OK, so how would YOU change the welfare system?

[MathsMadMummy]

just wondering following on from various threads lately. sorry it's probably been done before.

I guess it's more a question of how you'd change the culture really, where people feel it's their entitlement to never work etc.

I have no idea what the answer is, please tell me your bright ideas

"Reduce all benefits apart from short term contribution based JSA (I think it is fair to protect those who are willing to contribute and temporarily fall on hard times) and genuine incapacity benefit (wouldn't punish those who can't contribute)to subsistence level. "

if you really honestly think that benefits in the UK are anything other than subsistence level, I'd guess you've never had to live off them, pay rent, food, heating etc.

I'm liking the idea of a subsitence payment to everyon ein the UK to replace all the other endless claims and departments.

After that you could work as much or as little as you wanted/could find etc. And the money would end up in your pocket rather than your benefits swallowing it or being buggered up for months.

I know I often have extra work to offer my staff and many daren't take it for worry about thair credits being faffed with, when really they'd love a bit of extra at xmas or for a holiday etc.
I also sometimes have temp work. This always goes to eastern europeans because they're not worried about benefits, they just want the cash.

'expatinscotland I am talking about childcare for parents who are on IS etc, surely '12 hours/week, from 9.30-noon or 1.30-3.' is better than sitting on their backsides doing nothing?'

Where are the jobs that only want people to work that number of hours?

LOL. There'd need to be millions of them, too.

Or are we pack to the, 'Let them sweep streets' humiliate them line?

I think benefits should only pay for what a family actually needs to live on.

We have lost all concept of what it means to be poor and needy. The poorest of poor that I know (ie, both disabled and cannot work, with 2 kids) have a 3 bed house, a car, a tumble drier, broadband, a nintendo WII and X-box etc.

This is all paid for with benefits. Benefits are supposed to be a safety net, meeting needs, not wants.

You do not NEED a car, internet or a TV, so why are the tax payers still paying for others to have these things?

There are people in the world without WATER FFS, we need some perspective!

To be honest, HairyTriangle, while benefits paid in the SE of England are subsistance level, I survived quite well on IS and tax credits in the Midlands. We ate good, although not particularly varied diets, my children did have Christmas presents, just not £200 worth of them, and although i had to drop the broadband, the Sky, and the phone line - they aren't necessities, and not having them didn't mean we had a bad life.

If you are sick or disableed, and need to get to hospitals or run a car, then life could be a lot harder trying to live on benefits, and also if you can never see yourself getting OFF benefits and into work and a better life you could feel very resentful and 'poor', but as a short term solution for the majority of the country, single parent benefits are perfectly adequate.

You do need a car if you are disabled or a carer

PEOPLE ON BENEFITS SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO SPEND THE MONEY ON FAGS!

Not sure how to police it though.

It's an age old problem and as such I don't have great hopes that this Government will solve it.

From the very earliest days when the young state started to decide it had a responsibility for the welfare of citizens fallen on hard times (the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, via the Victorian poor law of 1834 to the reforms of the 1940s to the modern day, we have faced the conundrum of how both to provide a safety net and support vulnerable citizens in a civilised manner and at the same time not encourage people to be feckless.

The Victorians thought they had it cracked in 1834. The only people who could carry on receiving payments in their own homes were those who were unable to work. If you were poor but were able-bodied, then it was the workhouse for you, where the test was "less eligibility" - i.e. the standard of living inside the workhouse should be lower than that available to an able -bodied worker outside the workhouse who was working. The idea of course was to make it always more attractive to work. Those inside were "less eligible" due to the fact that they were workless.

It looks like it might work on paper, and indeed many people suggest the same thing on this thread - "simple! Make being in work always the more attractive option!"

But the problem is twofold (1) duty to the way our economy works and the competitiveness of the market place, the standard of living of the lowest paid workers is already obscenely low. Many of them have to do two crap jobs and still have a poor living standard. We can't make life on benefits "less eligible" than that without offending against our principles of what it means to be a civilised society in the third millenium.

(2) Availability of jobs. The "less eligibility" test does assume that there are the jobs out there, if people were only prepared to do them. There aren't always.

FWIW my suggestions are

(1) Some disincentive for having loads more children if you are already on benefit. There is no excuse in this day and age.

