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In this episode, Megi talks about Hackney council forwarding another family's very personal information to her husband's email address. Megi has an autistic daughter. She talked about the family's housing problems in episode 5. The information that the council accidentally forwarded to Megi's husband contained very sensitive details about another family entirely. It had their names and contact details, children's names, bank details and details of abuse and fostering. Why do these...

In this episode, we return to Latoya. Latoya was featured in the first episode of this podcast. She has an incredibly active 7-year-old autistic son who runs, climbs to incredible heights, barely sleeps and just about never stops. Latoya also has a 4-year-old daughter who is also very likely autistic. She has just been referred for assessment. She is also very active and copies her brother. The family lives in a second-floor council flat, which the boy (and possibly th...

In this interlude episode, I ring (and record) letting agents to ask if they accept people who pay rent with benefits like universal credit. You'll hear what the letting agents say. It is actually unlawful for letting agents to say No to people who claim benefits, but that doesn't stop them keeping benefit claimants out, as you'll hear. Most letting agents are smart enough to sound very welcoming and to say that of course you can register with them, but then they say - we don't have any...

Megi has an 8 year old daughter with autism. Megi talks about her daughter and the family's housing issues in this episode. She also takes us on a rollercoaster ride (some cracking downhill bits) through the 5 years that she's spent getting absolutely nowhere in her attempts to get her family rehoused. Megi's daughter is non verbal, not toilet trained and very active and strong. She generally only sleeps for an hour or two a night. She also has serious meltdowns. Their...

Total circus here. Niki talks about the 2.5 years it took to get on the Hackney council housing waiting list. She has a 6 year old son who is autistic. He attends a SEND school in Hackney. The family lives in a very small, one-bedroom private rental which has damp, mould and rodents. Needless to say, the family is keen to get out of there.Niki also speaks of her concerns about the security of her family's personal documents after Hackney council's systems were torpedoed by a cyberattack. She ...

Millennium politicians like to say that getting benefits, housing and support is too easy for too many people. Au contraire. In this episode, Niki talks about the ways that trying to get that help takes over your life. Niki has a young autistic son, a tiny, rented one-bedroom flat for her family's four members (the landlord wants to raise the rent) and an almost full-time (unpaid) job wrangling the benefits and housing systems for support. Easy it is not. -------------...

The podcast heads to Hackney council to ask to speak to someone about Latoya's desperation for a swap to a home when her son won't get injured.The council shows this podcast the door - though we absolutely refuse to leave. We are staying until someone from the council or the ruling Labour group gives an interview.Also - a few lines about how outfits like councils and government departments such as the department of work and pensions use press statements to blatantly lie about the services the...

Latoya is the mother of a 7 year old boy who has autism. The boy is heading for calamity in the family's present home, which everyone who sees him, including professionals, understands within five minutes of watching him. Will Hackney council help the family find a safer place to live? Answer at the moment is probably no, given that Hackney council refuses to even talk about it. They need to have a quiet think about that, because we will be back. My word. Music: In the First World. Original w...