{"id":386735,"date":"2026-04-19T03:39:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T03:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/386735\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T03:39:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T03:39:07","slug":"fuel-costs-i-cant-afford-to-go-to-work-says-home-care-worker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/386735\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuel costs: I can&#8217;t afford to go to work, says home care worker"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On Thursday, Stormont ministers approved a support package which means that households with a total income of \u00a330,000 or less or those on certain benefits will receive a \u00a3100 payment to go towards their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cd9vv3y1n8vo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">home heating oil<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The communities minister said the payment will be available during the summer at the earliest. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Speaking on Radio Ulster, Gordon Lyons said: &#8220;I understand this is not enough, I understand that this will take time, but we have limited levers at our disposal, we&#8217;re trying our best.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Brewer is not eligible to apply, but said &#8220;it would help&#8221; if he could.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said he has spoken to many of his coworkers who feel like &#8220;our backs are against the wall&#8221; and feel &#8220;scared to turn their heating on&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They&#8217;re trying to make it last because they don&#8217;t know if they&#8217;re going to be able to get to work with their fuel. And they&#8217;re skimping and scraping in the house, with their food even.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said: &#8220;I&#8217;ve heard actually a few this morning tell me they&#8217;re double layering in the house and not turning on their heat just so they can afford their fuel just to go to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday, Stormont ministers approved a support package which means that households with a total income of \u00a330,000&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-386735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}