(2) Research whether the Daily Mail hype about young girls deliberately getting pregnant get a flat really is true in a significant way. If it is, then I think the idea of removing the entitlement but building warm-hearted mother and baby centres, where each mum and baby has an apartment and there is a warden who works with them, particularly to help them get qualfications once their baby is old enough, is not a bad idea. Each unit could have a creche, the kids would grow up together which would be nice. (Though just reading about it, I think it would be incentivising in just the same way as the way the council house list works !)

(2) Proper apprenticeships to decent trades for young people who are not academic.

(3) A proper minimum wage

(4) Financial support to make the transition to work from benefits easier

(5) Generous relocation allowances for those prepared to move to a new job.

(6) Teaching in schools which bigs up the virtues of work and supporting your family if you can. And which expresses the fact that unlimited sexual promsicuity and babies outside of committed relationships are not things that society in general thinks is desirable. It must be possible to teach to these sorts of values while at the same time being supportive to those who do not live up to them. Does the choice have to be so starkly between "1970s non-judgmental woolly liberal" and "Victorian stigma and "on yer bike" attitudes ??

And schools should teach that it is wrong to be posting on mumsent while you are supposed to be working!

I will also add that it is HARD trying to get a job when you are a single parent with no family or friends.

I don't use childcare - if I had to, I wouldn't be able to do my job. I work whilest my children are at their dad's and to be honest his girlfriend (God bless her and keep her) picks up a fair bit of the slack.

If benefits area subsistence level, then how come so many on benefits can afford to smoke and drink? Or are fags and booze an essential part of subsisting.

And you are correct, I haven't ever been a benefit scrounger. I have always worked.

Absolutely agree with fakeplastictrees that IS should be for one year only - you get less than that as SMP (it's only for 9 months) so why should scroungers get more? The childcare argument simply doesn't wash - if I can go back to work, why can't they start? And if they don't want to leave the kids with someone else then they should have kept their legs together.

Another thing (I'm on a roll now!)...

we've reached a point where the Welfare system is actively operating against many of the principles we try to instil in our children when they're little.

Take the value of money, for instance. From when our children are little, and have just a few pence pocket money, we teach them the value of it, and that when it's gone, it's gone. They can, for instance, choose between two items, but can't afford both. And if they spend all their money as soon as they get it, they can't whinge and get more.

So, why, in adulthood, are they getting the message that actually, life doesn't work like that? Why, if you are feckless, and keep having more kids you can't afford, will the state give you a bigger a house to live in and more money to spend? Why, if your parents get divorced, and the resident parent is careful to only work a few hours a week, does a 16 year old in education get £30 a week, but if their parents stay together and both work, you get sod all? Why, if you are a 19 year old doing nothing and living on benefits, can you get a free dental check up, whereas if you're at University studying hard (and probably working part time too) do you have to pay for that dental visit?

These are the sort of questions the Govt needs to be taking seriously. For many people these days, it can feel like fighting a losing battle to stay married, bring your children up with values, and pay your own way - because you can feel like you're being taken for a ride. Of course there are long term advantages in being in work, and having the choices that will bring. But it can be very difficult to sell that long term idea to 18 year olds who do have aspirations, and want to achieve well, but see years of University debt or living with mum and dad stretching ahead of them, while someone their own age can get themself up the duff and be housed and paid for.

Surely expatinscotland it is more humiliating to be recieving money each week/month when you have done bugger all to earn it?

The fact of the matter is there is always something that can be done...Planting flowers/shrubs in the park? Helping at a homeless shelter? Cleaning public Toilets? Graffiti?
checking on vulnerable neighbours? League of friends? Helping sort donations at a charity shop? Picking up litter?

And what is so humiliating about sweeping the streets? I am sure the people who sweep the streets and the dustbin workers wouldn't say its hummiliating. At least they are paying their way in life.

Is this thread only about single mothers again? are they the only scroungers

Oh - my opinion may be idealistic and completely misinformed as I have never been in a situation which has warranted welfare benefits (apart from child benefit) but my opinion is:

• for those able to work but not able to get a job, should be contributing to society/earning their money via community service type jobs or volunteering for something they are skilled to do (not to interfere with job hunting);
• cut down childcare costs to make going to work worthwhile;
• benefits should be in the form of vouchers, not money - electricity, food etc. If people want money to go out / drink / smoke etc that should not be paid for by other taxpayers;
• scrap child benefit - why get money for simply having children, this should not be linked to paying bills/buying food to support your family;
• do not penalise people who try to work by taking away all benefits and making it uneconomical, if you need a transition period people should be supported;
• get rid of all the different benefits - its a very complex system that could be made much easier (don't know that but am assuming so!)
• review housing arrangments, does every child need its own room, why does a baby need its own room (I know one person who had a young baby - 9mo and was given a 2 bed flat whilst some working couples live in a 1-bed with a baby as its all they can afford)

Thats all I can think of for now. The system is a long way from functioning well and I think we make it too easy for people to claim benefits and too difficult for them to step out of that cycle, we should be helping people help themselves, not handing out cash to temporarily solve the problem.

