THIS week I heard something very disturbing.

I campaign against benefit sanctions outside my local jobcentre, and have become known to many of the claimants.

One of them contacted me on Tuesday. She was very upset.

She had attended the jobcentre for her signing-on appointment and was confronted with something totally unexpected.

She began talking to her adviser or job coach as they call them now. I don’t know why because they don’t coach you into anything except desperation.

She’s been attending a mandatory work-related course and had completed all her job searches correctly.

Despite this the atmosphere of the meeting suddenly changed.

The adviser suggested to her that she should be willing to get involved with a trial that they are running at Tameside Council.

They are asking single parents to be assigned a social worker and a key worker so they could keep an eye on her.

The reason for this? They said she hadn’t been doing enough to look for work.

This is shocking enough. Women have a raw deal of it in society, especially single parents.

They have borne the brunt of changes in government legislation and it looks like it is happening again.

It’s all part of what is known as the Troubled Families Wave 2 Joint Investment Agreement. On the surface, this seems like a good idea — an attempt to help families. Until you read further. And read I have done.

The council has approved a new investment agreement approach to working with a minimum of 1,750 families.

This is its target figure. It has to reach this target.

The government provides a fee, called the attachment fee, which is £1,000 per family.

Encouraging the local authority to engage with families, it then provides a result fee, which is £800 per family, which is provided by the government to an agency that is working with that family.

This agency, it has been decided, will be a local housing trust called New Charter Homes. They did not allow any other outside agency to apply and they made a special exemption for this.

They have also created new positions within the jobcentre. They are called troubled families employment advisers and Tameside Council has employed two of these.

It is classing single parents who aren’t in full-time employment as “troubled families” and if they agree to comply with this scheme they will be watched and monitored by social services and a social services case worker until they find employment.

Because they are classed as unemployed and most likely in debt they will be classed as troubled.

They will have to undergo “interventions,” either themselves or a family member will have to attend a voluntary placement, undergoing training to improve their skill levels and placements that will last for 13 consecutive weeks.

I must stress that they will be monitored continuously and will be dragged into meetings. There is no statement for a minimum age of the children either.

You are also expected to reduce your debt. How can you do this when the money that you do get just about enables you to survive?

You are expected to make a measurable increase in your household income. You’ve got to be seen to be reducing your debt. Again, impossible.

You’ve got to be seen to be able to sustain your housing and to make a positive move into more sustainable housing. You’ve got to show improved budgeting skills. How are you supposed to do this when you have no money? 

If you manage to pass all these measures then they will take you a step down from intensive intervention but you will still be monitored.

This is wrong on all levels, but Tameside Council has refused to comment. This is supposed to be a trial, but I’ve never known them to withdraw a DWP trial and I believe that this will become compulsory in the next year or so.

Classing all single parents as troubled families is very wrong and is discrimination at its worst.

As a single parent myself I find this very scary indeed. Being forced to comply with these rules will be impossible for most. Poverty already controls the people that this will affect.

Who decided that this should be allowed in my local town? One councillor, the executive director of governance, the executive director of finance and the DWP.

Our recent jobcentre protest was interesting. I don’t know if it was the weather but we had quite a bit of hostility from passers by.

A couple of women made a point of walking over to us to inform us that unemployed people shouldn’t have a rent top-up or financial help. They should get a job, they said.

They also said that unemployed people would rather starve than get a job.

But on talking to them, we found out that these two women were selling electricity on a zero-hours contract on commission only.

They had mortgages to pay, they said, adding that it wasn’t fair that they had to work while others don’t.

We explained to them that most of these people have fallen on hard times, which could very likely happen to them too as they are in the most precarious of jobs.

They seemed to be under the impression that unemployed people get hundreds of pounds in their hands — which we know to be untrue and we corrected them.

A disabled woman standing with us got quite upset. She’s living on only £114 a week for two people and is paying the bedroom tax and council tax supplement.

We told the two women that they deserved a better quality of employment.

No-one deserves to be walking the streets all day for a few quid. I hope that they listened.

It did make me think though. People are too easily influenced by television programmes like Benefits Street and Benefits Estate.

Make no mistake, I feel that these programmes are deliberate — turning the poor on the poor while distracting from the destruction of this country that they seem to be doing a very good job of doing.

We need to educate people more, tell them that being poor is no joke. It really is a matter of survival.

•  Charlotte Hughes blogs at thepoorsideoflife.wordpress.com.