I used to work on a kids adventure playground when I was younger.
We were open to children from 5-13, but certain families would regularly send the kids with the baby. As in, a few 6 or 7 year olds would arrive with a baby in a push chair, a baby bottle underneath, and a few bags of crisps for their "lunch".
The "parents" would basically have kicked them out, told them to mind the baby and not come back until the play park closed at 6 pm.
I never had the wit to inform social services, being young and daft, but would take the baby off them, and look after it until they went home.
Sometimes I would bring cheese butties for children I knew were not being fed.
Breaks my heart that people think this is OK, and that in some places it is really common.
A friend of our family fostered two little girls from a horrendously abusive background. They were 6 and 8.
The older one was seemingly OK, until the age of about 14, when she ran off, got involved in drugs, prostitution etc.
She has had countless babies, and been unable to care for them, literally going out and leaving them alone.
The younger one is better, but in a violent relationship.
They were simply too damaged by the time they went to their (excellent) foster carer.
It's a cycle that keeps repeating itself, and it's hard to know what to do about it.
I do think that we need to keep the whole benefit fraud aspect out of it though, since that is just more grist to the mill of justifying making life harder for benefit claimants.
Sure, some people abuse the system, and in some areas a lot do, but as far as the population as a whole, it is a drop in the ocean.