AIBU to think people shouldnt be getting money for having children?

[normality]

i know it is is controversal but i dont understand why some people feel the entitlement to get money for having children and aibu to think it should stop?

I think that if people want children then they should have them but they should not feel they are entitled for some kind of monetary hand out for having them

I especially feel like getting money for being pregnant like the sure start grant, maternity grant, healthy start vouchers ect should not happen because if you cant afford to have a child why should the goverment pay you to do this? what about the people who do not have any children and choose not to or can not why should they miss out on multiple grants and vouchers when they are paying more and more taxes to support the people who choose to have children and then choose not to work?

• i have a dd and although i wanted a large family i could not afford to have more than one child so stopped but never claimed any grants ect because i did not want to be paid for being pregnant as it was my choice

the cap is WEEKLY.

NickName, it's a weekly cap.

Hammy02, some of the families I read about had 6-8 children. So by following the occupancy guidelines they are entitled to the 4/5 bed properties.

The guidelines need to be changed.

Thanks, I thought it would be, you'd struggle to find a bedsit for £400pcm here, so I was a bit shocked!

RE bedroom entitlement: children with SN are entitled to a bedroom of their own (at least they are here) rather than having to share. 2 of my friends have 4 children each, both have 1DD and 3DSs. One got given a 3 bed LA house, the other a 4 bed, as her DS1 has AS, and therefore needs his own bedroom. Even she doesn't agree that that is right, but if she turned the house down, they would have taken her off the housing list!

i would like to see more money being spent on children from low income families in schools, sure start etc. & less paid to the parents directly.

Little Miss, all child benefit is removed from Income Support. They count it as 'money you already have coming in'. As is most of my carer's allowance, despite the fact that I save the government millions of pounds per annum.

I'm sure I read somewhere though that statistically speaking, children brought up in a workless household are far more likely not to work themselves and to continue the cycle, so how does that fit in with the argument that these children will grow up to pay taxes and support the country??

It doesn't - that is why the French and now other European countries put policies in place to reward working people if they have more kids.

The UK solution seems to be to import c 7m Other Country's Kids rather than growing them at home....

It's appropriate that children with special needs are taken into account. There have been incentive schemes to move people out of London but often people don't want to go. They want to stay in London even if they haven't been brought up in London.

I should point out that I don't necessarily disgaree with children with SN being given their own rooms, as ohanothersays, they should be taken into account. Just in the example I stated, the mother doesn't believe her SN son needs his own room (in fact he shares with DS2, and DS3 has the single room, due to age gaps, and SN child doesn't want to be on his own) but she wasn't allowed to accept a 3 bedroom house from the local authority! Seems a bit strange to me that someone who is happy to have 3 bedrooms should be forced to take a fourth, or continue living in 2 bedrooms in her parents house!

Yanbu - Don't have children if you can't afford them, they're not compulsory after all - it's your choice.

Dawn that is true. Most people do not realise that CB is deducted from families on income support. The papers always include it when they do those massive calculations.

They take it off the poorest families.

Lots of people DO move out of London given the chance. There is a big move from East London to Essex for example.

But why should poorer people be hoiked out of bits of London because the more affluent classes decide they are now desirable places to live?

Take parts of North London. No one would drive though parts of Islington at one point. It was fine for the plebs to live there. Then those who cant quite manage Primrose Hill start moving down the ladder and suddenly Tufnell Park, Stoke Newington etc become the place to be.

Are the poor classes destined to be kicked out everytime some estate agent comes up with a cunning plan to rebrand a crap area of London and people are stupid enough to fall for it?

Most people do not realise that CB is deducted from families on income support.

How long have they been doing that? I thought CHB was disregarded.

When I got IS, it was so much for me, an amount for being a single parent, then CHB on top. That was quite a few years ago before CTC was brought in.

Ineed that is a clever way of manipulating housing lists. Once someone is eligble for housing they are on a different list. The fact that there are no properties for them to bid for doesnt seem to matter.

It has always been a nonsense. I lived in a two bedroomed flat with two children M & F. I was happy there. I was never going to be moved. Our rent card said we could have 7 people living there. Children under 5 counted as half a person and babies not at all so infact I could have had almost double that and not be considered overcroweded. My neighbour lived in a duplicate flat but her rent card said 9 people

But if I had, had another child whilst living there I would not have been able to bid for another 2 bedroom because it would have been too small.

