Good afternoon. Welcome back to Survival Guide. Isabella here, senior reporter at the Big Issue.

I was lucky enough to recently be invited along to shadow a grassroots project feeding people sleeping rough in London. It has to be one of the best food initiatives I’ve covered – Dean Collins is a professional chef and his piping hot, cheesy beef lasagne would tempt anyone.

But our night took a worrying turn when we were stopped outside King’s Cross station, which has never happened to the team before. They believe it’s because the government is ramping up its drive to criminalise homelessness.

Also in this week’s newsletter, journalist Charlotte Elton meets Clare Randall – a cancer patient who has to work from hospital during treatment or risk falling into poverty. 

Plus, read to the end for tips on turning your stuff into cash from money-making expert, pawnbroker and This Morning regular Dan Hatfield.

If you have a story to share, we want to listen. Get in touch at isabella.mcrae@bigissue.com or share your story here.

Claire’s story: ‘I’d like this unjust system fixed’

When Clare Randall was diagnosed with cancer, she needed chemotherapy and a bone marrow stem cell transplant. But the 55-year-old couldn’t afford to take time off work.

She was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma for the second time in 2019. But “ridiculously low” sick pay meant she couldn’t take time off to heal.

“I’d like this unjust system fixed so that no one else has to go through what I did,” she says.

Clare is far from alone. Around 250,000 workers living with cancer are left struggling to cover essential bills, according to the Centre for Progressive Change.

Read Clare’s story.

In case you missed it

Are we headed for a low-turnout general election? Why poverty and mistrust mean voters staying home. May's mayoral elections and this year's by-elections saw low voter turnout. Will the upcoming general election will go the same way? Get the lowdown.

'Real change is essential': Our blueprint for change shows how Sunak and Starmer can end poverty for good. Big Issue founder Lord John Bird has warned leaders of today and tomorrow that failing to act now to prevent poverty would be ‘catastrophic’. Read more.

Applying for DWP benefits is 'soul-destroying' and 'unnecessarily difficult', study finds. Charity Turn2us is calling on the DWP to 'get the system working' and make benefits more accessible for people struggling financially. Here’s the story.

There's a chronic shortage of social housing. Here's how the government can begin to fix it. Around 90,000 social rent homes are needed every year to plug England’s social housing shortages, according to MPs. Read about it.

World War 3, climate crisis, benefit cuts… Here's how to process the news when it feels hopeless. With the increase of digital media and the 24/7 nature of the news cycle, people are exposed to a constant stream of information. Get expert tips.

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This chef walks the streets of London serving piping hot lasagne to rough sleepers: 'We won't stop coming'

“I don’t know what we’re going to see tonight,” Raj Singh said as he briefed his team of volunteers for the night. “No idea. There are different moods and different levels of mental health that we’re going to encounter.”

Five of us gathered in central London, just across the road from Euston railway station, alongside a trolley stacked with piping hot beef lasagne, vegetable curry, rice pudding and homemade jam, all freshly made by professional chef Dean Collins.

The pair walk the streets of the capital at night with a few volunteers and offer hot meals to homeless people who are sleeping rough.

It is a project run by Dean called Feeding Communities, which was set up during the pandemic and has provided tens of thousands of freshly-prepared meals and food parcels to vulnerable people across the UK, as part of the Thomas Franks Foundation.

“Our mantra is just turn up,” Raj, who is the director of the charity, said. “Even if we can help one person, that’s something, but of course it’s never just one person.”

This is a wonderful project which is genuinely helping people – but then we were stopped outside King’s Cross station. 

Read about my night shadowing Feeding Communities here.

Saving those coins: Dan Hatfield's top tips for making money

Money-making expert and TV pawnbroker Dan Hatfield spoke to the Big Issue about his top tips for bagging yourself some cash.

“Brits have around £48bn of unwanted items collecting dust,” he told me. “I’m sure you’ve got something in your home that you’ve wondered the value of. That could be anything from a kitchen gadget right through to a 90s toy or old CDs or DVDs.

“Everything has an intrinsic value. We throw away hundreds of thousands of tonnes of stuff that goes into landfill every year. And the only thing that is doing is being detrimental to our environment. If you want some extra cash, the first thing to do is not to try to be Richard Branson or Bill Gates but to look at yourself and what you’ve got and start with the basics.”

Read my Q&A with Dan here.