Amy left home aged 13 and didn't have much security growing up. But she is doing her best to provide it now for her eight-year-old son - albeit on long-term sickness benefits. Chatting to her in her flat in Keighley, outside Bradford, she has made her home into an well-kept oasis of stability in a run-down estate. 

Spending the day with the Ch4 film crew, she struggled to walk to the park with her stick and had with her X-rays of her pelvis which has had extensive reconstruction work. "I am in pain all day, every day," she says. "I do suffer with mental health issues as well. CPTSD, anxiety and depression and things like that." There is no doubt that she's in no position to do full-time work.

But she would like to do some work, as is evident by the courses she took and qualifications she secured. Eloquent and thoughtful, she is training to be a counsellor. Aged 30, she has never held a full-time job. But with the right support, she believes that she could make her way to work. "The issue is finding something that I'll be able to do consistently," she says. "Without making my son suffer and myself suffer and losing money." 

What she says next cuts to the heart of it: a belief that she is trapped by the system. "If I went and got a job tomorrow, everything I get would stop from today. Which would then mean that my rent, everything would stop. And then I've got letters coming through the door in the next two weeks telling me that my rent's stopped, and I owe this, I owe that. Where does that leave my eight year old?"

She said that, after tax, she'd need to earn ~£35,000 a year to replicate the package she is on now - about £10,000 more than the average salary in Keighley. She believes she has little chance of earning that. 

Amy is making decisions not just for herself but for her son, who she wants to have a better home and greater opportunities than she did. In her position, would I swap for security that she has now with the more precarious world of low paid work? I'm not sure that I would. And that, in a nutshell, is the welfare trap.

In fact, the system offers her the chance to work up to 16 hours a week without penalty. But anyone who does move into work does risk reassessment - which is enough of a deterrent. 

This was a feature throughout the film: a feeling that finding work would be dangerous, even (for a single mother) reckless. We would check on our case studies, with advisers and researchers on hand; it took us two or three days to get a serious answer. It left me wondering how those on sickness benefit are expected to navigate the system with any confidence. 

This, of course, complicates reform. If a new system is developed with better incentives, can it be communicated in a way that those affected will trust and understand?  The lack of one-to-one coaching, the write-cheque-and-forget system leaves people feeling abandoned, helpless and fearful of trying to get their life back in the right direction.