The challenge
To reach intersectional communities to understand the current state of the nation when political rhetoric is demonising people who need the support of the welfare system.
What we did
107 participants across East London, North London and South East England included disabled people, unpaid carers, migrants and refugees, asylum seekers, working-class communities experiencing digital exclusion, and people with long-term health conditions. Over half were women. 41% identified as disabled. 30% had migrant or refugee experience. Many spoke languages other than English at home, including Somali and Sylheti. Methods: People Street's community-led methodology is trust-based, accessible, grounded in lived experience, using established social networks and community researchers who shared linguistic, cultural and lived-experience connections with participants. No commercial panels. Weekly research sprints over four weeks, with structured reflection and debrief built in due to the emotionally difficult nature of the material. An intersectional recruitment approach recognised that exclusion is shaped by disability, literacy, digital confidence, language, postcode, employment and caring responsibilities, not just ethnicity.
The outcome
Five themes emerged. Identity and life circumstances: criminal records, illness, caring responsibilities, homelessness, domestic violence shaped every interaction with the benefits system before people even met a form. The system was structurally inaccessible: complex paperwork, digital-by-default processes, language barriers and rigid compliance rules disproportionately penalised those with limited English, dyslexia or low digital confidence. Interactions were consistently experienced as undignified, suspicious and damaging to mental health. Digital exclusion intensified inequality: 89% owned smartphones but only 35% were digitally confident, a gap invisible to systems that conflate the two. And despite strong desire to work, an inflexible employment landscape made paid work feel risky and unattainable for those managing health conditions, caring responsibilities or benefit taper fears. The research demonstrates People Street's capacity to conduct trauma-informed, intersectional, community-led engagement that surfaces nuanced evidence from communities systematically excluded from policy-making.
In partnership with UCL · July 2025