Kely’s story
Money worries and challenges with bosses are bad enough at the best of times. Add in a global pandemic, as Kely discovered, and the stress can make your hair fall out.
Despite having a teenage son with asthma, Kely felt her only choice was to continue to brave public transport each day to get to her cleaning job – where she was earning the London Living Wage. Her employers bluntly rejected her worries about travelling on public transport knowing that her son has asthma and refused to furlough her. Later they cut her hours without warning.
“They said I should leave if I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t do that when people are losing their jobs so I was caught between a rock and a hard place.
I was getting so worried that I wasn’t sleeping and I was losing weight. Even my hair started to fall out. My union was helping me and eventually I decided
that I would stop fighting them trying to sack me as long as I received redundancy money.”
The company even played hardball on that but eventually paid up. This still left Kely facing the challenges of unemployment when the UK was in the biggest recession since the 1920s.
After a few weeks Kely found new work, but she is working fewer hours and it only pays the minimum wage. Things are very tight and she has had to turn to her local foodbank to get by.
Ironically, that hit on her income is being felt even more now that society is opening up.
“It is great that the pandemic might be coming to an end and we can do things to take our mind off it all, but now I don’t have the money to do anything. Splurging for us is a new school shirt or trousers for my son. When I go food shopping I check the price tag on every single item.”
Throughout the pandemic Kely has found strength and comfort from being active in a Latin American community group, whose name translates as Empowering Families. Lambeth Citizens, part of Citizens UK also provided her son with a laptop and phone. This means he could take part in remote learning.
Having been trained by Citizens UK to lead small online consultation groups for South London Listens, Kely has participated in and led several – encouraging others to open up about their experiences.