Working families £18k worse off than benefits claimants after budget

@Bumblebee72

No one should be allowed to sit at home on their Xbox when there are veg to be picked.

I imagine it's this bit. It's been a while since I last visited London, but I don't remember seeing many veg farms last time I was there. Fruit pickers tend to live on site; that's why it is a popular job for migrants; they travel here to pick fruit for our season, then move on to the next country when our season ends.

The 25% figure does not mean all of those people classed as disabled claim benefits. Also, 45% are pension age.
The Equality Act also considers a diagnosis of cancer as a disability, and for the rest of your life. That is even if you are fully recovered and have no symptoms.

People are going to have to start contributing more to the cost of their parents care if they want to subcontract caring for family to the state.

What on earth has that response got to do with my post? Maybe walk away from Siri for a bit?

I didn't say there were loads of good carers, sadly the opposite seems to be the case. But I tell you what, the sums we are now forking over for a measly 2 hours' care a day for my mum, I'd be interested to know how much care company owners and senior staff generally are taking home. It's hard to believe they can only afford to pay carers NMW, that's all I'm going to say.

Siri show me someone who doesnt understand the rules of living in social housing.

Risk to Tenancy: A primary concern is that social housing tenants risk losing their homes if they live away for extended periods, as seasonal fruit-picking jobs often require living in caravans or on-site accommodation for weeks or months at a time.
Logistical Challenges: Many social housing tenants, particularly single parents, have family responsibilities and cannot easily relocate for a season. The logistics of moving a family to a farm, and what to do with their primary residence, are major obstacles.

And you sound like just the type of person who would report them for not living there.

And another reason this wouldnt work is because of frequent visit from HAs for repairs and surveys See @Frequency posts.

Of course it could always be achieved by giving social housing tenants more rights. Like the right to live away from home for any reason. Up for that are we? No? Thought not.

It would also involve HAs having to massively overhaul the way they do things.

Why can't it?

What people are failing to grasp is that it would cost the taxpayer even MORE if we forced Mums back into work. A mother with two kids pre school-age in my area, paying £1000 a month in private rent would get £1580.76 a month UC. I think we can all agree that would be a pitiful existence raising two children on £500 a month after rental costs for all bills, food and living costs.

If the same Mum worked 16 hours a week, she’d pay no tax. Assuming p/t childcare for both children was £600 for each, she would earn £880 a month in wages and get £2342.23 in UC. Total income after rent and childcare is £1022, so over £500 better off than not working.

If she worked full time, and the children were in full time nursery (£1200 a month each) she’d earn £2037 and pay £270 tax/NI. She’d get £2607.70 in UC and take home £1760 in wages. After rent and childcare she’d have £967 left to live on.

So not only is she worse off after childcare is paid than working part-time, it also costs the taxpayer more for her to go to work full-time.

I think we’d be cutting our noses off to spite our faces if we were to force mothers with young children into full time work. She would suffer, her children would suffer, and the taxpayer would suffer. But maybe some pps would be happy to pay extra taxes to support it just out of jealousy. And if they think someone is getting something they’re not, they can always stop work and try and run a home and raise 2 children on £500 a month.

My point is that there aren't enough people that want to be carers that would do it well. We as a society already have a massive shortage of carers and this will only get worse over the coming decades. Tweaking T&Cs and pay won't change that. We don't have the money as a society to drastically alter T&Cs or pay for carers. Lots of people can't pay for their own care at current cost levels. The state is crippled by debt and the last thing it can afford to fund is more expensive social care.

The reality now is that done is better than perfect when perfect is unachievable. We need to operate in the real world and vulnerable people need adequate care. Ideally of course it would be better than adequate but we need to set realistic goals and put in strong checks and measures otherwise we risk failing our vulnerable people completely with this idea that there are loads of good carers available to fill all these vacancies.

It doesn't surprise me. It makes sense to me that those who have a disabled child are more likely to claim UC because they will also be more likely to have a parent out of work due to caring responsibilities and are also more likely going to be on lower salaries due to likely working part time if it is possible for them to work.

That sounds a truly shocking figure. I read the other day 25% of people are now classed as disabled. This really cannot be true.

I couldn't do it well, and vulnerable people need and deserve carers who can do it well. Without going back over the whole thread I don't know if you yourself are in the care sector or if you mean 'we' in terms of society, so I'm unsure what point you're making here.

