‘People know we are on their side’: advisers help those locked out of welfare

Left to right: CA Bolton advisers Carol McLoughlin, Gemma Walsh and Emma Davies, who help people who are not entitled to public funds. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

It was three months ago that Samaira Riffat and her daughter, Eman, decided to start sleeping in the lounge of their two-bedroom terrace house in Bolton. “We can’t afford to heat more than one room,” said 21-year-old Eman on Thursday. “So, we moved a bed downstairs for mum, and I sleep on the sofa.”

Their situation is, in the call centre worker’s own words, desperate. Both bedrooms have extreme damp and rat droppings have been found in the kitchen cupboards. In December, a burglar broke in – and left with nothing. “What could he have taken?” asked Eman. “Our secondhand air-fryer?”