Where is the sense in all that?

I now own a house. I have had 5 DCs altogether although we only have the 3 at home. I would have more if I could but decided to stop for lots of reasons. The amount of bedrooms was not one of them.

InPraiseOfBacchus - "I understand where you're coming from, but it isn't just people who give birth who are contributing to a productive, successful new generation. I'd say the credit goes more to the teachers and doctors, many of whom are CF, to create successful people."

They do indeed have a very important role. And they're paid for it. Not sure what your point is.

marriedinwhite lives in the London borough where I grew up and went to school. None of the families who were on benefits that I knew were living in massive houses in beautiful areas. They were all living in estates that most of us would avoid walking through. They were not living a life of luxury. The girls from school who I knew who got pregnant as teenagers didn't do so because of the benefits they did so because they had been let down by the education system and lacked aspiration. I imagine a small minority do abuse the benefits system but I would rather this than children living in worse conditions than some already do.

I remember very well the letters I got from the welfare with the breakdown.

It showed quite clearly that the CB was deducted. This was about 15 years ago. I sincerly hope things have changed but I have never seen any announcements about it.

My CB wasn't deducted when I was on IS? However the amount of maintenance I recieved from boys dad was deducted from my IS. My friend who also has 2 children got more IS than me, as her 'sperm donors' (her words) didn't pay any maintenance, whereas I recieved £130 pcm.

My local council had a crap idea a few years ago, to move all the trouble makers from one council estate in A, to a brand new one in B. The idea was to make A a nicer area to live. The result was, A IS a nicer area to live, but B, is as bad as A used to be. Like ohdoadmit says, moving the poorer classes just rebrands areas. It doesn't actually solve any 'problems'

That's a good point. Why should poor people move out of London. In central London now most families are either very affluent or on benefits.
i moved out of London because once I had children I wanted to live in a house rather than a flat.

OddoAdmit - but what your saying doesnt make sense. insisting on staying in an area when you are on benefits in houses that people who are both working cannot afford? What is the point of working if you have people claiming benefits who live in better houses than people who are working. It should be a fact of life that if you choose to have some children, choose not to work and choose to live in a certain area then there might come a time when you need to move!

If I lost my job and was unable to find another one then I would have to move - full stop. I cannot come out with a raft of reasons why I should stay if it is clear I cannot afford it!

"But why should poorer people be hoiked out of bits of London because the more affluent classes decide they are now desirable places to live?"

Because you've failed to pinpoint a key difference.

You're talking about families on benefits / relying on the welfare state for a significant amount of their income.

Working families wouldn't be given a choice in the matter. Too poor to rent in Islington and you work? Too bad, commute for an hour on the tube or bus each day. Too poor to rent in Islington and you don't work? Here's HB to top up the chunk you can't afford.

That is a fundamental, unsustainable difference.

But what do you do with families who are troublemakers then? My council evicts these types of families relatively vigorously. But they end up in private rented housing, often very close to where they have been evicted from.

Threat of eviction does work on the families who are troublesome, but it doesn't work with the worst families.

I work with challenging families trying to turn their behaviour around. It works with some, but with some the problems are just too complex e.g. drug and alcohol issues and mental health issues in 1 family.

p.s. And, frankly - an offensive one, to many people who have been brought up in dirt-poor working class households like myself, but who were instilled with a fierce sense of hard work - maybe this is my old fuddi duddiness speaking, but I don't see that work ethic being passed on in a huge number of the families we're talking about here.

ohdoadmit I don't understand how thats manipulating housing lists? We only have one list here, with different bands. My local council, you fill out the housing forms, then get put in a band based on your need. I am in lowest band as my rented house in big enough for my family, my friend was sharing with her parents and therfore was in a higher band. Then every week you can 'bid' on 3 houses, you can bid on one with more bedrooms than you need, but not less, so I can bid on 2, 3 or 4 bed houses, but not 1 beds! Then the houses are awarded to those in band A first who have been on list longest, then band B etc etc.

When exactly do the new rules for HB come in??

I can't see it working tbh. Surely all it will achieve is to drive poor people out of places like London, leaving only the richer people living in London??

What good will that do when the entire capital is only occupied by richer people? Who will do the low paying work in London then?

I can't imagine anyone is going to travel miles to work in London as a cleaner/supermarket shelf stacker??