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?

I usually don't like to accuse people of being stupid, but bloody hell, that was an incredibly stupid question.

Some abusive people get (a woman) pregnant accidentally. Some have kids for the express purpose of abusing them. It really doesn't require many brain cells to work out.

Tory’s cut lots of early interventions and support. They also cut lots of council provision. Which has led to a need of (more expensive) fire fighting interventions further down the line and private companies charging a fortune for things that were traditionally government / council provision.

Abusive parents usually wouldn’t consider themselves abusive. They’re shit parents, who are usually behaving in the same way their own shit parents did. They often don’t know they’re shit. My DM was an alcoholic and I was in care from the age of 12. To this day, she would be up in arms if anyone criticised her parenting. To her, she was a wonderful mother, despite the fact that we were starving, she never played with us, took any interest in us at all, we were always dirty, had no decent clothes, never had a holiday/days out and I was forced to raise my brothers and take care of all their needs.

Abuse isn’t the only reason for children going into care. They may be neglected. They may have parents with an illness or disability which prevents them from caring for the child, despite their bests efforts. The child may have a complex disability or severe behavioural problems and the parents can’t manage. I’m sure these scenarios are just as common as evil parents who deliberately abuse their children.

your dm sounds mentally unwell. was she ever diagnosed? where was the rest of your family?

Yes, she has a catalogue of diagnosed psychiatric conditions as a result of being raped by her father from the age of three. She was taken into care in her teens too (a convent/catholic laundry back in those days). Her whole family was severely damaged by him. She went on to marry my Dad, who was a violent narcissist who social services deemed unsafe to look after us (he’d once held my brother and I hostage at knifepoint and threatened to kill us when my DM told him she was leaving him), so we went into foster care (different foster homes, me to one and my brothers to another).

So OP, what is your solution?

This has to be the most tone deaf thing I’ve read today. Yes, in years gone by women did tend to stay in the home, cooking cleaning and raising the kids etc.

Now. Let’s ignore all the reasons why this is not something to aspire to (unless you want to be a stay at home mum/housewife - I’m talking about the expectation to do it just because you’re a woman), people simply can’t afford to do this now! My parents in law met at university. Father in law got a good job as an accountant on leaving and worked his way up. Mother in law has never worked. His wage was enough to fund a home, threee kids, one holiday abroad a year, a car, and a lady to help with the ironing (lol). For their generation, this was pretty much standard. If you went to university you could expect a good job on leaving and wages were enough to meet the cost of living comfortably. House prices were lower etc etc etc. the reason there aren’t so many women staying home to raise the family in this day and age is because one wage is simply not enough to pay for all of it!!!!

Because people feel entitled to having kids, even when it's clear they don't actually want to be parents.

Having kids and being parents are definitely two different things these days. Sadly. It's glaring apparently in our primary school which children are which....

Yeah, I think the bigger question here is whether it is really more cost effective, and better quality care, now that all of it has been monetized.

As opposed to having a percentage of the adult population available to manage important ant social functions like child and infant care, elder care, and also to a significant extent what used to be the labour force of volunteer organisations.

It looks like there is more cash circulating on paper, when all that work is being accounted for in the GDP. It also puts more money in the pockets of big business who take their cut.

But I suspect it isn't actually more value for society, and in a lot of cases the care is worse and less attuned to the needs of the community.

OP, your standard of punctuation is so variable between posts. It's very intriguing. For example, in this thread alone, you've gone from flawless implementation of em dashes to forgetting to use full stops.

Certainly the tax burden when we move from the current three tax payers to one pensioner becomes two tax payers to one pensioner over the next 30 yra will make outsourcing the care of the elderly and vulnerable to the state completely unfeasible.

The LA has a legal responsibility to provide education to all children, fwiw. Most are extremely adept at evading that responsibility. Easy to criticise when you’re not a SEN parent.

I thought that the point the poster was making.

