David Cameron welfare reforms-no family will receive more than £25,000 a year.

[Hammy02]

Good idea? I think so. I can't believe a single family receives this much already in benefits. It is about the same as the average income so it would be ridiculous for any one family to have more in benefits than someone that works?

peachy .

When doing my dla form i got asked will it still be the same in 6 months .I was like what part of spinal cord injury do you not understand .It is not going to regrow it will not magically appear

mila

thats what we are trying to say cuts are not as straightforward as they seem ..

Oh I agree the working poor will get hit to right now there is amessy gap but let be honest there is very few areas where the very wealthy live alonside the benefit claiments it is only a few highly public cases where that happens .

mila

but where do people go if you end up with people with no hope and to poor to care then that cycle is likely to be repeated over and over with most never escaping the poverty trap .then you get the problems of anti social behaviour ( though this goes on right accross the boards anyway )increasing ,drink , drugs rising

Thehumancatapult - try London for rich and poor living cheek by jowl.

And the number of households where no adult ever worked doubled under Labour (there's a separate thread about this).

There are huge problems to tackle.

Mila what the band we were in for many eyars and fully expect to be in again before long?

of course.

But the way it works now allows people to rent privately. Under the new scheme it won't for most people. Remember, the state has block bopoked 200k B&B places across the SE (hope HAstings & Margate have abig surplus in their provisions, eg schools / hospitals / SSD....)

The cut in the HB is the damaging bit, and that's the only reason anyone without sn would get anything like that amount without being one of the reallY rare huge famillies,

The 4 bedroom alowance for HB is being cut by the way, and that's even when as with out LA we'd accept a 3 bed but the social worker will not allow us to accept under 4 bedrooms. Luckily we don't need a council house ATM but it would not take much to push too far.

The people that will lose ironically will be the contributors. Those who are the poorest are usually in council housing but HB includes working poor and 80% of claimants for it are not unemployed (so disabled, elderly, low income), So people who never worked are secure in their homes but people who ahve but are on a low wages / have become ill or carers / been amde redundant will be forced out of their long term homes.

I am especially wary as we moved away from home for work purposes and now find it really hard without family to help with childcare. It's amazing how much harder it is to find work as well when nobody knows you or any of the people you ever worked for. It's amazing how much that all counts for.

meditrina

when you look more closely into it there is infact very few but the ones are yes i agree someone getting 2000 a week Hb is wrong but its not high percentage .But we all remember it becuase it is high profile .

but will cuting benefits help that .Becuase a lot of highly skilled people are finding themselves out of work due to cutbacks becuase there are just not the jobs available

peachy you have the same issues as me you have to take a 4 bed.

I had no idea you could get 25k on benefits

@herbietea when I said DLa covers care and mobility costs that was in reply to someone asking why people need more money when they are disabled. DLA has a care component and mobility component does it not? I am well aware from some of the posts on here it is not always enough although they are the extra costs it is meant to meet.

noddy that is not in money it will include your rent and council tax so if you are in private rented that soon eats into the amount

NH only with very high rents or very high numbers of kids

very much the exception only.

Just as usual being sold as a norm to make everyone look in horror at teh bogeyman.

Our rent is £6.50k PA. Not bad really. But elsewhere it could easily be double which would then leave £13k, if we claimed DLA for all the boys (we choose not to, their SN is my fuck up, my genes) that would pay that alone.

sadly opionted it doe snot meet all the costs or anyone near sadly enough .To top up my 4 free pads I need at least 4 a day more at cost of £1 each so thats £28 a week just on them .

But do think that some posters have stopped and ooked and realised now that there is a lot of extra hidden costs when theres a disability.Which is at least a good thing to come from here

yep .

My hb here at the momoment is 1100 a month rent is £1200 i pay the differance .so there is 13000 gone straight of .my Lha will be 1000 a month from september but evne then that is still 12000 a year ( and i be having to pay the extra 200 a month myself becuase the misfortunate to have ds3 with sna nd to be disable dmyself so i need a paticular sort of house

oh and i have 4 kids as well all born when was married and xh and me working .This is so not the life I imagined or planned on having

TheHumanCatapault....I am one of those posters and am that I didn't know any of this before....

We're in a 3 bed but using a different room as a bedrrom ATM. DS3 is very vulnerable and ds1 very aggressive: there was a child protection case waiting to happen, and it got to the point when ds3 would shake if he just saw ds1 in the room, poor kid.

A lot was just bad luck though: ds3 is very sensitive to noise, ds1 stims loudly a lot. Bad mix!

