Among families struggling to make ends meet, there’s an uneasy sense that the people who can least afford it are being forced to bear the brunt of the nation’s financial woes.

As the impact statement of the government’s welfare cuts was released – revealing tens of thousands of children will be tipped into poverty – at a community centre in Wolverhampton, families shared their frustration that sick and disabled people will be those who lose out.

“It’s for people that need extra help because they’re ill, so why would they target that? I’m confused,” said Melissa.

A former carer, she’s currently pregnant, and says she’d love to go back to work and hasn’t been able to since her older children were born – due to the cost of childcare.

Melissa believes the government’s aim of encouraging more people into work is “a good thing, it’s what they need”. But she questions where the jobs are for people who’ve been out of work and may struggle due to illness.

“It’s okay saying they’re making cuts, but how are they going to help get people back in work by making them cuts?” she asks.

Philippa agrees. “It’s always a certain section of the community that gets targeted and it’s always those are on low incomes,” she says.

Now a grandmother, but still a few years away from retirement, Philippa recently applied for the disability benefit PIP – personal independence payment – due to diabetes and related health problems.

She was rejected but intends to appeal – and says she feels targeted by the government’s cuts.

“My son’s got disability living allowance, which means I can become his carer and that’s the opt out of getting a job”, she says, adding “I’ve never had to look into ways of avoidance”.

The cuts to welfare target the rapidly growing cost to the public purse of sickness and disability benefits.

The bill currently stands at £65bn a year and has ballooned since the pandemic, fuelled by a large increase in claims from young people with mental illness.

The measures are designed to remove some of the disincentives to work within the system.

Currently, people signed off sick can get double the amount job seekers receive in benefits.

However, they risk losing the extra money if they do get a job.

Stephanie Leo is a senior community support worker in Wolverhampton and believes some people are put off looking for work because they worry about losing their benefits.

“If you could still work on certain benefits that would be more impressive,” she says.

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Winston Lindsay, 57, struggles to walk due to a range of conditions, including spondylosis that affects his spine.

He used to be a social worker but now runs a voluntary organisation in Wolverhampton supporting people with disabilities.

He uses his PIP payments to cover the basics, but says he already struggles to get by, and worries that if his benefits are reduced, it will have a “major impact” that will force him to restrict how much food he buys, and how often he puts the heating on at home.

“We’re going have to wrap up and wear more clothes”, he says. “I’m just glad it’s summer at the moment – with the winter that’s going to be the worst period.”

The government’s aim is that more people currently in receipt of benefits go out and seek work.

Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation, told Sky News that it may happen.

“These measures will mean that they will face an increasing need to engage with employment support services.

“The problem here is whether they’ll be able to be connected to the appropriate kinds of work”, he says.

He believes the risk is that people “get pushed into inappropriate kinds of employment”.

“That in the end, makes their condition worse, and it makes their long-term employment prospects worse as well”, he adds.

As Rachel Reeves made her spring statement, opposition to the spending cuts was being spelt out on the ground in her constituency, literally.

The voters of Leeds West and Pudsey sent the chancellor to Westminster with a majority of 12,000 last summer, support she perhaps can no longer take for granted after rewriting spending plans to meet self-imposed rules she can never have intended to break.

In appropriately seasonal sunshine, disability campaigners gathered in the shadow of gold and silver cladding of the city’s John Lewis.

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On the pavement, one wrote in chalk, “Welfare not warfare”, expressing the disbelief some have at benefits being cut as defence spending goes up.

The chancellor’s cuts are a little more short term than that, a means of balancing the books that may have satisfied the OBR but left campaigners furious.

The cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP) are particularly unpopular. The government’s narrative is that cutting these benefits will help push people back to work.

Campaigners like Flick Williams, a wheelchair user, point out PIP is unrelated to employment.

She thinks she will lose at least £100 a week under new assessment rules, with devastating implications.

“I don’t know how we will survive, I absolutely have no idea because I don’t have any luxuries as it is,” she says.

“The whole point of personal independence payment is to fund the additional costs you have for being a disabled person,” adds Ms Williams.

“So, for example, disability equipment like my power chair, it’s extremely expensive. I have a bigger electricity bill because I have to charge my wheelchairs. I have a bath lift which also needs charging, and this equipment wears out.

“The government’s got a funny idea about what incentivises people because, honestly, nobody was ever motivated to go to work or increase their productivity by being pushed into penury.”

‘Everyone hit by cost-of-living crisis’

Welfare recipients are at the sharp end of the spending cuts, but they are not the only ones squeezed by the cost of living.

At the Pudsey Community Project, they see the impact of in-work financial stress, too.

Based in a community hall serving 20,000 households across two wards, they have been operating for five years and have seldom been busier.

The project offers a food bank and food pantry, a contributory scheme where people pay for subsidised goods, along with youth activities, lunch clubs for the elderly and lonely, and a busy clothes exchange.

Children insist on growing, even if the economy does not.

Director Richard Dimery says demand is steadily growing and senses that need has become entrenched, with the impact of the pandemic compounded by the cost of living.

“I don’t know anybody who’s not been affected by the cost of living crisis,” he says.

“We’ve all become a lot more used to things not necessarily getting a lot better. There haven’t been any quantum leaps of significant improvement, just ongoing costs, a lot of them above inflation.

“One of the reasons our pantry, our food bank, our children’s clothes are all six days a week are because we know a lot of the people we’re supporting are in work, either part-time or full-time.”

Economic growth would solve a lot of the chancellor’s problems, never mind the country’s.

For that, companies like WDS Components need to thrive.

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Employing 50 people with an annual turnover of around £10m a year, it manufactures myriad parts used in production lines and finished goods.

They stock more than 40,000 lines, from handles and hinges to hydraulics, casters and clamps, in what marketing director Mark Moody calls “an engineers’ candy store”.

Like every other employer, it faces rising costs from higher employment taxes that kick in next week.

It’s the latest in a long line of challenges that has made growth and expansion a tougher proposition.

“Considering we’ve had a pandemic, we’ve had Brexit, global supply chain issues, the Suez Canal and a few wars, we’re doing okay. We’re holding our own with good, modest organic growth, and we’re trying to stay positive,” he says.

“As we try to manage our business, if we’re constantly mitigating increases in costs and the pressures around us, then we’re not as focused on driving the business in really exciting, innovative ways.”

Police say a newborn baby found dead outside a church in west London was discovered in a black M&S bag.

Metropolitan Police said officers and the ambulance service were called to the end of Talbot Road, in Notting Hill, at 12.46pm on Tuesday.

The baby boy, who was found outside All Saints’ Church, was declared dead at the scene.

Superintendent Owen Renowden described the case as “shocking and tragic” as he gave an update on Wednesday morning.

He said they were “really worried” about the mother’s wellbeing “as she will have recently given birth”.

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Mr Renowden said: “I know she will likely be feeling very frightened and going through an extremely difficult time.

“If you are the baby’s mother and you see this today, I want to appeal directly to you to come forward and receive help, my priority is to help you, to make sure that you can receive medical assistance.”

He added she can get assistance anytime by attending any hospital, police station or by calling emergency services.

He also appealed to anyone who may have information to come forward.

They can call 101 or make an online report quoting reference 1879 and today’s (26/3) date.