Where are those people's families and where is my tax going?

[AmusedTaupePlayer]

Nearly 50% of my income vanishes in tax and NI, and I’m seriously wondering what I’m getting in return. The streets are filthy, the Tube’s a mess of delays and breakdowns, and my child’s school can’t even fix leaking ceilings.
GP appointments? Impossible. Police follow-ups? Hit and miss.
I asked my councillor, and he said most of the money’s going to social care — mainly for elderly people and kids in care. Fine, but it makes me ask: where are their families? Why is the state carrying so much, and why does it feel like we're footing the bill for a system that’s barely working?
I’m not trying to be cruel — just frustrated. Is anyone else getting the same response from their council? Or any better answers?

If kids are in care there will be a good reason. I wouldn't want kids to have to stay with abusive or neglectful parents. Enough do already.
Families won't be able to look after their elderly if they are working or they wouldn't cope with looking after them for some reason.
People are living longer than they used to. Life expectancy in the UK was 68-70 in the 50s. More people smoked etc.
Living a perfectly healthy life may mean you live a long time but end up with dementia and need full time care that a family can't cope with. Or you may get frail.
Elderly care is funded by house sales and/or tax payer.

Agree 100%. I'm all for helping out the needy with our taxes. But it currently feels that more people are 'needy' than not. There'll come a time when the majority will be relying in some form on the state, propped up by those of us working paying increased taxes. And the rich will have left the country leaving the middle of the road tax payers to pick up the burden.

Also the state pension has to go a lot further now than it did when life expectancy was 68-70.

Lots of the money is going straight out to private hands:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/18/child-care-cost-year-wealth-funds-councils-britain-residential

you can also substitute adult care homes for children’s in the article - story is similar in adult residential care.

When you read threads about people’s parents putting their houses in a trust, or signing ownership over to their kids in their 60s/70s, everyone accepts that as a sensible thing to do to avoid care costs.

The public paying for their eventual care is the result.

But what happened to those kids' parents? Why would abusive parents even breed?

Issue is more people taking out than paying in.
Your taxes and mine too are paying for those who don’t pay in and claim benefits.
The NHS is one massive tax burden.
I 100% get what you are saying.

Another thing that's different is that in the past, people with learning difficulties were chucked into asylums and given a very basic/poor standard of care. Now people are either paid carers allowance to look after family members or supported accomodation or residential care is used which has better ratios and care than the old asylums. This all costs more as it's a more acceptable standard of care.

Do you mean why aren’t the elderly staying with / being looked after by their families?

Well, for children in foster care, there is an obvious answer to your question of where their families are - they’re not safe for the child to stay with them, and presumably extended family can’t take them in either.

Regarding older people who need care, their families are probably unable to provide care because they’ve moved away (for work), or they are working/ raising children and can’t take on the full-time care of an elderly person. Should they quit their jobs to take care of their parents, and live off benefits?

With dementia, it eventually becomes impossible to keep an elderly person safe at home. My mum had to go into a care home because she’d started wandering out of the house while confused, and she was only getting worse. Care fees are means-tested, so she was paying for the carers who came in three times a day while she was still at home, then the family home was sold to pay care home fees.

And of course there are plenty of people who object to their parents having to pay care fees - you see posts on here with people asking how they can make sure their parents don’t have to sell the family home that they worked so hard to buy (and will provide an nice inheritance, if I’m being cynical).

So that’s your answer. I work in local government and social care (adult and children’s) takes up the majority of our council budget as well. All those newly-elected Reform councillors taking about slashing costs by getting rid of diversity officers and the like made me laugh - they so clearly had no idea of what the real costs are in council budgets.

This, the amount of money thrown at people who's only income is benefits in Scotland once they have kids is insane. Absolutely no incentive to work and be self supportive.

Maybe received crap/abusive parenting themselves or low IQ. I remember the mum of Star Hobson had a very low IQ and was suggestible enough to allow her partner to abuse Star.
There have always been abusive parents though and in the past not much would have been done to help the kids. Too many are left with abusive parents even now.

Ffs OP, “why would abusive parents even breed”. You are being ridiculous.

It's costly that we are living longer, but not much to be done about that other than retire later?

Well, now I think you’re just being goady. The basic answer is that ‘abusive parents breed’ because there’s nothing to stop them. For example, the government doesn’t make everyone have permanent contraception as soon as they reach puberty and insist you pass a test before it can be removed and you can have a child (a common idea in science fiction). And because we’re a civilised country that doesn’t want to see children starving, we provide benefits for those families to live on if they can’t / won’t work.

The more complex answer is probably to do with generational abuse and cycles of poverty, but I suspect you’re not interested in that.

My (adult) dsd’s care costs in excess of of £100k a year. That doesn’t include the pip, uc, housing element she’s entitled to.

We’d exchange every penny for her not to be severely disabled her whole life. Looking after her simply isn’t possible without 24/7 wrap around care and a modified home which her parents did but eventually you get too old, tired and quite frankly just had enough, it’s bloody hard. I alongside my husband do have her for a few days a year like Christmas to give the care team a break but means little sleep and constant stress

Yes is this what you think should be happening OP? Lots of people are trying to do this but its often unmanageable or even unsafe. Have you done this yourself?

Social care is needed to look after an ageing population. It's not the responsibility of families to care for elderly people - this isn't the 19th century!

Our local council sends a letter every year with the council tax bill (always increased, obviously) and it has a little pie chart showing where your money goes. Really wish they wouldn’t, it’s infuriating to see how little goes on the things that need done.

You’ve summed up what most people feel. I genuinely think people can swallow paying tax as long as they see some societal benefit. The pendulum has swung too far and too many are taking out and not putting in which in itself is unsustainable and causing a brain drain of people leaving this country - everyone is fed up. This ludicrous commitment to the NHS being free at the point of use is a case in point but politicians are too terrified to have that conversation.

The government/tax payer saves £1.3 million every time a child is adopted from care. So the government decides to cut the support for adopted children and families and there is a new expectation that adopted children will have ongoing contact with their birth families…unsupported by children’s services. Adoption numbers are plummeting resulting in many more children staying in care with poorer outcomes and costing a fortune. That’s just one example but I’m sure there are many more.

Why would abusive parents even breed?

Are you being deliberately goady or just naive and clueless? I suspect the former.

if you’re curious about where your taxes go then HMRC provide a yearly summary.
Overall I think the system is becoming unsustainable, but I doubt that foster care is a huge burden overall and I don’t begrudge a penny of that.

And here is part of the problem in a single post (though by no means all - politicians need to stop treating pensioners as a sacred cow. If their benefits are costing the country more than it can afford, that needs to be addressed).

No sense of duty or responsibility. All Me Me Me Me Me.

This chart from the Local Government Association shows how £1 of local government funding is spent on average. Local councils have had their budgets slashed since 2010 and this, combined with an aging/less healthy population and greater levels of need, means that a huge chunk of their budgets goes on social care. There is very little they can do about this as it’s a statutory requirement to provide this service.

It’s all very well saying ‘why aren’t their families caring for these people’, but the level of care needed often means this just isn’t possible (and often necessitates someone, usually a woman, giving up work to provide it).