To feel a little sorry for the 7 children benefits Mum.

[MilgramsLittleHelper]

www.itv.com/daybreak/hottopics/benefits-mum/

Is just seems like another bit of benefit bashing to me.

I know she shouldn't have had children she couldn't afford, but what hope of improving her lot???

Lottie "some people always want to blame the poor". This woman's receives the equivalent of a salary of £45k a year.
That's a hell of a lot more than I earn or ever will.

£16.00 per HOUR TAKE HOME pmsl

2 and a half times the minimum wage

changing to only twice the minimum wage

God knows how the poor woman has managed

The child with the life limiting illness is 2. She hasn't worked for 20 years so what was she doing for the other 18? Resting up in readiness?

Jake - I would not want her life, no.

If I did live her life, I would shut the fuck up moaning about it, and do something .

Plenty of suggestions on this thread, Let's see what she chooses to do shall we????

Beau

No I don't have that much for sah, but when all 3 of our dc were younger I did receive a nice amount to sah, because the gov thought my family needed this.
I'm sure you could get it too if you needed it.

None of us would want her life but she's chosen to hae 7 kids with no visible sign of supporting them except relying on benefits.

Returning to the original question, do I feel sorry for her? No I don't because she s a grown up and no-one made her have 7 children.

Okay

£2600 a month

Of that take off the rent (am presuming the figure includes housing benefit).
Take off electricity, gas, water etc (yes you STILL have to pay these on benefits).
Take off whatever council tax contribution she makes....a six bed house will be in the upper categories.
Take off phone costs (okay with current deals that might be very small).
Take off transport to school, hospital appointments, any clothing needs.
Take off sudden unexpected repair bills/other bills
Take off food shopping for 7 children
Take off laundry costs for 8 people.
Take off whatever is needed to meet the needs of the children who have extra needs.
Take off what is needed for the children to have any kind of club activity.

I seriously doubt she has £2600 plonked into her bank account. More likely it is less than £2.000 and then has to last four weeks meeting all of the above. Even worse is that it probably goes I to her account in dribs and drabs so she has to pay one thing put of me lot of money and another out of something else. I welcome UC as it will make MY life so much simpler.

....and her children MIGHT be entitled to FSM but this doesn't mean they have them. DS is entitled to FSM but as he is autistic and finds the hall too noisy he chooses to have a packed lunch which I buy for him. I still claim them though as the school then gets the pupil premium.

Be interesting to know what the first husband did for a living, when they decided to have the first 6 kids. Must have been one hell of a well paid job, because they would have been well aware of the costs they are responsible for, you know, with only one wage earner.

One wage and 6 kids. Hmm Wonder what on earth it was?

You might moan however Beau if the cuts were affecting your children and two of them were disabled.

I would moan in that situation.

Be clear that I worked for 30 years and only gave up work when I could no longer combine it with meeting my DS's needs. I am now reliant on the State and if the State were to cut my benefit payments in a way which impacted upon DS then I would not "shut the fuck up", I might well shout about it too.

I had a mortgage (I couldn't could not continue with it as DS needed me too much for me to work full time any longer).
My marriage broke down as my DH could not cope.
I am now in social housing (and am fortunate) but I could equally be in a private rented place and struggling with the cuts.

All I am saying is that we are all one accident, one child with a disability away from needing benefits. We need to clearly understand that because this is NOT where I planned to be in my forties. The mortgage should be paid off, I should be in a higher position at work etc. circumstances mean it did not happen.

I did not have 2, 3 or more other children to support when DS came along thankfully but I might easily have done had I been fertile.

I knew a family with 13 children where they lived on one wage. Dad had/has his own business and they were not entitled to claim anything. They lived in a four bedroom house with the children ranging from 18 to a baby...the 18 year old had moved out, the 17 and 16 year old were going away to college which left 10 children. The bedrooms had the children in and the parents slept in the living room in a sofa bed.

If his business went bust though then I am assuming they would have been entitled to a fair amount on benefits.

Soooooooooooooooo she thought long and hard in between child 2,3,4,5,6 and 7 about how she would manage should anything go wrong?

Looks like she was was not an accident, but a full blow car crash.

