For beneficiaries Natalie Langford and her partner Kelvin, this month's primary unpleasantness will be the formal loss of their ten-month-old daughter. She was taken away from them just after she was born, and will shortly be adopted out by social services. Such are the joys of life as a junkie, says Natalie.

'So, my daughter was taken off me and I never get to see her again. I only get photos,' Natalie says. 'I won't see her now until she is 16 and [if she] wants contact. I was nicked for shoplifting (just after the baby was born) and I was taken to Holloway for two months. They didn't give me a chance to look after the baby. All I have is letterbox contact now, because I was on methadone. I stopped taking drugs and everything. I was trying to go into detox, but I couldn't get into detox, because they didn't have funding and all that shit, so like, it weren't happening. So, my daughter was taken off me and I never get to see her again.'

It is a story that calls, Kelvin says, for a drink. He and Natalie and five or six of their friends are already working their way through a pile of cans. They're drinking at the top end of Deptford High Street. They all look pretty horrific. Natalie is only 35 and she is personable, eloquent and political, but you'd be pushing the romance if you said she was something to look at. She's got thinning hair, bleached-looking irises and the pale, pimply skin of a user. Her skin is so inflamed in places that her face looks misshapen. Kelvin, who says he's ex-Army, could be anywhere between 35 and 60. He's grey-haired and sallow, and also has the faded eyes.

Regarding the baby: they say they wonder if social services got the wrong end of the stick, because of the nature of the baby's birth. Kelvin delivered the baby himself, round at a friend's house.

'I'm not going to go graphic on you, but I pulled her [Natalie's] trousers down, and [Natalie's] only gone like that [he leans forward] and the baby came out and I thought wow, and she's opened her little eyes… and then in their [social services'] report it was like, the baby shot out and slid along the floor, and that we endangered her life... listen, I know my daughter. She was born into my hands, so that means something. She came out and opened her eyes, and I tell you what, I cried my eyes out. Then, they take her off of me and I don't like it. Ten months old, she is. I can't see how they got her so early… They didn't give us a fucking chance.'

'We weren't even allowed to leave the hospital,' Natalie says. 'I had to be escorted to have a fag because they thought I was going to kidnap the baby.'

'They said 'if you take the baby away, you'll be arrested on sight,'' Kelvin says.

'Then, they take the baby away from me and five minutes later, I'm in handcuffs at the hospital and then in prison for eight weeks for shoplifting,' Natalie says. 'They wouldn't give me a house [when she was pregnant, either]. [They wouldn't give me a house] because I didn't have a birth certificate. I was eight months pregnant and I was sleeping in stairwells and all sorts. Christmas night, I slept behind the Deptford Church Centre you know, freezing cold, snow and everything. And now, it took me from then till now to get a hostel. [She's living in a hostel in New Cross]. I'm still not allowed visitors, because they accuse me of supplying and buying drugs. Nobody's allowed to visit me.'

Kelvin tries to visit her in the hostel, though. Nobody else he knows has to ask permission to spend time with their partner, he says, so why should he?

'They found him in the wardrobe once,' Natalie laughs.

'You got to laugh,' Kelvin says. 'One day, somebody grassed us up and they opened the wardrobe and I was in there stark naked with my phone and fags. I went 'All right, mate?' and he went 'Yeah, come on, get out,' and he threw us out.' He laughs.

The problem, Natalie says, is fairness. She says they treat her too harshly at the hostel. 'If I do anything wrong, they will take me back to court and get a real ASBO on me. I got a 28-day warning [from the hostel] just for sitting outside the hostel with a can in my hand. [Meanwhile], there's other people that walk round that hostel playing with themselves…'

'…stark naked, playing with theirselves,' Kelvin says. 'Promise ya. Tony Blair, he ain't seen nothing, mate…'

'…he wants to come and live in that hostel for a week,' Natalie says.

'…you've got a bird standing there stark naked with her fingers up herself... ' Kelvin says.

'…she can do what she wants,' Natalie says. 'It's out of order. [That woman] causes trouble every day. Every day she's acting up... most of the people working there [at the hostel] are black. They don't even know your name.'

Both Natalie and Kelvin think that foreigners are the problem: they take the few council houses that are available and they get support that Natalie and Kelvin don't. They both stand up to look down Deptford High Street, to see if some of the worst offenders are out and about. 'Too many fucking foreigners in here,' Natalie says furiously. 'They get all the houses - everything. They get all the priority – everything. I go there [to the council] when I'm pregnant and I get fucked off [sic]. They go there, and [they] say 'I can't talk any English' and they get four-bedroom houses. Me and him, we have to sleep in stairwells, and I'm pregnant, and it's fucking bollocks.'

'I can't get a job no more,' Kelvin says. 'Look at the amount of Poles and Romanians. Walk down there by the traffic lights,' he says, pointing to the Deptford Broadway/Brookmill Road intersection, which is about 100 metres down the road. 'There will be about 15 Romanian birds there, doing [cleaning car] windscreens.'

'You've got all these Romanians, walking around trying to sell like false gold,' Natalie says. Kelvin lifts his hand up, to show off a ring that he bought from one Romanian woman just this morning. 'Somebody come up to us this morning and wanted 50 quid for that. They took £1.50 in the end. They think we're all divs in this country.'

'She [the Romanian woman who sold Kelvin the ring] used to walk down with a baby in her arms,' Natalie says. 'It weren't even a baby. It were a doll. She would be saying 'pound, pound, pound,' and putting her hand out. And she's getting her social money, and she's probably got a four-bedroom house. How much money is she getting each week?'

'I saw them talking to a black woman the other day,' Kelvin says. 'She give them 50 quid…'

'…they were [basically] just putting their hands into her purse and helping themselves to her money,' Natalie says.

'… and when that Nigerian woman's got home that night with that bracelet and that ring she bought, I bet [her husband's] hit her around the house. Those Nigerians, they hit their women. I'm sorry to say it, but they do. They clap them all about the house. [That woman] would have said [to her husband] 'look love, look at what I got...' and he would have been like - Bang.'

'We need normal people running the country,' Natalie says. 'Not people who have been brought up with silver spoons in their mouth - public schools and all that shit. How can they know what it's like? They want to sit out here and see what it's like. I have £40 a week to live on - how the fuck is anyone supposed to live on £40 a week? When my grandad was alive, he was getting more than me. I had two kids, then (she had her first baby when she was 15). I know he fought the war and all that, but he got £100 more than me.'

'I used to love England,' Kelvin says. 'I really loved it.'

'I'd like to do a job if I was capable of doing it,' Natalie says, 'but while I'm on the methadone and all that, I have to go there daily and collect it, and that prevents me from doing anything, really. I have to go there at 1pm every day and take my methadone, so I can't do nothing, really. I can sew and I like computers, but they never give you a chance. They don't give a shit about you. They think that you're a dirty, lowlife cunt.'