nightmare. Already people are struggling financially with the ever increasing cost of living and energy costs. Combine this with being financially sanctioned will push even more into destitution and poverty.

Benefit sanctions have been and will continue to be one of the main reasons why there’s been a huge increase of foodbanks and people that are reliant upon them. Whilst they do help Foodbanks often offer short term support only whilst sanctions can last for months.

Where do they get food from if they’ve already had their allowed amount from a foodbank? Thankfully many do offer continued support but many don’t.

This unfortunately leads to survival crime, shoplifting food and other essentials.

We also can’t forget the distress that living with the constant threat of sanctions has upon claimants. Being forced to live with extreme levels of anxiety and stress causes a huge increase of people having mental illnesses of which it’s hard to get professional support for.

Sadly as sanctions are yet again on the increase all the above will be exasperated by the constant attack upon working class people by the government, and demonized in theright wing press.

The only way to hopefully stop this is to have a change of government and the future government listening to and acting upon these issues.

We need to continue to talk about benefit sanctions and the damage that they do. No one should have their very means of survival taken away from them by those that have plenty.