benefits - can anyone advise?

[namechangerrr]

hi i am a regulare but have name changed for this. i was wondering if anyone would e able to help me here. i have seen on the news about benfits being cut/capped but cant seem to find any exact figures.

was wondering if anyone could be able to help me and see if my benefit will be capped or cut, so that i can be prepared for this.

i recieve weekly:
£135 child tax credit
£48 cb
£65 incone support
£145 hb
£12 ctb

i no this seems like a huge amount when written like this but in reality it isnt. once i have paid gas, elec, water rates (£28 per week!), tv licence etc there is not much left for food/nappies.

i would be very grateful if anyone could help. i am not intending to be on benefit forever and i do want to better myself for myself and my children.

Very good post - UnlikelyFangazonian - when people point the finger at single mothers, they usually forget about the feckless fathers who are totally failing to support the families they created.

But some of us single working mothers who don have a penny from their chidlren's father can support children solely without any benefits. I have supported 5 alone. The answer is for girls to pick good careers and don't get side lined into shelf stacking and low grade stuff in their teens I suppose.

I used to earn a very good wage. I paid my taxes, quite rightly, for 20 odd years.

I never thought I would be in this awful position.

Now that I am having to lean on the state for tax credits, I am deeply appreciative and thankful. We are so damn lucky to get help. We are so damn fortunate to have been born here and not in some impoverished. famine-struck dictatorship.

We are a humane country and we should be thankful that families receive support when it is needed.

Forget those like the OP who are only making the most of the shitty, short time we have on this planet to be with their children.

Most of us want to work and pay our way. Look at that man with the crinkled face crying on ITV on the night of the spending review story. He was not imaginary, he was a real person. His life looked prettty bloody shit to me and he and many others like him deserve all the help and support possible. Have some compassion.

I am gutted for families who are on the breadline, living in shitty accommodation. And by god I met a lot of them when I was working as a reporter in London.

I am thankful that they can access as much help as possible.

I am not living in shitty accomodation, I have a lovely house - thanks to a good education and a successful career. BEFORE disaster hit me and I was abandoned with no job, a massive (stolen) overdraft and a small baby. I earn crap money now but Iam thankful top be supported by tax credits.

This is what makes us civilised.

There are no well-paid jobs here where I live. My friends and I can't even get jobs at waitrose or morrisons as there is a two year waiting list.

I clean.

I clean but I need an operation on my hands as a result.

I am certainly not complaining, as the state is helping me beyond measure to give my little boy a fun life.

I am not wracked with dysentery or aids. Is that your bottom line? All you critics? That we should be suffering for our 'gain' ?

Let those who commit fraud and cheat the system be caught and penalised.

Let my husband also be caught and penalised.

But he won't come under scrutiny at all.

I and my son will bear the stigma. He will be shagging in Thailand and earning good lolly until the day he decides to move on and abandon again.

Where are bounty hunters these days?

But even the idea that we aren't as women obliged to support our children is perhaps suspect. By all means hope the mother or father will help but never assume they will. Each man and woman is individually responsible for their children.

The problem is (a) we cannot afford the system we've had so are changing it and (b) that it has become too easy not to work; the benefits are not quite painful enough because of the high cost of housing benefit - fine if it provided a room for mothers and babies but not whole places. Ensure people are warm and out of the cold but not give them what is similar to a private rented flat someone on a wage would get, make it nasty enough that they try to move themselves out of poverty rather than cushioning them in it.

When we wokred and paid more for childcare than one wage in the 80s in those days without tax credits or any help with childcare etc people did what we did - buy all the chidlren's clothes in charity shops as we did, never buy orange juice as tap water is cheaper etc. We just have got too used to things being a little too easy.

So .......... You reckon me' and my 5 dc should be in one room rather than our 3 bed housing association house then???

But Xenia - it takes 2 people to make a baby. To me, then, both parents are equally responsible for providing for them. And your suggestions for a "room for mothers and babies" might work for making some think a bit harder before falling PG, but is of no earthly use to a woman who's husband fecks off, just because he feels like it, and avoids all consequences.

unlikely yours is another post where you appear to reading comments that do not exist - people have said repeatedly on this thread that they do not want children or indeed parents to suffer.

But xenia is right as a country we simply cannot afford the system that currently exists. It has to change.

I do however agree with everything you say about feckless fathers - no idea what the answer is but a system that allows any parent to walk away whilst simultaneously washing their hands of any financial responsibility ought to be treated extremely harshly in my view.

SprinkleDust - not everybody gets Cold Weather Payments. It's specific circumstances and benefits that makes you eligible. Same with lots of the other additions you have described like uniform grants and free laptops.

I know. I've 3 student age children. I know there aren't even jobs in bars or night time cleaning at Heathrow airport toilets. But some people do damage to get some work. Every day I work at getting more work.

As for feckless men given any man might run off (and I know men whose wives have left them and their babies although that is less common) women need as teenagers to pick work which will enable them to support their families on one income and think about that and never go part time or make career sacrifices when they are with a man etc etc and that helps in down turns too.

