Workfare scheme for loan parents of children as young as 3, as of next month.

[WaterLoadaCack]

kept that quiet didnt they

Ooh summer, love the personal attack.

Go on then, find one post where i say i'd like to home educate. Somehow i doubt you will given i dont agree with home educating unless the person is a teacher themselves. But dont let facts put you off will you.

I also have used childcare for numerous years, shall i find the threads for you seeing as though you missed them?

I dont leech off my family or husband. There have probably been two weeks in my whole adult life I havent worked. We have small outgoings, decent insurance and savings so my back up plan is very much sorted but thank you for your concern.

I didn't get the HE from ASing. That was my memory failing me.

I know you've used childcare too (as your child got older). AS is helpful. What I'm saying is you're still a hypocrite. You're telling lone parents they should easily find work and childcare. They're telling you it doesn't exist. You should be honest and say that actually you didn't even use proper childcare, you used family while you worked. And you do leech off your husband and family. Would you have savings and be able to work part time if you had no family support or the wages your husband brought in? Would you have insurance if living costs as a single parent meant you couldn't afford to keep paying it? Subsidised by your husband and family.

You'd be in the same position as many people on here back then had your husband died or left and your family not existed for easy childcare. Savings don't last long and childcare isn't as easy to get as people on here have claimed. You'd have been on benefits and tax credits too.

PMSL at the thought you know more about me than i do

The family childcare was mutually beneficial (and also paid for) and I swapped when it was no longer so. Had the situation not been available, we would simply have gone with the nursery we had already chosen. Childcare is readily available both full time and before and after school clubs and i dont even live in a big city where its even more abundant.

Is it hard to understand that people may have savings before they have children or get married or is that too novel a concept?

If anything had happeneded to DH, no i wouldnt have ended up on benefits i can quite safely say. I value DS far too much to ever put him at that disadvantage in life and have morals so choosing not to support myself would never be an option.

When Lehman's collapsed i had several ex-work colleagues who discovered the HARD way that insurance doesn't always protect us to the extent we think it will. The whole job centre and benefits claiming experience drove one or two onto anti-depressants too. It's dehumanising in a way that if your life has always run smoothly (school, college, white collar job or happy marriage & now in your mid thirties upwards) you can't even truly imagine until it happens to you tbh.

I suspect that should any of life's myriad unforseen circumstances hit happymumfone - she'll get a nasty shock. The aim of insurance companies is to avoid paying out at all costs in order to preserve their profit margins, and there are a LOT of life circumstances they just do not cover. (Act of God is the term used when all small print and legalese has failed). IF they pay out then they'll often drag their heels in doing so for months, if not years, by which time many people's lives have fallen apart or worse they've died!

Same with marriage - noone marries with the knowledge they are choosing a philandering, abusive twat, or realising that their partner can't handle the reality of "in sickness & in health". (It always saddens me how many cancer victims and children with SN's are abandoned). Yes we can avoid individuals that demonstrate the obvious red flags, but human nature is by definition a fluid and unpredictable entity.

As for job security - anyone who truly believes they have cast iron job security in today's world is living in cloud cuckoo land. (This is true in both the public, and private sectors btw).

Did you see the part where I said savings run out? How much savings would you like people to have before they have children?

Just more guff from you about choices anyway and ignoring most of the information people have provided you with. And a passive aggressive "PMSL" to ice the cake.

Childcare isn't available everywhere if you actually take on board what people are telling you. Nowhere here does weekend childcare and I don't live in a big city but it's not a tiny village either. Jobs require flexible working and every advert I've seen emphasises having to work Saturdays and Sundays. And the jobs with evening work during hours way after after school clubs finish.

If your circumstances had fallen in on you at the same time like many women on here have experienced, you would have had the choice of accepting benefits or having your child removed from you when you couldn't afford to feed him. That's the only choice that exists in this thing. Any good parent will tell you that you'd soon forget that morals bullshit if it came to that. Or maybe you wouldn't. Maybe you'd spout some more shit and wave him off into the sunset and go and sleep in a cardboard box just so you could say you didn't accept benefits.

So go back in time. Your husband has left you. Your part time job won't let you go full time. All the jobs want flexibility. You don't have the option of family childcare or any properly paid childcare at the weekends or evenings so you can't get a second job. You slowly work through your mammoth savings. It gets to the point where you still can't get more work and it's getting harder to pay the bills. Then your boss announces that he's cutting your hours, the business just isn't there. You now can't cover your bills, your savings are all gone, your fridge and cupboard are nearly empty. Would you still choose morals over benefits then when your happychild is hungry or his clothes are too small or his shoes are?

That's just one example of what happens to people. And it could have happened to you even with all your planning and saving. If you can't get your head around that, then you are a very stupid person.

hapymummyofone - what if your child has a serious accident or illness?

Would you not prioritise his daily health, therapy, care and educational needs? You would be expected by his health and educational professionals to give up work too.

Instead of judging others struggling with circumstances beyond your comprehension, why not just give thanks for the blessings in your own life? (& pray that they last!). I can't help feeling that volunteering on a children's ward would make you stfu about aspects of life you've have NO understanding of at all - either that or someone somewhere needs to put you in a ring with Katie price for half an hour!

