To think that this is inhumane and going back to draconian workhouses

[diaimchlo]

I have had this on my FB News feed from a well known and trusted community page.

www.facebook.com/pages/The-People-Vs-The-Government-DWP-and-Atos/430588573684275?ref=stream

This makes me ashamed to be British.....

Bit sceptic tbo the page has less then 5000 likes so not that well known and respected What proof do they actually have that the person who put that in their in box was telling the truth or actually works for the DWP.

Sounds like propaganda written by the FB page owners or someone on the group trying to gain a but of publicity (trend) / notoriety for this particular FB group. Logically why on earth would a Whistleblower that was trying to raise this because they are so unhappy about the situation and taking such a risk send it to a completely unknown FB page? I would expect them to send it to the national press particularly the left leaning papers like The Guardian or something more trashy like The Daily Mirror.

I doubt very much this is true.......

I can assure you that I felt, when I initially read this that is was some troll scaremongering, exactly the same as you, then I read the comments which you obviously haven't. If you had you would have come across this link from the DWP themselves.

www.dwp.gov.uk/newsroom/press-releases/2013/mar-2013/dwp031-13.shtml

Maybe the person who decided to post this has a conscience and felt that the negativity of this government was totally unwarranted. So logic does not enter into it at all concern for your fellow man does, closed mindedness is what is allowing these horrendous changes to happen.

Also why has this not been picked up by the media?

diaimchlo I have read the GOV page and to be fair what they say and what the so called Whistleblower says are totally different. Trolls scaring families it's applauing..... The page looks like its full of consipiricy nutters and the owner sounds like a nutter. Read something from him saying the GOV is building workhouses in secret and he has filmed it. Utter tosh!

The GOV page is publically available and political journalists and the opposition would have cotton onto this by now if it was true. I am sorry but it's big fat conspiracy theory b*llocks..... Sorry just saying it as I read it....

In answer to your question why has this not been picked up by the media. Well the reason will be because it's b*llocks

So where does it say in that article that children will be taken into care etc?
It talks about support for these families and that's needed for the families and the community. Maybe Fiona Pilkington and her daughter would still be alive if some of these measures had been taken against the families of the yobs who tormented her.

And BTW a quick glance at the FB page showed people whinging about things that I know happened under the Labour Government as well

A lot of it fits very, very closely with stuff we know the government is already doing, so it actually wouldn't surprise me.

Gove is saying more children should be taken into care more quickly because their parents are "dysfunctional". That's a scary article in itself, because Gove denies that care itself can be harmful, and claims poorer outcomes are because children weren't put in care sooner.

They've already legislated for the extreme sanctions, eg 12 months, for failing to please JobCentre clerks, often in quite small ways.

We already have workfare, where people are working for less than minimum wage.

It fits very well with IDS's claims in this article that benefits increase drug and drink addiction, and that addiction is a major element of poverty. (Which he was well slated for, as there's nothing to show it's statistically true. Even the "research" he cited was just an opinion poll of the general public's image of poverty.)

The 120,000 is indeed the figure invented to count "Troubled Families". It comes from secondary analysis of data and has a margin of error of 200,000. The original data was based on criteria about mother's mental health, family health, low income, etc. There was no measure of criminality or drug abuse anywhere in the data, but Cameron has stood up in a speech and described the families as full of "Drug addiction. Alcohol abuse. Crime. A culture of disruption and irresponsibility that cascades through generations." (The generations bit is also untrue.) See: "The Lies We Tell Ourselves: ending comfortable myths about poverty"

Will need to see what else comes out, but I have been wondering what IDS's madder recent statements have been leading up to. I wouldn't be surprised if quite a lot of this turns out to be true.

It's a load of utter tosh! And that paper The Lies We Tell Ourseleves is biased, I find it impossible to give it any credibility. I know you keep posting it on different discussion boards but I can't take it seriously, sorry.

Actually, can I ask? The people saying it can't be true, would you be upset if it were true?

I mean, leave aside the word "workhouses": is this something you actually think would be a good idea, and work very well? (And work well to achieve what?)

It's not true so it's a pointless question and as I don't deal in conspiracies I won't waste any gry cells on it....

Workhouses?? Really?

Yep, never say "workhouses". You just get 200 posters talking about what a workhouse is, and 3 discussing the actual content of the post.

