to think capping benefits at 2 children is a good idea

[moogstera1]

Child-related benefits may be 'capped' at two children"
*Iain Duncan Smith said the current system, where families get more benefits the more children they have, was among changes being considered.

Families on benefits were often "freed from" the decision of whether they could afford more children, Mr Duncan Smith said, and must "cut their cloth".*

yes yes, before I get jumped on, if both your arms fall off and a previously hard working wage earner is jobless, there should be ( and I imagine would be)a safety net for those who then need benefits and have more than 2 chidren; but, in principle, I agree that working families seem to have to make much more difficult decisions regarding how many children they have than long term non working do, and it's mostly about finance.
The suggestion is that this would not be happening till 2015 and then only to new claimants so no comments about which children should be sacrificed, please.
The idea seems to be to only factor in 2 children wrt tax credits, child benefit

Episode I don't claim HB as I live in the same house as my DGM (who brought me up, works and pays the rent while doing a lot of caring for me and getting no help for it).

ESA (for both DH and I)= £115 a week (having some social fund loans taken off from when we were desperate.
CTC = £60 a week
CB = £20 a week
------
£780 a month for everything (food, clothes, travel, contributions to heat etc for the 3 of us.)

I don't know where people get the idea that those on benefits can afford a life of luxury. And that's disability benefits, those on jobseekers allowance will be even less.

DP* not DH.

Cockypants Yep, suck it up, we disabled folks are going to have all your taxes and spend it on shite.
FFS. As far as people with disabilities are concerned then no, you don't have a right to question their spending, in the same way that they have no right to question yours. They're disabled, they didn't ask to be that way, it happened.

Thank you Schro, I can see lots of room for luxury there lol ;-) I'd be interested to see more examples and exactly how this argument develops! Am I right in assuming a ESA is a special benefit of sorts, I don't know much about different benefits, sorry!

ESA is for those who are unfit for work (I have been assessed by Atos and they deemed me unfit for work) didn't stop me getting a letter through about a month ago telling me that I may be sent to workfare and will lose a massive proportion of benefits if I don't go.

I can assure you, most of us who are on disability benefits (and a lot of other people) would gladly swap you for your job with our disability. :)

I'm sure you would and I don't say that lightly! I can't understand because I have never been in your shoes, but I can empathize which seems to be a rare thing in this day and age. From my experience, sitting at home worrying about finances 24/7, feeling a failure as a mother, the feeling of despair and the feeling of the cold (not a joke) drove me to severe depression at the age of 24! Not sure many of these married workers or optional sahm's would want to trade with me too!

Funny you should ask for figures, Episode.

There's a report just out by the Methodists and other churches about the actual figures for benefits, and continual misuse of statistics by this governement: "The Lies We Tell Ourselves: Ending comfortable myths about poverty"

It absolutely rips up Cameron for crap like this 2011 speech:
"today, I want to talk about troubled families. Let me be clear what I mean by this phrase. Officialdom might call them ?families with multiple disadvantages.? Some in the press might call them ?neighbours from hell?. Whatever you call them, I think we have all known for years that a relatively small number of families are the source of a large proportion of the problems in society.....
... Drug addiction. Alcohol abuse. Crime. A culture of disruption and irresponsibility that cascades through generations. We?ve always known that these families cost an extraordinary amount of money but now we?ve come up with the actual figures. Last year the state spent an estimated £9 billion on just 120,000 families. That is around £75,000 per year per family."

It's bunkum.

The "120,000" is from a secondary analysis of data, and has an error margin of 200,000. Yes, 200,000.

The data didn't measure criminality at all.

The original data came from families who met 5 out of 7 of the following criteria:
? no parent in the family is in work
? family lives in overcrowded housing
? no parent has any qualifications
? mother has mental health problems
? at least one parent has a long-standing limiting illness, disability or infirmity
? family has low income (below 60% of median income)
? family cannot afford a number of food and clothing items.

The largest shared characteristic was that the mother had mental health problems (and indeed you can see how the other criteria are likely to be consequences of that).

The "£9 billion" came from a different set of families under a different set of criteria.

It includes the normal costs of education, health, etc that would pertain to an "untroubled" family.

