Whole families on UC, PIP, DLA and carers' allowance for each other?

Will you be getting your DC sterilized to make sure they don't have DC of their own?

SEN kids are spat out the other end as adults with no support other than PIP.

How should we treat these adults?. I wonder if you will be so judgemental when your DC are in their 30s & 40s & struggling in the way you despise & judge so much?

How would you want staff & other parents to treat them at their own DC school?

It's not flawed, and takes a severe lack of imagination to believe disabled people can't help each other. It's entirely possible to have one person who can do ABC and not XYZ and a second person who is able to do XYZ but can't do ABC, and have them muddle through together.

I'm deaf, my late OH was blind. He'd do my phone calls for me, I'd help him with letters where the text was too small.

He needed oxygen tanks to leave the house, so I'd carry spares on the back of my wheelchair, and he'd pass me medication from the back of the chair as I needed it.

He'd help me wash my hair and back in the shower, and I'd help him with shaving.

He had an eating disorder and needed to be prompted into eating a well balanced meal, but I was unable to cook (kitchen just not set up for my chair) so I'd do all the meal planning and shopping and instruct him on what to make so we both ate.

He would keep track of when I'd taken my pain meds so I didn't accidentally overdose, and I'd make sure he ate a big enough snack with his meds that caused bowel damage if taken without food.

Anything we both couldn't do we had outside help for but our daily routine was splitting tasks into "who can do this one" and we muddled through together.

This is so sad. I wonder what age kids are when they realise they’re in a problematic environment, if there’s a window to help them see that they don’t have to follow the same path, before it’s too late for them to break out of that cycle?
It would doubtless be way younger than the age these issues are covered currently in PSHE lessons as by say 13-15 many of these kids will already be detached and disengaged from learning, have solidified their behaviour patterns and on the same path.
Or is it just so difficult to help kids break the cycle when their parents and home environment are basically their entire world when they’re young?
Like the plot of Matilda - she sees it from so young and disengages from her parents to read etc by herself but that’s so unlikely IRL.

There are so many claimants now that it’s very difficult for it to be addressed by any government. People are not going to bite the hand that feeds them. They will fight tooth and nail to retain their set up, and governments face th3 reality of being voted out if they try to address the issue, because so many people take advantage of the system. Any party that addresses the issue of Welfare, Immigration and the untouchable NHS gets my vote.

Vouchers are going to cost more to administer. And why can't I as a disabled person decide what the best use of my money is?

This is very true. My parents are both disabled but were listed as each others carer. My sister and her partner with the same disabilities have done the same thing! It adds more money to the household pot.

I'm not saying I disagree but then you have the problem with parents having children when they can afford them and then their situation changes through no fault of their own (becoming a single parent, giving /p/p work because of disability / carer, etc)

I think it’s a generational thinng that impacts how they see education. I come from a family who are all disabled but could work. They struggled to find work or it never lasted long because they have learning difficulties as well as a shared disability. They are all on long term benefits. I do not share the disability gene. When I got Bs in my GCSEs my parents didn’t congratulate me. They stared at me blankly when I told them I was going to college. They were unhappy when I went to university because it was a “waste of time”. When I got a well paid job and bought a house they seemed genuinely surprised! They truly didn’t understand that education can lead to well paid jobs and buying a home.
i have encouraged my children to do well and plan ahead education wise, because I know it matters. One of my siblings actually said to me that she wouldn’t get out of bed as early as me for a salary. I thought she was stupid and far too comfortable on her benefits. Her £4,000 per month on benefits made her ignorant to the real world in terms of minimum wage and living in a budget. She has no rent or council tax to pay. She is comfortable in her little bubble. She has made 4 children who all have the same disability therefore PIP. She doesn’t care about their education at all. Her only concern is if they’ll get a council house in the future as it’s more difficult now! I would prefer to see the disability benefits overhauled. Instead of giving them money, to give them access to things they need e.g a voucher book to pay for interpreters for deaf people, another voucher book to a taxi service or mobility car for physically disabled people, a carer for people who need it. Not cash thrown at them. My sister gets £4,000 per month from benefits and everyone’s PIP combined. That’s £48,000 per year. Many disabled people I knew through the family did work at the local sure start centre run by the government for disabled workers only. The government closed all of them down back in 2000s to save money, putting millions of disabled workers out a job. The disability benefits needs an overhaul and those factories need to open up again.

