To ask the truth about life on benefits nowadays

[ginorwine]

Too many benefit programmes on implying different things- blaming media .
Also on some fb pages reports of increased food bank use and people with disability killing self due to new laws .
My cousin who is a wheelchair user has a sister bedroom and no issues over the bedroom tax and also says she as enough money for what she needs including a fantastic car that picks up the wheelchair and packs it into her boot , sufficient money for nice things , Petrol and meals out and said to me she genuinely feels she has a decent lifestyle .
Amongst the media hype am wondering what the reality actually is these days ....

@almostajillsandwich, do apply for pip when you have to switch from DLA and get as much supporting medical evidence as you can, as another poster recommended. You probably are entitled but you do need good supporting medical evidence and perhaps help in filling out the form so you map your problems correctly to the descriptors. And if u originally denied do appeal. So many are turned down initially but win on appeal. Sorry know it's stressful though when ill. Good luck.

I think it all depends on the person and what benefits they are receiving. A single person, not disabled, on jsa of about £70 a week probably has quite a shitty life financially. If you qualify for dla then you are on maximum of about £220 a week not including rent (if you are single). But then you are disabled, and depending upon your disability may or may not need to buy extra things to deal with it. Certainly df falls into this category, and finds his finances comfortable. Single parent with children. One child and not working, you will probably find that you will struggle financially. Working and claiming tc/ctc it all depends on your lifestyle. Dsis is single but works full time with low wage topped up by tc/ctc. She says she is fairly financially secure and is able to save money every month for things like xmas/emergencies etc. She's not living hand to mouth. But she doesnt smoke or go out every weekend and is lucky to have a LA house. I guess if you did these things or had to pay exortionate rent, then money would be tighter. I do think smoking is expensive, I remember years back one of my friends telling me between her and her dp they were £90 a week for cigarettes. I was shocked.

I personally think some people get more help from family than others

Secondhand hand me downs
Help buying a cooker
Know someone who fixes TVs
Some are cheeky on free sites
Some are buying and selling in eBay
Some houses are warmer and cheaper to run

Every little helps

None of this is wrong - but it gives a false picture

thenightsky I am not a liar. It was ten pages. You have no idea what my medical conditions are or how they effect me or how badly they are misrepresented by the dwp in their medical handbook.

Regarding having to pay for medical letters. My Gp surgery didn't use to charge but now charge £25 a time. My GP made an error and charged me again when she corrected it.

So far my consultant hasn't charged but know it could change.

Becca19962014 Sorry... I worded it badly. I was not saying it was lying, just the letters WE do are never more than a paragraph. This is psychiatry. I can understand that other specialities will need much more explanation and variable prognoses etc.

@justnowords, unless you are including esa or JSA in your maximum figure, both maximum DLA and PIP are the same at £139.75 a week. Many of course are not entitled to the maximum.

"OP - if your getting just jobseekers allowance or whatever its called these days it only comes in around £70 per week and I think this is where single able bodied people really struggle to survive. They need to pay all bills off this plus clothes, food and aren't bus fares really expensive? They're meant to have internet to job search, bus fares to travel to job centre/interviews."

You can claim housing benefit as well, but the housing benefit won't cover your rent. Also, you're obliged to look for any job up to a certain distance away so you could potentially end up worse off than on benefits if you have an expensive commute.

Hard working people get pissed off when people on TV shows say they are entitled to spend their benefit on cigarettes, leaving their children unfed, because people who work hard, earn money and aren't on benefits smoke. Entitlement is not a right.

You can include the letters the consultants copy into you, which you are entitled to anyway. You sometimes need to ask for these though. PIP does just ask for 'letters you have already' and I feel, prefer these to ones written for you, as an advocate.

Also, a care plan can be done with the GP for free..

thanks again ginorwine i'm very grateful all the same but i'll be ok

wineusuallyhelps idk your relatives' circumstances but a woman opposite me has four children like i do and has never worked (i have) and must have been hit hard by the November benefits cap like i was yet appears to have everything. she's selling knock off fags and Spice and other stuff but people who don't know that would assume she's getting an excessive amount and managing a luxury life on welfare but it's not true. so all i'm saying is don't assume benefits money is enough to live well on, there's usually other things at play in the back ground

I temp so between jobs I'm on JSA and housing benefit. I still go out during these times to have a chance of socialising and keep myself sane, using my savings. This is legit - I'm allowed to have a certain amount of savings and still claim and my JSA claim is based on the national insurance contributions I've paid in. So you might see someone like me living a 'normal' life on benefits, but of course the longer you're out of work, the more your savings will dwindle and if you don't get a job...
So another thing to bear in mind is how long the person has been on benefits.