It’s not just the pay - it’s not nursing as such - your patients are not going to be restored to health.

In the pil’s nursing home for example there were just heaps of people with absolutely no capacity. Just sitting, being fed, being hoisted and needing to be changed. The carer profile was increasingly sub-Saharan men. I can’t imagine that they were loving the work but they were the ones prepared to do it.

Do some posters imagine that all care workers should be cheery capable kindly women bustling into work every morning and loved by one and all? In your dreams.

Try reading this = its by someone who knows how these things work

https://benefitsinthefuture.com/lies-damned-lies-and-the-telegraph/

I don't think it's a terms and conditions issue. People have used the analogy of hospitality and I think it's fair in terms of zero hour contracts, antisocial hours and low pay. There are still lots of people willing to work in the sector because it's intrinsically more desirable work. I would choose a job in a restaurant over a care home any day of the week. Most people would. That's the problem we have. The work is undesirable yet hugely in demand. We do need to effectively push people into the sector.

It was easy to sponsor someone from abroad to come and work in care in the UK. You didn't need any evidence that they were particularly good at the role or had a specific skillset. Since July rules have been tightened though so we will see where that takes us when we can no longer import our carers and need to rely on our own population to care for our vulnerable people. I still stand by the fact that nobody will do these undesirable jobs unless they are incentivised sufficiently. This will involve some carrot but also a lot of stick. It's too easy now just to choose to stay on benefits and not work.

I dont know if recruitment from abroad is easy. Its partly a bigger pool of people. Its the whole world! and some of the motivation is how far our currency goes back home, so we cant ever recreate that bit.

I do actually agree that if terms and conditions were much better, it would be a more desirable job and many people are capable of it, but I cant see how to achieve this cheaply.

I’ve read time and time again on this site women having multiple children with an obvious feckwit of a father and to be honest they should know better. But that said relationships do break down and fathers then wander off and shrug off their financial responsibilities. The government should be using some of these increased taxes to sort this issue out because the lack of financial support from the father is then landing on the taxpayer who is having to step into the de facto parental role. In many cases the reason why children are in poverty is because the fathers don’t pay up but it is the taxpayer who get the brunt of people’s anger when it is them who actually step up.

It should be, but you know its not. We can punish women and children for men's short givings but id rather not.

We simply have to hope that the father is at least paying tax to contribute a bit to his own children. They say men contribute much more tax that women overall, so perhaps the good men are subsidising the rubbish ones they can sort it out amongst themselves.

This is why I say that most people could do it but most wouldn't enjoy it. That's why we have a staff shortage but why you recruitment from abroad isn't that difficult. If it was a rare set of skills then it would be difficult to find people no matter where you looked. If it was a matter of motivation then it obviously is easier and that's what we are seeing with the apparent 'success' of foreign recruitment

A lot of roles only offer part-time work because it is beneficial to them. My friend owns a local shop, and she will only take people on part-time. She doesn't have enough hours available to have 2 full-time staff and 1 part-time; instead, she has 3 part-time staff and one ad-hoc/cover worker.

If she had two full-time staff, what happens is that when one of them wants two weeks' holiday, the other one has to work 7 am-11 pm 7 days a week, and she found most people can't do that because they have a life/family/care commitments outside of work. Small businesses have that very valid reason for only employing part-time/zero hours workers, but the likes of Asda and Tesco, who also do the same thing because it suits them to have more workers on fewer hours, don't have that excuse.

My mum enjoyed care work but it is a real mix of skills. You need a strong stomach and you need to not mind being abused verbally. You see upsetting things, so staff need support to help process those things as well.

Imaging in some settings where you build professional but warm relations with families and clients, like a teacher does, but all your clients die with 2 to 5 years Its quite tough!

I do agree zero hours contracts should be banned as they are totally unfair for workers

The answer to that would be where’s the father? He should look after the kids. The taxpayer is not the de facto parent

It's similar in a way to DH's job in hospitality. Next week, he'll be working 60 hours but come January? His work will likely be closed 2 days a week due to how quiet it becomes and then around March, it will slowly start to pick up again and eventually will go back to regular hours.

He stays because he likes the job but also because shift work suits our family well and it's fairly flexible (just not in December).

40% of families impacted by the two child cap has someone with a disability within them. They therefore are eligible for uncapped benefits.