You've jumped the shark with this comment.

non means tested state pension is taking a big ol chunk of it

The social care bill is massive and there are a lot of private companies making a huge amount at the tax payers expense!

My disabled adult child’s care costs social care £7000 a week!! If I gave up work to care for him myself I would get £79 a week carers allowance only so I can’t afford to do so. If they gave families an amount they could live off to care for their relatives more people would, but most of us can’t afford to do so.

About a decade ago there was an explosion in articles about different standards of childcare from eastern European countries and the UK.
Unfortunately this meant that more children from ee were removed or went into care.
Remember the recent riots sparked off because a child was removed. I also remember something about some Lithuanian people up north having issues.
There were articles about the UK becoming the pied piper of Europe.
How are newcomers supposed to know or understand our legal baselines on how to feast children?
One thing to consider
Obviously most ee treat children well but if for some it's normal to do xyz in their homeland... How would they know until a neighbour sees them for school reports in.

I think that aspect has calmed down now but it all adds to the pot and takes from the pot.
Google it plenty of info out there

*treat not feast

You would be stunned I tell you stunned, at the cost of a placing a child in a residential placement, sometimes (often) on their own, in a 3/4 bed detached house. Teenagers. Going missing regularly. £10-20k PER WEEK. Kids too far gone for foster care (foster carers can’t manage them). When they go missing they often commit serious crimes and end up in young offenders prisons. That might be cheaper to keep them, I don’t know.

At that age, and if that is going on, you might as well skip this stage, and just put them in prison.

They don’t want to be in the placement, they want to be out with their mates, free to commit crime.

It costs a FORTUNE and someone (the agency who owns the home) makes a tidy profit from it. From our tax payments.

These families, generations now of not working are all over, certainly in the North where I am.

Kid after kid, dragged up in the gutter as we used to say. Parents claiming state benefits (and always with top ups for disabilities with the kids) drinking alcohol, taking drugs, costing a fortune for social services and the courts to be involved.

I see what money they have coming in. Massive amounts. Example. £3700 per month (rent and council tax already paid. 4 kids and the mother all claiming disability top ups for disabilities - autism/ADHD etc. Still not enough, still asks social services for money for furniture. Kids still not bathed. What are they doing with this money? Gambling, drinking, drugs. And those of us paying tax are all paying for them to sit at home and do bog all.

There are LOADS like this.

No shame/embarrasment anymore, no desire to work.

@Jamesblonde2 evidence for this?
Although again I read somewhere years ago problem families cost us an absolute fortune.

Unfortunately private care homes seem to be failing these kids don't they, we as a society fail them from very early on.

I will add, people need to stop being reliant on the state and take personal responsibility for whatever plate they are laid. We cannot afford it. The tax payer is sick of it. How many people is a high tax payer covering in benefits and taxi fares for children to school etc?!

Evidence is held with Children’s Services. Perhaps a FOI request by anyone who is interested.

This will be a controversial opinion, but I think some of this attitude starts with the idea that education of children is the responsibility of the state.

People have the idea, very deeply held and not often examined, that families are not responsible for education, and that everything necessary, including transport, should be free for all families.

It's also entwined with school as childcare. So even if a child is not in a position to benefit from institutional education (my niece for example) the state is seen as obligated to care for that child for 6 hours a so a day so parents can work.

It's a strong enough feeling that some people think that families paying for their own children's education should be taxed more for it!

I know quite a few heroin addicted ladies who have had 7+ children that they lose custody of as soon as born. I'm not sure what the solution is because their heads are too screwed from all the drugs to realise what they're doing is wrong.

Demographic changes also mean that not only do we have more older ppl but that increasingly greater numbers of them have no adult children to provide support/help. We also now have far more ‘beanpole’ families with more generations as ppl live longer but with smaller numbers in each generation so where ppl used to have say 3 or 4 children they now have 1 or 2 so not only are there more older ppl without children there are also fewer nieces and nephews