Why is IS available until your youngest child is 7, when children get 15hours free nursery care from the age of 3? Whycan't those mothers do community/voluntry work, in those hours?

All those jobs mentioned by veyron keep someone in paid employment ...what happens to their jobs if the unemployed do it for free

here here violet

Totally agree about smoking.

It is not an essential. (Or a desirable IMO)

Nothing wrong with vouchers for food and electricity, and neither is it humliating - it's pure snobbery if people feel they're too good to be given vouchers. It's a better way of targeting the things that benefit money should be spent on

Have any of you actually been out of work during this recession?

I lost my job as a retail manager during the recession and it took me over 6 months to find another (and I have a degree )

I think it is all well and good saying do this and that and get a job but if you have never worked or are out of work, it really isn't that easy. Why are these young children/adults leaving school with no aspirations and no belief in themselves and thinking they cannot do anything? Is it their parents fault or that ofthe school? Does the endless testing of our children and the culture that if you don't get this sat result, don't pass the 11+ etc, then you are already a failure? Working class ethic used to be about working hard and getting the rewards for that, be it financial or emotional wellbeing. How have things changed that much, or havent they? Is it just that there are more of us as a population and it is more noticeable?

LolaKnickers, do you even know any single parents?

I didn't keep my legs together because my children were born into a double income family, with plenty of money to support them. It's not my fault or theirs that their dad started hitting me!

You will find similar tales if you can bring youself to interact on the lone parents board here - poeple generally don't just caw "Awwww, I wanna Baybay!" They had families, and nice homes, and husbands, and jobs, and all the other normal things that normal people have - until the shit hits the fan.

Part of the antipathy towards single parents is the deliberate disassociation of their situation from your own, because their situation is scary and you don't like to think about how easily it could happen to you.

So it's more comfortable to think "They should have kept their legs shut" .... but they had no more reason to keep their legs shut than you do. Have you kept your legs shut? What would you do if your partner developed schizophrenia and simply walked out and quit his job, 2 months after you were made redundant? It sounds too unlucky to be true, doesn't it? It does happen. Similar situations happen relatively frequently which is why we have people who are suddenly jobless, homeless, partnerless and have three children that they cannot feed without stae help!

Think a little before you spout.

• those able to work but not able to get a job should be contributing to society/earning their money via community service type jobs or volunteering for something they are skilled to do (not to interfere with job hunting); -

this is what the conservatives are now stopping, by not continuing with Future Jobs Fund or Community Task Force.

• do not penalise people who try to work by taking away all benefits and making it uneconomical, if you need a transition period people should be supported;
• get rid of all the different benefits - its a very complex system that could be made much easier (don't know that but am assuming so!) -

this is already in place, but discretionary for Job Centre Plus.

Well yes colditz, life is a bit more complicated than women having to strap their legs together

hear hear Colditz. Well said.

I know MovingBeds, it was an example. The family I know, do not NEED a car. The disabilties do not hold them back that much physically. They live within walking distance to school, shops, nursery etc, and they don't need to drive to work do they!

And the certanly don't need TWO expensive game consoles - except that they are at home all day so they're bored!

I also think that disabled people should be made to feel valued as part of the workforce so they want to work if they can. Just because they can't do everything or anything (and who can), doesn't mean there isnt something they can do, that they would enjoy doing. The friend I refered to, I met at work, and I think she was good at her job and certainly able, right now, she is choosing to let her disablity hold her back (because it's easier and she has no incentive to work).

Ditto for young or under-qualified parents. It's not "you'll be stuck in a cleaning job", it should be "here is something you can do, and we will support you to do it, you can earn your own and work your way to something else if you want to".

there is very little work now that isn't intellectual or requiring special training. You cannot just walk into an old people's home and pick up 3 night shifts a week, starting next week, like you could 20 years ago - which I must point out was only 1990! You have to enrol for an NVQ2, you have to have a CRB check that really can take up to 5 months to clear - it's easier for employers to get their current staff to do even more.

This is why we have people working 70 hour weeks while others have no work.