It’s 2014 and blowing a hoolie. I rush into an echoey old church. It’s cold but the single mums are friendly. A steel urn puffs steam up to the ornate rafters. I relent and accept a smiley face biscuit. Angela is taut as she rattles out her story. She doesn’t mind looking for jobs – it’s what she’s doing anyway. It’s the near miss with a sanction she’s angry about. The injustice burns. It was six months ago but still fresh in her mind.

On the day, Angela phoned and told her work coach that she couldn’t come in because she had to stay at home with her 11-year-old daughter who was recovering from a bull-terrier attack outside their door the night before. Angela wasn’t sanctioned but she felt scarred by it. She needed flexibility and empathy from her work coach. What she actually got was a stern warning that if something like that happened again her benefits would get cut.

Angela is 34. She’s a lone parent with three kids, 6, 11 and 13. Her narrow escape from sanctions is intensely emotive. The bottom line for women in her position is that “you can’t always [work] as a mother, you’ve got to make sure your little one’s fine”.

Angela used to work at a call centre but finds it difficult to balance a job with looking after her kids. The second time we speak to her, Angela is working part-time for a call centre but on a self-employed basis. A year later, she has moved off Jobseeker’s Allowance onto Employment and Support Allowance Support Group because the stress worsened her asthma and depression. She now volunteers as ‘permitted work’ in a charity shop two days per week.

Introduction

Angela’s brush with the sanctions system came at a traumatic time and had long-lasting negative impacts. Many women in the study feared or experienced sanctions during very difficult times in their lives.