Floggingmolly it's Trolls trying to scare families but using google, making stuff up and generally writing tosh.... If it wasn't so sick it would be like reading a really poorly written satire sketch.....

I agree with LittleChickPea. What a load of absolute rubbish.

Just read that DWP press release. It repeats the made-up figures.

So the press release says:
Troubled families are defined as those who:
? are involved in youth crime or anti-social behaviour;
? have children who are regularly truanting;
? have an adult on out-of-work benefits;
? cost the public sector large sums in responding to their problems, an estimated average of £75,000 per year.

But the data was collected about families who met five 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

And figure of "120,000 families" is from a secondary analysis of that data, with error margin ±200,000. (Unless by an incredible coincidence the DWP did special research for the first definition, and magically happened to get exactly the 120,000 figure they'd been touting for years. I'm sure they'll happily show the additional research, if so.)

The "costing £75,000 a year" comes from a different set of 46,000 families,
identified by yet another different set of criteria by the Dept of Education. And the £75,000 includes all the normal health, education and welfare costs all children are expected to accrue.

So right from the off, the DWP press release looks like notable tosh.

Didnt say the DWP was tosh. Isaid the FB page is full of consipiricy nutters, the FB page is full of trollers posting scary trash and the paper posted on here been biased and therefore I can't take it seriously..

The 120,000 families over the years of the programme is the publicly announced target (eerily similar to Gordon Brown's 'over 110,000 families'.

It's was never an analysis of how many such families there are.

A Government, of whatever leaning, has to start somewhere.

According to that article we're classed as a "troubled family" because we have and adult on out of work benefits. Really? FFS! SO you lose your job and go from being a tax paying contributor to a troubled family within the space of 24 hours? Fucking hell! Shitty arsed mother fuckers can shove their troubled family bullshit up their arses!

an not and

Deadwoman - you have to met 5 of the criteria not one to be classified as troubled under that system.

Parsing - Gove is saying more children should be taken into care more quickly because their parents are "dysfunctional"....

whether that's good depends on where we are the moment. in an area related to me, 10% of children are neglected (either come to school dirty, underfed etc.). that is a lot of children to leave with parents who are not looking after them. are all those parents even fixable?

Faster you got ther before me..... Totally agree with your points.

LittleChickPea I do wonder what you would have said if someone said to you a couple of years ago that the disabled, vulnerable, service men who had lost limbs etc would be left destitute, with no income at all because a French IT company deemed them "fit for work" and people like the "Honourable" (Not a title that man deserves IMHO) and the dreaded Mark Hoban keep lying about the stats on welfare. Looking at your posts on this and other threads on this subject you would have called the people telling you this that they were conspiracy theorists, scaremongers and trolls.

I acknowledge that there are families out there that do need guidance and support but to leave them with no finances at all is not the answer for the parents or the children as both will turn to the only option to them and then the DoJ costs will go up massively providing prison places. This hard line is a disaster waiting to happen.

diaimchlo if you are going to quote me please quote me in the right context. My references to the conspiracy theorist Scaremongers and trolls have all been related to the FB page linked above. No where else have I mentioned this in relation to those less well off. My only other comments on another thread have been related to those that are capable if working but have never worked a day in there life.

Now please could you specify where I mentioned people with disability outside of saying I would rather they got a larger portion of the welfare benefits than people that are capable of working but don't and continually abuse the system? Happy to pay taxes to support people with disabilities that aren't able to work

Please ensure you correctly quote me in the future..

OK, I've looked a little further.

I take scaevola's point that the Trouble Families Programme is about "a" 120,000 families, not "the" 120,000 families supposedly arising from the original criteria.

The new criteria for local councils to choose Troubled Families are here, pp4-6, summary p17: "Financial framework for the Troubled Families programme?s payment-by-results scheme for local authorities"

Basically a family needs to meet some of these four criteria:
? Are involved in crime and anti-social behaviour
? Have children not in school
? Have an adult on out of work benefits
? Cause high costs to the public purse

Local authorities can add families which meet only two of the criteria if they need to fill up their allocation. They are encouraged to add families which have health problems or are "high cost".

Which I hope allows us to come back to the question of quite What is intended to be done to these families.

You'll find the DWP document above interesting, then LittleChickpea, because "out of work benefits" includes disability benefits.

One of the "results" the Local Authority gets paid for is persuading a sick or disabled person to go on the controversial Work Programme (ie workfare and frequently inappropriate courses).