“When we save this many lives, something is going very wrong with the welfare system,” says Jacky Everard. She and her staff are not nurses, doctors or counsellors, but their role, she says, is increasingly about easing desperate clients back from the brink of suicide.

Everard, the chief executive of the Hastings Advice and Representation Centre (Harc), compiled a client report in the summer which found that, out of 100 clients surveyed, seven said they would have killed themselves without the charity’s help.

The report is an upsetting read, Everard accepts, but she is also upset. She has been a social security benefits adviser for 40 years and never witnessed such despair and unremitting crisis.

Everard’s staff are trained to help people claim benefits, but clients routinely arrive at Harc’s office in a converted church in a fragile mental state. Their distress is caused or made worse by a welfare system that bullies and humiliates them, and leaves them destitute, she says.

Increasingly, the job of advisers is not just to sort out money or housing problems, but to offer clients hope and emotional support.

Or, as Everard puts it, to light their path back from the edge. This is new. Six years ago, none of the clients they surveyed mentioned suicide.

“That we need to save this many lives, keep this many people from total despair, is a perverse incentive of recent welfare reforms,” Everard wrote in the foreword to the survey. “No one should be pushed to the brink of suicide by the welfare system set up to support them in times of sickness and need.”

Everard sent the report to her MP, Amber Rudd, in July. Last week, Rudd became work and pensions secretary following the resignation of Esther McVey, and she is now in charge of the benefits system. Hastings, says Everard, is a good place to find out exactly what is going wrong with welfare.

Located on the south-east coast of England, Hastings is a mix of faded Victorian elegance and grim poverty. There is some affluence, driven in part by “down from London” arrivals who are helping fuel a thriving cultural scene. But there is also extreme deprivation. Unemployment is high. Housing insecurity and homelessness is endemic, and rough sleeping is rising.

Universal credit, the government’s flagship change to the welfare system – wrapping six benefits into one monthly payment – came early to Hastings in late 2016. Its arrival was soon felt by the local food bank, where demand shot up by 80% virtually overnight. With its 35-day inbuilt payment delays and baffling rules, universal credit rapidly pushed vulnerable claimants into crisis.

One of Rudd’s first acts as work and pensions secretary was to acknowledge there were problems with universal credit, which has been eight years in the making and is six years behind schedule. Her mission, she said, was to fix it and deliver a “fair, compassionate and efficient” benefits system.

That is easier said than done. Tracy Maietta, 40, describes being trapped in an endless cycle of assessments to qualify for personal independence payments, a benefit awarded to help chronically ill and disabled people meet the extra costs of living, as “hell”.

Maietta, a former housing officer, had to retire when a cluster of health conditions made work impossible. Despite a 500-page folder of medical evidence attesting to her incapacity, the private assessors hired by the Department for Work and Pensions repeatedly turned down her applications.

She appealed successfully each time. “At the last tribunal, I put the 249 pills I have to take daily into a tub and held it up. I didn’t know how else to show them,” she says. Her experience has been one of indignity, humiliation and endless hostility. “I feel judged constantly. I’m not saying I want people to look after me, but I do want someone to show empathy,” she adds.

Another Harc client, Laura, in her late 30s, fights back tears as she describes her experience of universal credit. A collapse put her in hospital, where she nearly died after contracting sepsis. Laura was a successful businesswoman before becoming ill. She is physically fragile and, to her bitter frustration, cannot work.

“I’m a fighter, I never ask for help. And then when you do, and to be stamped on [by the benefits system] …” Laura says. “The system is so fragmented. Nothing connects.”

What advice would she give Rudd? “There is no a simple tick-box solution. Remember we are human beings.”

The leader of Hastings borough council, Peter Chowney, says universal credit austerity cuts have led to increased homelessness in the town. Chowney stood for Labour against Rudd in the 2017 general election. Her majority was 346. About 10,000 voters are expected to move on to universal credit from next year, he notes.

Everard welcomed a report into UK poverty last week by the UN rapporteur Philip Alston, who described the “misery” of an increasingly remote and punitive benefits system. Rudd called his report “highly inappropriate”, but Everard disagrees. “He recognised our truth. What he said is happening,” she says.

Maietta says the benefits system needs more than technical fixes and has to be more humane and understanding of people’s lives. “The people at the top don’t realise it isn’t working,” she says. “It’s just two separate worlds. They just do not live anywhere near our world. They don’t know what it is like to go to a food bank.”

A DWP spokesperson said: “No one has to face hardship with universal credit, and advances of up to 100% of the first payment are available for people who need extra support. The vast majority of universal credit recipients are happy managing their money, and we’ve announced a £39m partnership with Citizens Advice to support vulnerable people with their claims.

“Other benefits, such as personal independence payments, are available for people with mental and physical health conditions to help with additional costs. PIP assessments are done with all available evidence provided by the claimant, including notes from their GP or health professional.”

• In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.