Cameron goes on to reference Shameless in his speech. I think he must have been talking about himself.

Are carers and disabled classed as unemployed, this is a genuine question because if they are it blows all the figures out the water, because these so called non working families sitting on their lazy backsides living in luxury could in fact be a disabled person being cared for by their partner, who just for the record are saving the government money.

Did anyone see the programme about poor people with children in the US? It was very sad to watch - and shows what would happen here if the welfare system was dismantled as the tories are trying to do. Lots of families living in 1 room with no furniture and alternating between there and a shelter. I think there was a mother and two children who had about £400 a month to live on.

I'm disabled (I have bipolar) and a carer for dd I'm classed as unemployed

Parsing thanks for that! I've only had a skim but it looks very interesting. That will be my activity this evening, hopefully others may do the same

Crawling I am shocked to hear that, how can someone who cares for a minimum of 35 hrs a week be classed as unemployed. This where the problem lies, false representation of the real figures. By doing this society turns on each other taking emphasis away from politicians and what is really wrong with this country.

If all carers were classed as employed which I believe they should be then unemployment would drop drastically. On the other hand force all carers out to work, bring in paid carers and we really will see a financial crisis.

Can somebody please make a part 2 if this thread if it fills up? I'll try but have to run soon and don't want lose all the posters (for and against!) I'm genuinely interested to see how this progresses and I'd like as much information on peoples actual circumstances. I'd hope others would too! Specifically all those secret so called educated daily mail readers

Genuine question: is there anyone here who lives solely on benefits who has not had another child due to financial worries.
Another question: is there anyone here who works who has not had another child due to financial constraints.
Would love to know the difference in numbers.

^Genuine question: is there anyone here who lives solely on benefits who has not had another child due to financial worries.
Another question: is there anyone here who works who has not had another child due to financial constraints.
Would love to know the difference in numbers.^

Genuine question? Or a bit of shit-stirring? Sorry, but really...

maybe if you knew any unemployed people you could ask Moogy1a - and maybe ask about all the other myths :)

I collect data on under 19's who are not in education, employment and training - anyone not in those is classed as NEET - and counted in the over all NEET figures. This included those on ESA, parents, carers and those who are unemployed.

I am guess the same applies to post 19 figures - for over all not in work numbers - rather than the numbers claiming JSA

I have lived on benefits and I did not have a life due to financial constraints. I did not have adequate heat due to financial constraints. I ate a shit diet (me, not my kids) due to financial constraints. I never went out to meet friends due to financial constraints. I never had a coffee out due to financial constraints.

And I didn't have another child either. But that was the least of my worries.

no, genuine question. I want to know if people consider the financial implications of having children when they live off benefits or whether it's not a consideration

You are not going to get accurate answers unless you ask the same amount of unemployed verse working and you would need to make sure they are from different areas across the country. mnet has a high proportion of working mums and sahm therefore the results would not be realistic.

I am sure some do and some don't - in both situations - given that human beings are all wildly different - some sensible, some not, some compassionate, some not so much

I was working full time and DP and I rented privately together when I got pregnant with DS. I hadn't had a proper diagnosis of my condition at the time so I didn't know that pregnancy could make my disability much worse than it was. That's when I left work and had to go back home. DP lost his job around the same time, he was also working full time.

I am now pg with DC2, this was a contraception fail, I was using Nuvaring (properly btw) and didn't want anymore for obvious reasons, both financial and medical. I couldn't go through with an abortion and I am really shitting it with money and health worries.

(((SchroSaw)))) (and I never do that!) it's proper shit isn't it - without the added judgement of others x

Gordy Thanks. :) It really is worrying but we manage, it just drives me insane when everyone thinks you're living the high life when in reality there are plenty of days where you struggle to eat!

x

Why do people always jump to the workhouse at any suggestion of child benefits being capped? How is getting £70 per week per child in any way equivalent to the workhouse?

The only people currently in the workhouse seem to be those in work who are paying more tax, take home less and less of their own money in order to provide more for those on benefits and the poorest people in this country tend to be singletons in low paid work who have to live in shared accommodation because that is all they can afford.