How do we know the extra welfare payments for multiple children will be spent on the children .

[hattie43]

A genuine question really . I don’t begrudge the children and I’ll save my irk for the parents but how do we know the extra money will be used to support the children in the right way giving them a better start and turning them into these honerable citizens. It worries me that the kids with feckless parents are going to be given much more money but the parents spend it on themselves not the kids . Just because these parents have more money doesn’t mean they’ll use it responsibly or change the attitudes they may pass down .

The sad thing is we don’t, and you’ll be flamed for even mentioning it.

You don't. It will go into the family finance pot and be spent accordingly.

Well exactly.

Unless someone is a seriously neglectful parent to the extreme that they starve their children, then it's highly likely it will just go into the family pot and go towards household expenses.

I see it like this. Last month I received about £173 in child benefit. Last month I spent £170 on weight loss injections. I'm sure some tabloid would love the headline "mum spends child benefit on fat jabs". But last month I also bought school shoes, trainers for my ds, a coat for my ds and spent hundreds of pounds on food for them.

You don’t. Some families will use it for the good of their kids. Some will treat kids poorly and make their own lives a little easier.

I work in an ancillary sector and my experience is that the majority of parents do put their kids first, often to their own detriment. And those who really piss (any) money away have additional problems which need separate, targeted support and intervention.

You dont and some wont.

My aunt works in oldham in a primary school. During covid they initially gave the parents asda vouchers etc in lieu of free school meals.
Parents were selling them at half face value for cash so in the emd they had to hand deliver lunches so the children had food.

Some people are fucking disgraceful.

No shade on oldham btw. It's a demographic problem not geographic.

You can’t know & some will not spend it on their dc but the vast majority of parents do care about their dc, even the “feckless” ones.

Maybe less of them will need to go to a foodbank? Maybe it will give parents enough money to feed themselves better too? Maybe they'll be able to afford more fresh fruit? So many dreadful outcomes....🙄

We don't.

Honestly in the 2000s and first part of the 2010s a big family was lucrative. It wasn’t so much people ‘had’ children for the benefits but there was certainly no incentive at all not to have them. Now, amongst a falling birth rate I guess we need that incentive back.

There is still the benefit cap. So lifting the two child limit will only really benefit working families who claim.

Because the evidence shows that child poverty deteriorated sharply soon after the two child limit came in.

Not one country in the world has managed to reverse birth rates once they are below replacement rate, this policy will certainly not do it.

Really?

I'd assume for a strong economy you would want to encourage net contributors to breed and continue to discourage net recipients as statistically it will yield more future net contributors.

We’ve created a dysgenic environment

@SalmonOnFinnCrisp you think previous generations only saw net contributors breeding?!

We don’t, but it gives them a chance and most will spend it on family expenses. If we can get to a position where we don’t have the shameful levels of child poverty we currently have then there is far more opportunity for services to be able to intervene/support where there are genuinely needed and can have an impact.

It's not hard to feed yourself well ffs, it's not oliver twist out there. Rice beans eggs and some cheap fruit is more than affordable while you're struggling and much cheaper than the slop most struggling people feed their kids on. You know for a fact that money isn't going on fresh berries and greens in 95% of cases and if you say otherwise you're playing dense.

We have made housing so prohibitively expensive and not invested in young people and young families that surprisingly lots of them don’t feel they can afford dc.

Just like the pensioners winter fuel allowance...no one knows how the money will actually be spent.

That's not the whole story. It’s always going to be in the interests of those in power to maintain a mass of casual and cheap labour.

Does anyone ask this question about child benefit which most families receive? Perhaps we should replace that with some vouchers that can only be spent on school shoes and vegetables?

Or is it only poor families that everyone assumes to be feckless?

We should not want to keep seeing an increase in child poverty.

@blastfurnace do they ask it about Attendance Allowance, pension credit?

Obviously you don’t. Just like you don’t know if rich families neglect their children (they do, just as much as ‘poor’ families)

The ‘deserving poor’ rhetoric runs right through this shitty thread. Just when you think Dickens writing goes out of date this bollocks rises again.

In one of the early Adrian Mole books, Adrian’s mother admits to spending family allowance on gin and cigarettes. If social services hear about it, she will get done!

We don’t want government monitored purchases, though: otherwise it might have been “here’s your furlough money after we stole your income, but woe betide you if you kill grannies by spending it on Easter eggs, while we put champers in suitcases for the parties which the biggest liar the world has ever known will swear on the bible did not happen.”