Anyway, enough of this, I must away out for an hour.

...and bunk beds ruled in the bedrooms

I need to get off this thread and clean the house now, been interesting chat though.

I think if listening to the earlier grumbles of resentment had happened, there could have been a compromise "transistional and non retrospective" solution put on the table and garnered significant support from both sides.

I worry that perhaps the swell of resentment has been amplified by being reframed as "pure nastiness" to the point that the only solutions that will gain a critical mass of support are those that lean towards punative.

Which doesn't bode well for the children at the sharp end.

Oh God, that is SO true. And so depressing.

So bearing in mind everything comes out of this amount she is entitled to, its hardly the life of riley, living in clover is it?

Anyway, thank you Jake for the explanation.

BeauNidle. many of your comments are offensive and vile at times, I hope you don't allow your dc to hear you behave in such an anti social way. I think its a case of the kettle calling the pot black with your comments about full blown car crash. You are really not very nice.

I have to go now too, as dd needs me to explain her maths work.

Dawn what is the life threatening illness? Sorry, this thread is too long to trawl back and find it!

I thought she had one with arthritis and one with ODD?

Lovely beau, just lovely.....
God forbid any self-righteous people on here ever get made redundant or find themselves pregnant in bad times.

Excuse typing in my last post.

Contrary to appearances I am not drinking during day, my phone took a funny turn.

One of the children has Guillian-Barre Syndrome (not sure that is spelt right).

BeauNidle Thu 13-Jun-13 10:13:20
"Does everyone who has children with SN in this country automatically get given a house big enough for them all to have seperate bedrooms?"

Not all SN are the same. Some children with SN can share without a problem; in the case of other types of SN this cannot be done safely.

My dd (mobility problems and chronic pain) was fine sharing with her baby brother. If she had been severely autistic or had extreme behaviour problems, a shared bedroom might have been totally unsafe from the pov of baby brother. If her SN had caused her to scream and shout in the night, it might also have been totally unsuitable.

She has one with Guillan Barre syndrome, Fellatio

However, if dd had been dependent on her wheelchair indoors (which she was not) then she would have needed a bedroom big enough to accommodate said wheelchair- and possibly a hoist to help her into bed. Out goes the space for baby brother's bed.

"Does everyone who has children with SN in this country automatically get given a house big enough for them all to have seperate bedrooms?"

That is regarded as best practice for children with some disabilities by providers of Social Housing.
If you are in private housing, there are grants available to enable this, they are not means tested, and before you start, it has been very clearly demonstrated that they usually reduce the price of the resale value of the property, not increase it.

Of that take off the rent (am presuming the figure includes housing benefit).
Take off electricity, gas, water etc (yes you STILL have to pay these on benefits).
Take off whatever council tax contribution she makes....a six bed house will be in the upper categories.
Take off phone costs (okay with current deals that might be very small).
Take off transport to school, hospital appointments, any clothing needs.
Take off sudden unexpected repair bills/other bills
Take off food shopping for 7 children
Take off laundry costs for 8 people.
Take off whatever is needed to meet the needs of the children who have extra needs.
Take off what is needed for the children to have any kind of club activity.

But everybody whatever their income has these things to pay out! We have a minus figure at the end of the month like many many people do. No paying clubs for our dc, except after school club due to working, full council tax and mortgage. I try not to moan about it as appreciate we are lucky working, but she's no different to anyone else who has to pay for just exisiting!

What is the position for families who own their homes, are not in a position to take on a larger mortgage and find somewhere with more bedrooms, who have a child with some sort of special need who would benefit from their own bedroom? Can they apply to the state for a grant that will pay all the expenses of moving, and cover the difference in the new mortgage for a bigger house? Or a grant to do an extension or a loft conversion? Or do they just get told to suck it up?

And what happens if the situation becomes intolerable and they decide to sell their house and rent a bigger one? Are they eligible for HB or some sort of top up to help them out with rent on a bigger house which may very well be much higher than their previous mortgage? Or are they told that while they have any of their equity in the bank they must spend that first before they can access any kind of state help? And if they applied for a council house would they be put at the bottom of the list on account of having made themselves unintentionally homeless?