Another effect of austerity, Rhona Cunningham adds, is that the benefit system has become “increasingly punitive”. Universal Credit, which replaced six benefits with a single monthly payment, was rolled out to Fife in 2017, a fundamental change that affected the way Fife Gingerbread supported pregnant teenagers through its teen parent project. Staff went from helping young mothers be good parents to counselling teenagers left without money from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) for five weeks. “The workers were frustrated because they couldn’t tell the parents it would be all right, because they didn’t know it was going to be all right,” Rhona says. “They didn’t know if six weeks were going to turn into seven weeks, eight weeks, nine weeks, 10 weeks. “They didn’t know how long they were going to be caught in this hellhole basically. It’s what it was. So we had teens at home with new babies and no money.”
Billy Briggs, ''There Is No Safety Net': How Austerity Has Hit One Of Scotland's Poorest Communities', Huffington Post