So individual help for journalism person. If people will pay me to write (which is a small part of what I do) I don't see why others can't. How many publications do you write to every day with unsolicited articles? have you tried sites like paypeopleperhour? Could you market? I have stuff I would pay people 10% commission to sell.

Xenia said :
"a system that allows any parent to walk away whilst simultaneously washing their hands of any financial responsibility ought to be treated extremely harshly in my view."

exactl!

thank you Xenia.

Bastards

I am thinking of abandoning my son (church hallway)and going to have great sex with gigolos in brazil. Any tips would be welcome.

TIA

I didn't write that by the way. You must be quoting someone else. I am saying we are now in an era of responsibilities not rights and those include to our children even if that means we suppor thtem alone as plenty of us manage fine.

Unlikely - let me know when and where and I will join you and leave your son some company in the church doorway ;)

earwig I am thinking of a date. What can they do? take our children from us and given them back to their 'fathers'?

namechangerrr i would def get on to water company about your rates.

i am also in sw and we pay £14 per month and we are in credit with them paying thta. we have to adults and 2 dcs in a 3 bed house so use quite a bit of water.

To the folk wringing their hands saying "don't punish the mothers alone, it takes two to tango" (although it's not only accidents we're talking about here, perfectly level headed women can find themselves cheated out of material support through hidden drug use, or whatever, as one poster has already explained)....

A solution has ALREADY been made in this thread for fathers who CAN but WILL NOT support their offspring - the poster who mentioned that in the USA men get sent to JAIL for failing to support their children, because it's treated in the same way as tax fraud (taken off at source, different culture of accountability, active pursuit of those failing to pay, real punishment rather than slaps on the wrists, etc)

THAT is something we should all be pushing for.

Why advocate sending men to jail for not paying child support but let women live off the state? BOTH parents should be financially responsible not just one.

Well that would be because the absent parent in the case of jail isn't looking after the children in any way shape or form, male or female, surely?

If BOTH parents should be responsible should the parent who stays also go to jail? Very expensive a proposition that and a tad unfair on the children

Ninks, I'm not sure if you're just taking the "send the worst absent fathers to jail / treat it much more severely similar to tax fraud" idea to its logical but absurd extreme to nitpick, but if you need your questions answering in such detail, I'm glad you're not in charge of implementing such a policy directly It's hardly a revolution in thought, is it? Absent parents who are able but refuse to support their offspring treated with more severe penalties than they already are - my best friend's had to deal with a lying ex-H and the sheer frustration of having to deal with our CSA - this is also an institution that needs over-hauling to re-focus on the very people it was meant to primarily support - a primary carer and offspring who have, effectively, been abandoned.

if we forced people to share chidlren 50/50 after divorce people who don't h ave their children with them very much at all but would like more of them would pay more of the cost as when children live with you on a daily basis and need new socks or dinner money etc then they ask the parent they are with. It would also make it much easier for workingm others to work full time as I managed to do with 5 children. It wouyld also be much fairer and reflect modern realities.

To those who claim we cannot afford the current system.

Can we really afford to push people further into poverty? How on earth will reducing people's spending power improve the economy? How on earth will deepening the divide between rich and poor improve anything? Can we really "afford" the social fall out from that?

Xenia........ That's a fairytale in your head!!!!

Have a read of lone parents section for a bit of a reality check!

And in my case my ex is subject to probation and not allowed near children. He us assesed by mappa as High risk to women and children. He's violent.
No, he won't support his kids, I will when I can find a decent job, but untill then it's benefits system. Tough for those who don't like it really

Xenia, I agree. If the courts were less biased towards women and 50/50 was the starting point then there would be little need for the CSA. The child would benefit as they would see both parents and one parent would not hold all the cards re visitation etc.

It would also, as you say, assist with both parents working rather than the state picking up the cost of lifestyle choices.

Children bought on benefits often go on to claim themselves as they see it as the norm, getting parents to work means children grow up with a work ethic and stops the cycle repeating. Showing children that you dont have to work to get nice things, or that they can eat free or go on numerous school trips that working parents cant afford is doing more damage to the future. The pot is not endless and the new changes go some way but not enough to ensuring people see that they should support themselves rather than the sense of entitlement which is evident in many threads.

Yes, but I don't blame people who do. It's the system that needs to change.

So my suggestion of 50/50 unless there are good reasons not to like the example above where the mother or father is assessed as high risk and out on probation (which is a tiny tiny number of fathers and mothers) etc. would help.

So would splitting tax credits and child benefit 50/50 between parents - the children would be 50% with each parent and all costs halved. Neither would pay money to the other. Each could easily work 3 days a week and on the other 2 days would have to fund a nursery place or some divorced couples share their childcare arrangements still where they both work full time.

Also if men could be prevailed on never to let their other half drop out of full time work when she had a child then things would be easier when relationships broke up because the woman would still be working full time adn the family could more easily survive without benefits.