DS4 is with us atm: technically if gets a dx and ds2 does they could insist on a 5 bed (!) but he would just stay with us forever I guess.

k999 i think if people read the whole thread a lot of eyes would be open but thank you for being openmided enough to learn

Me neither with the life.

When ds4 was born I was sitting finals at university (mature student). I got an A with a 5 week old baby: I thought I was set on a direct path.
I had made contact with cardiff University about a conversion to social worker status but I'd need £5k in fees; Dh's business might make it, but if not I don't feel i could rely on UC or DS1's DLA reassessment, both of which would happen midway. DS1's care needs won;t drop if his DLA does, so we'd have to find it from food budget etc.

This is what I don't get.

Conservatives are supposed to be about personal responsibility, making yourself a future. We've tried our best, amde massive leaps, and now we are at a stage where we don;t feel safe enough to take the leap to take us the last bit of the way.

I will look for PT work but heck, where we live? yes righT! Anything needing childcare though will mean a specialist nanny (SW has said they don;t want that due to ds1's baheviour but FFS). A PT Tesco job is not going to cut a Nanny, whislt where we are a SW job would be enough to mean DH could work PT (as he is self employed can set his own hours to an extent) and be there for caring whilst hiring a SN nany I know when he has to work away

Disabled people should get more money IMO. If they are not very mobile and have extra heating costs in winter they should get winter fuel allowance like pensioners do.

My eyes have certainly been opened by reading this thread. Makes me angry that a minority of scroungers who choose not to work and lie about their circumstances in order to cheat the system are making less money available to those in genuine need.
And because the scroungers are the ones we hear about most often we assume everyone is the same.

A few thoughts;

When they announced the cut in Child Benefit (which I am STILL livid about - 10% of our income gone, when those on DOUBLE our income keep it), loads of people came on and said 'Why are people on 40k so angry, if you can't manage on 40k you must be having 3x foreign holidays, 3x luxury cars etc etc etc. But 25k once you gross it up is not THAT much less!

So I don't think 25k, essentially after tax, is necessarily a very small amount.

BUT. I fundamentally disagree with having a cap, because of the massive discrepancies across the country in housing costs etc. It's nonsensical. People should be helped to the level that they require, not some arbitrary cap created for political expediency. You simply can't say that ALL families can manage on less than this, when housing costs vary, needs of children/adults vary.

So - help as help is needed, and don't impose arbitrary caps.

Thehuman and Peachy I can now see it's very complicated and a difficult area when dealing with families coping with all you both are.Your posts have been very enlightening.

However I still think for many families 25K is plenty good enough and the system needs to be looked into and changed. What do you think they should do?How do you think they could protect families such as yours and yet cap benefits.

Opinionated until last eyar we got cold weather payments (they bought me a coat; the bills always got paid but I had no coat).

They were stopped. By Labour IIRC. Though Tories won;t bring back either so both as bad IMO.

Teddy- the press deliberately manipulates that idea of benefits = scrounger. When you read the Shelter stat about 80% of HB claimants not being unemployed, and then take into account people made redundant / college leavers etc it brings it home.

Government spin doctors choose to promote it too: all teh crap about people on DLA faking when it has the lowest fraud rate by their own admission; people on DLA who ahven't beena ssesed for a decvade- usually in my experience only becuase they are so severely disabled it's a waste of effort harassing some carers.

Some stats an d other info when we are on a thread with people willing to learn please:

DLA will change for adults to PIP, and perhaps for chidlren at some date.

DLA is 0.5% fraudulently claimed at Government estimates; it is 40% underclaimed. PIP hopes to make cuts of 20% in teh disability budget. It will not count people using chairs as having mobility needs, even though they rely on adapted vehicles (they will lose those). Claims are to be assessed by ATOS- a horrid company that has been associated with suicides, has an overturn rate ranging from betwenn 30%- 70% at appeal 9depending on source and whether apellant has legal help- but the government ahs pulled legal aid for the purpose of benefit claims). People have died on a pittance awaiting appeals as ATOS takes so long. The laws were apssed and ATOS hired even before the consultation period had finished. ATOS criteria for PIP includes asking the eprson if theyc an pick up a pen: pick it up, you get nothing,

DS3 has severe autism, he can walk and talk but will never work- SLT ahve even had to pull his therapy for a while as his attention is so affected he can;t benefit ATM (restarts in September). he was assessed for epilepsy but it was negative: it's just severe absences. he is like a toddler, completely vulnerable. he will fail the pen test. if he fails, I will no longer get carer's allowance. i will be expected to to attend for work programs, and if i can;t as I have to care for ds3 be refused any benefits help.

Without DH I could starve to death and the Government is OK with that.