Now struggling families have a no-deal Brexit to add to their worries | Frances Ryan

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Austerity and low wages are bad enough for many people before no deal costs households up to £1,000 a year

Before things changed, Nikki and her family were what you might call “comfortable”. Her husband, Ian, worked in sales for a phone company and Nikki as a pattern cutter and grader for high-end high street stores, taking in a joint income of £60,000. Soon their family grew to five: with a son, Lennon, the eldest child, and two little girls. Then Lennon got sick, with a long list of complex, undiagnosed disabilities, blindness, hearing loss, and eventually multi-organ failure, and both had to quit work to take on caring as their new full-time jobs. “Our little soldier,” Nikki, 37, calls him.

A patchwork of social security helped the family get by: from housing benefit to help paying the rent on their council house, which was specially adapted for Lennon’s wheelchair, to carer’s allowance for Nikki, disability benefits for Lennon, and tax credits. Ian worked part-time when he could.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2onncuR

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