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 .

I don't know and I don't care. I'm not getting caught up in who 'deserves' benefits. No one can live a life of luxury on them exactly.

You don’t. I teach in a school with a high level of deprivation. I see it daily. Children neglected and the social to overloaded to intervene. Children turning up unclean, unfed and lacking in basic care. No shortage of fillers, tattoos, booze and drugs for the parents. The only reason I am still where I am is because I worry for these children. We do all we can. These parents can’t even be bothered to turn up for the free breakfast club.

Extra money will technically get children out of poverty on a spreadsheet. That will make Labour supporters feel good. It won’t actually do anything. If they actually cared about these children they’d divert the money to schools and the community.

We could say the same about the child benefit that most parents get.

Good grief!
Fresh berries indeed!

Did the story go on that Pauline gave Adrian his family allowance and he could not, in fact, feed and clothe himself on it, or have I invented that - it's ages since I read the book.

@HeatonGrov A brutal but truthful response. I am one of the 1 in a 100 that made it out of a chaotic feckless family and became a net contributor. I have had relatives in prison and they have always been recipients. The cap should not be lifted and ant held needs to be supervised directly to the child.

Labours tinkering will only encourage the rise of reform, which I don’t welcome.

We don’t. This is why many European countries now don’t pay child food related costs as money but as boxes of food.

We are encouraging the wrong people to have children.

Families who have multiple children AND live on benefits are way more likely to produce children who will grow up and live on benefits.

We need to encourage middle and high earners to have children as they are more likely to produce children who will be actual tax payers.

You are spot on. It is a stupid thing to do just appease the backbenchers looney bunch. Basically, money blown out and next time around we will have the same poverty and will be asked for more.

This was a political decision more to do with internal Labour wrangling. Andy Burnham is being touted as a successor to Keir. He was an advocate of ending the two child cap. Some in the party are manovering themselves by supporting Andy B's stance. The new Deputy voted in being one.
So RR capitulated and gave in. And hopes to save Keir and her skin in doing so. Nothing to do with children really.

The quickest way to lift a child out of poverty is to give their parents more money. There will always be dysfunctional families which is why there are social services, the vast majority of families are doing their best with what they have.

The thing mumsnet will not accept, is it isn’t just money that is a problem with families in poverty. The vast vast majority also have a lack of education, and a lack of personal capacity. For example, I often see a mum drinking cans of monster at 8.30am on the school run (which is late for drop off), with her child looking scruffy as her face isn’t wiped, hair not brushed and eating a bag of crisps for breakfast. Mum is unemployed. More money is not going to fix this. It isn’t suddenly going to make her bother getting up earlier, or wiping her child’s face, or thinking oh maybe they should have toast for breakfast sat at the table. it’s just going to buy more cans of monster, vape, and crisps.

There are huge numbers of families like this, and the cycle will never be broken by increasing their benefits. Their parents never taught them the importance of getting up / dressed/ out/ working hard so they literally can not do this, they do not have the skills. Telling them to go out and get a job won’t work, as they aren’t really capable of that level of functioning. Neither will their children be, who will just continue to accept that they don’t have to bother much and life will be handouts. It’s a generational cycle of being raised in the benefit system. Unfortunately just increasing benefits doesn’t really help the child break free of it, concentrate on education and become an achieving member of society. It just fosters more dependence on the system.

I disagree that most of these families are doing their best. Or if they are, how do you define what “best” is? Social services will only really get involved when there is a serious lack of care / abuse. There are many thousands of families skating above this line that aren’t thriving because they don’t have the education, or to be honest, the wherewithal, to function at a higher level. Increasing benefits is not going to fix this.

Oh it won’t, it’ll be spent on Botox and lip filler and Prosecco

Be honest, that’s what you’re implying, isn’t it? You clearly have no concept of what it’s like to live on a really low income and rely on top-up welfare to survive.

My late Mum worked in a school and although it wasnt in a great area she carried on because quite honestly she felt she was making a little difference.

Mothers who turned up late with their kids who had clearly just got up. Mum brought in some toast and juice for the kids saying that they hadnt had anything to eat because Mum (and it was mainly women sadly) got angry if they woke her up for breakfast.

These parents were often late for pick ups. They just didnt care. They put themselves first every single time.

This in fucking spades!

I volunteered at a foodbank for years, it was west London so parts of the borough were mega bucks and it was mainly middle class women 40+ who would donate items.