This is ridiculous. You’re manufacturing a rare set up to justify. I’m sure this may be a situation, but very rare.

So you work on a SEN primarybschool but some of the children dont have an EHCP ??

Agree. Too many taking from the pot and not enough putting in. Plain to see that the pot will be pretty much empty soon. Help should be available for those who need it the most, but too many jumping on the benefits gravy train. There is so much abuse of the system. Just because enough fraud investigators aren’t there to investigate, it doesnt mean fraud and abuse isn’t happening. It’s obvious that Burnham isn’t going to address the Welfare bill, but will just continue to increase taxes to subsidise it.

I agree - so many busy working people would love more than 2 kids but have to accept practicalities of what they can manage in terms of costs and available time due to work. Providing child benefits for 3+ kids is not an essential use of scarce public money.

"Nuanced" discussion = poster produces compelling evidence of an issue, demonstrating it exists and is a widespread pattern. An example might be, that children of long term benefits claimants have poorer outcomes or that there is a high instance of food poverty amongst benefits claimants.
Discussion follows that considers all options to address the problem.

"Benefit Bashing" = poster regales us with an anecdote about negative behaviour of people on benefits and extrapolates, without evidence, that it is a widespread behavioural pattern amongst benefit claimants, the cause of which is the welfare benefits system, and that the resolution is to cut benefits.

Similar here I have one parent with dementia and another with poor mobility they work as a team.

Claiming DLA for my son is putting him first so we can repair our house after he has broken things yet again.

That would be great and as a society we should be supporting people to do this. We are talking about families though where the parents possibly had a poor upbringing themselves, or have combinations of learning difficulties/neurodiversity/mental health problems. The support that would be needed to get to where you say they should be, just isn't available, so the only thing we can do is make sure they have money and are not homeless.
How do you prevent it?

Go and read about life before benefits.

This is quite judgemental even if its unintentionally so. What is your point? It comes across a bit like you thought you would be able to transform a major social issue with your superior outlook. People and conplicated.

Learned helplessness. I think there are a lot of families like this, where staff bend over backwards to help (my own primary school for example). However I do worry about them once their children leave as for a lot of these children they do have to go to mainstream due to lack of funding and due to the way our school do so much for the children as well as the parents I don't think this then is helpful for the wider world where that help then stops or they need to be more aware of how to get it themselves (e.g. we have school staff who might help families by physically taking them to food banks, citizens advice, making phone calls on their behalf and so on. While they might now know the services that are available, for some they lack the confidence to go alone or for others who don't drive they don't want to go by foot or ask about delivery for food).
I don't really know what the solution is though to help certain groups who seem reliant on others.

I think that anyone that gets stuck in some kind of a rut long term is going to struggle to get out of it. The job market is crap and I completely agree that the increasing complexity in job seeking and traditionally unskilled work is a huge problem. I'm cynical about how we can get more people in work whilst this is the case.

It isn't just working though is it? The way the family works is often completely dysfunctional, unhealthy and not conducive to raising happy and well rounded children. Even if you can't find paid employment, you can be valuable to society, especially as a parent. You can raise your children in the best possible way that you can and you can volunteer your time to organisations that are crying out for people. There are always ways you can contribute and not be a complete leach.

You have stereotyped ridiculously here.

You definitely can! Think of it like this, one person is physically disabled and needs help with physical things like cleaning, shopping, getting about. The other might be ASD or similar, physically able to assist their partner, child, relative but needs help with other aspects of life like managing money, taking medication, help with socialising. So they can be each others carers.

I agree, also the vast majority of those available jobs will be taken by people moving from one job to another, or by young people coming into the workforce without any disabilities or difficulties, so it's never going to happen that there is a job for everyone.

You do realise that being on benefits isn't some legally protected characteristic? People can have opinions about different groups on benefits, their entitlement and whether benefits are currently facilitating the type of society most of us want. All of this is fair to debate, especially when ultimately lots of us are paying for the benefits in the first place.

So MN doesn't have to take down or even moderate threads or posts that are critical of the benefit system itself or groups on it. People are allowed to share their experiences of how benefits have enabled people to effectively check out of society and to some extent personal responsibility. Does this mean this is true for everyone on benefits? Of course it doesn't, but we can have nuanced discussions like we do on a host of other subjects. Crying 'benefit bashing' and insisting that this means that the topic is illegitimate doesn't work.