If DS had a serious accident or illness then DH and I are here for anything he needs. Why would my stance on people choosing not to work have anything to do with disability or an accident? The thread was about people on IS due to being a lone parent not carers.

Yes cirumstances can change but the majority on IS either were not working before the change or refused to juggle childcare with working claiming they cant both parent and work so quit their jobs. If they wanted to work they would be on JSA.

I have every sympathy for those truly unable to work due to disabilities or serious illness but choosing not to work when physcially able to should never be part of a welfare state. A short helping hand if circumstances change but not years on benefits as its the easy option.

If they wanted to work they would be on JSA

Lol, you haven't got a fucking clue have you.

The majority on income support, either have children under 5, or they care for older disabled children.

The difference between being on IS or JSA is dependant on your childs age, or your caring responsibilities [like if you have a disabled child with higher care needs] because it is recognised that there are difficulties with childcare etc for younger children and it is pretty much non existent for those with disabilities. so, even the government can recognise that being a single parent, working full time, with pre school aged children and finding adequate child care is not always possible, or for the best of the family.

Nothing to do with whether or not you want to work and those are the 'rules' you don't actually get a choice of what you will claim.

Would be lovely if all these people on jsa who want to work could go out and find jobs. My sister is desparete to work. She goes online daily and does voluntary work. She spends up to £10 of her 71pw job searching.
Some people live in cloud cuckoo land.. workfare is only going to make it harder to find work.

Thats what I thought amber

I don't think you really do want to work happy

Every single post you make stinks of sour grapes.

Your attacks are quite subtle, But I have yet to read a more cruel set of opinions from anyone during my years on MN.

O and what happens if you have may e 3, 4 or 5 dc with a hrt so you fully fund your lifestyle choice to sahm! he than rjn off with Secretary. Your dc will need you even more as they will feel abandoned by tbeir dad. You will than be forced into workfare.
Great work govt.

Feminine, then you couldnt be more wrong. I love my job and volunteering, its hard work but very rewarding. I could choose to stay at home if i wished but its not for me as i like to retain my own earnings as a safety net but also to give DS opportunities in life I never had.

Cruel opinions for daring to believe people should work rather than live off taxpayers. If thats cruel, it just shows how the entitled the latest generation is.

Great in theory happy but where are the jobs. Going to be even harder with workfare.

You can only claim for what you are entitled to and many parents of infants or disabled kids aren't entitled to JSA, same goes for those who have to give up work to help elderly relatives or disabled siblings etc. Many an unmarried childless spinster has had to call time on their career to care for an aging parents.

I want to see those three grand grants given not to workfare employers to pocket but to benefits claimants as vouchers to spend on the training of their choice in order to become employable. Three thousand pounds is enough to fund some pretty useful training that would make lone parents of value to employers and our nation, especially considering we have such a huge skills gap for which we are having to import labour to fill so often right now.

The only losers in a scheme like that would be the rip off merchants who would then be forced to pay NMW to see their shelves stacked and their floors mopped. The rest of us would be winners all round.

Yes Yorkie, I am rolling my eyes at the people here who seem to think the secret of a successful job hunt, is that you want a job. As if those, like your sister, are only still jobless, because they don't want it enough or something.

Feminine, good point, I think maybe happymummyofone, isnt as happy as she makes out.

Oh my happy what do you still think all these Mums are saying to you on this thread.

Have you read them properly?

Why do you tar them with a totally unsuitable brush?

How can you type such cruel words?

Many of the parents on this thread are not 'young' I'm 42 for example.
Do you mind sharing your age?

Perhaps it is a lack of years that is clouding your opinions?

I want to see those three grand grants given not to workfare employers to pocket but to benefits claimants as vouchers to spend on the training of their choice in order to become employable. Three thousand pounds is enough to fund some pretty useful training that would make lone parents of value to employers and our nation, especially considering we have such a huge skills gap for which we are having to import labour to fill so often right now

Great idea. I'd also like the government to fund proper placements (with flexible hours to accommodate childcare) with accredited training attached. People tend to respond if they feel valued and invested in.

But of course it suits them to bribe corporate organisations to run workfare, demonise people and use crude vote pulling tactics.

People in work are living off the taxpayer too happy. You could call it bloody unicorn tax credits for all I care. It's still taxpayers money.

Oh I meant proper industry recognised training e.g PRINCE2, MCP, city and guilds, postgraduate certificate in X from Y uni, ACCA foundation, childcare foundation degree etc. Unless the applicant really doesn't have 5 A-C GCSE's inc English and maths, in which case the training needed is fairly self-explanatory to most of us.

I've not met a fellow lone parent in the 9 years I've been one that wouldn't leap at an opportunity like that if childcare could be provided! The cost barriers to sensible retraining for adults have become ridiculous in recent years, which does my head in.

None of this patronising - "here's how you fill in your name on a job application form" that's been punted onto jobseekers in recent years by both parties so their mates in private employment skills agencies could get a back hander.

Oh and then while I'm imagining myself as dictator - BAN zero hours contracts simply because that role I went for last week would have been perfect but for that. (or as a compromise enable those that do risk them to claim working tax credits like other workers can at the very least!).

I dont recall mentioning anything about the age of lone parents, age of the parent makes no difference.

Sorry Derek but MN allows people to have their own views. We are not all entitled sheep following the herd.