It used to really piss me off the amount of them, who would come in sneering at the lists we asked for (long life milk, any cereals, SHOCK HORROR biscuits, tins of meat and veg, custard).

They would stand there full of absolute shit about how children should not be fed tinned potatoes, ham and tinned carrots, didn’t these awful parents know how to cook properly?

Also lots of comments on how if people didn’t spend money on cigarettes, they could afford to buy their own food.

They would come in with bags of fucking lentils, saying “they could make a healthy daal to feed themselves for week with this!” And talk about how cheap carrots and cabbage were, why not just give the child an apple instead of a biscuit? Why didn’t we want donations of fresh fruit, meat and vegetables?

Absolute sheltered idiots with no fucking clue what it’s like to live in poverty, or in temporary housing or a bed and breakfast. No clue that you can’t simmer lentils when you are on an electric meter, or you might not even have a hob.

Just because their John Lewis kitchen in W5 was filled to the brim with cooking supplies, an American fridge freezer and a range cooker, they couldn’t see beyond their sneering, stuck up noses.

I used to tell them straight. I had one tilt her head and say, “oh, are you poor too, did I hit a nerve?”

I think you are being quite naive.

The quickest way to lift a child out of poverty is to give schools more money to fund breakfast clubs, uniform banks, school holiday lunch clubs, after school clubs etc etc.

As for there always being some dysfunctional parents only a small percentage is because of parents knowing better but just not caring about their children, the majority is simply because they don't know any better. Giving extra cash to parents relies on them prioritising their children first and when you are on benefits and times are tough then even with the best intentions it's not always easy to do this.

The other issue is just how do you record this. Are we looking at absolute or relative poverty? Because if the latter it will never be ‘fixed’.

sadly there will be families where the money makes no difference to the children’s lives and the parents aren’t capable - how do we find those families to help and would they even accept help?

as with everything, throwing money at a problem rarely makes it go away - it just covers the cracks for a while

Yes, I live in a area of very high deprivation now, my children’s school is as you describe.

But once upon a time, I worked in a school in a very affluent area of London. Those parents were sometimes no better, but it was okay, apparently, as they were middle class.

How do we know that two parents who earn £100 000 each will spend their wages on their children and not themselves.....
Neglecting your children is nothing to do with a persons money source.
Rich people can neglect/abuse their children too.
Sadly.

Great response. You said it best of all. The cycle just keeps getting repeated. My Mum was a single parent when I turned 11. There were three of us BUT she got up every morning, went to work, looked after the house and life admin.

I remember she told me about when she asked a young boy of about 7 to pick up some crisp wrappers and his rubbish that he had just chucked on the pavement. She said it in a joking way as though he did it in error and she offered to help him.

The Mum came storming over saying how dare she correct her child and that he could actually do what he liked and what difference did it make - someone else would pick it up when the street cleaners came around.

That is teaching your child terrible lessons with the next ones being how to claim benefits without working. Its a terrible ethic to teach your children but might go a long way to explaing the 16-24 year olds not in education or work.

How do we know those boomer pensioners are spending their winter fuel allowance on turning up the central heating rather than beer and fags?

I can't say I know a single pensioner who changes their heating as a result of the winter fuel allowance but nobody seems to have a problem with that!

We don't know for sure what parents spend benefits on but the vast majority will spend the money in ways which benefit the children. Do we really want the children of those majority parents to suffer because we're worried about the feckless minority spending their money on things we don't approve of?

Why does it only matter in relation to third or fourth children and not the benefits received for the first two?

@Judeyoubigtwat - some people are in hostel/bedsit accommodation, but most are not.

The fact is cooking is a pita, especially day after day after day. BUT that’s what you have to do if you have a family. You can cook big cheapish meals, but how much easier to get Deliveroo/Just Eat.

Most women on benefits (I say women because we are talking mostly about single mothers here) are not time poor. They could be making pots of stew/pasta or whatever. But it’s an effort.

Should we judge if the children everyone is apparently so concerned about don’t get a chance to eat decently?

Better parenting us needed.

Scraping the two child limit is a joke. I’m not perfect got pregnant at 15 fave birth at 16 but 4+ kids and expecting other peoples taxes to pay is surely taking the piss? I think two kids was a reasonable cap at a push they could have raised it to 3. Shit happens but how did you not learn your lesson the third time
I mean seriously? Raising taxes for THIS?? I doubt many people will vote labour again.
I know a woman who had her third child a year ago before she was born her older kids were just as impoverished as they are now because she spends all her money on alcohol and dumb bs