I was on benefits as a single mum about 8 years ago. And I have to say, it was ok. I could buy my 2 DC's what they needed and pay my bills. In all honestly, there wasn't much money for myself (once everything was paid), but I did manage to treat us to the odd take away or going to play places, ... I wouldn't say it was enough for big items like holidays or state of the art TV with games console... - unless of course I answered the door to the loan shark!
Once I got myself sorted and went back to work in a mediocre job and income (£7.50/h - there abouts, 5 years ago) I had a big surprise! My income was a little bit less than the benefits, partial due to child care costs (child minder before/ after school and holidays) and I had to pay more rent.
OP I don't know how it is now, with all the cuts, but I would think, that ordinary people who are level headed will probably struggle to make ends meet on benefits. And they might struggle even more, if they are in work (even with all the tax credit available), if they get a slightly above min wage job. I think the government has a long road ahead if they want to make work pay... and still offer a decent safety net for people who have fallen on hard times or are just not able to work due to illness/ disability.
As to those TV families, let's face it its all a con!

When i was 19 i lost my job and was on the dole for a time. I lost my job thru no fault of my own and it was a job i had had for two years. I had left home at 16 and been working ever since. I had v little contact with my parents who lived 100s of miles away from me.
I lived in a shared house and my rent was £200 a month not including bills.
When i signed on i did not get the whole of my rent paid i got about £45 a week for some strange reason and on top of that i got around £30 a week supposedly for food and travel.
Of course i had to pay the rent shortfall out of that extra £30 and then any bills for the house.
It was really difficult to survive on that. Really difficult. I lost loads of weight and became incredibly depressed.
In the end i actually stopped claiming and just left my house and went to live on someones sofa and lived off any spare food they had for a month until i eventually found a new job and paid them back.

This was over 10 years ago and now days things are even worse. Especially for 19 year olds who are no longer entitled to housing benefit.
If i hadnt got that i dont know what i wouldve done. There was no way i could return home. I had been working for years 100s of miles away from my family. I dunno what they expect young people to do? Well i know what they expect them to do... go back to their parents. But often there is a reason why people who are in their teens are living away from their parents and they would effectively be forced either back to very terrible situations or onto the streets.

I really think its disgusting. The government says its to stop people just expecting to go straight into a life of benefits but the only effect i can see it having is sending already vulnerable young people into lives of homlessness depression and possibly petty crime.

At the moment I am a student who receives the maximum amount of loans and grants from Student Finance England (new students no longer get any maintenance grants, only more debt if they're poorer). I also get Disabled Students Allowances as I'm disabled - this isn't cash but paid in-kind through equipment or paid directly to my support workers, I do have some small items I pay for and then get reimbursed. We are not getting any conventional state benefits atm - DH works full-time but is on a low-income although it fluctuates depending on how much overtime he can do - he is my carer so some months he can't do any. I claimed PIP but was rejected. I have put in a mandatory reconsideration. I used to get enhanced rate of mobility and daily living about two years ago but then we moved abroad for awhile so I had to end my claim and re-start it when I moved back and now I got denied anything at all. We can't claim any tax credits purely because a) we are both under 25 and b) we would be an exception to that rule if I got PIP but as I've been denied it now we are not. Having said all that, we have a decent standard of living. We eat out sometimes/get occasional takeaways, we go on days out sometimes etc and buy the clothes we need, we both have mobile phones on good contracts, we have internet, a decent sized flat, and two guinea pigs. We owe my parents about £1000 though from when DH was unemployed for 4 months as he wasn't allowed to claim JSA because they said I had enough money from my student loans & grants but it really wasn't enough (we had to move which was expensive, and our new flat was our first unfurnished flat so that was expensive to furnish, and then also disability-related expenditure for me etc). But there is no rush to pay that back. Oh I also have a free bus pass due to my disabilities which saves us lots of money on local transport and helps us get out and about. At the moment I'm at my parents' house for a few weeks as it's the Easter holidays, apart from my train fare they feed me and pay for any small things I need to buy and take us out on day trips etc and pay for us. So I agree family support and finances makes a huge difference, we would be much worse off financially and would have really struggled when DH was unemployed without my parents financial assistance.

I realised earlier how truly bollocks benefits TV shows are.

There was one on about being pregnant and on benefits and one of the mums listed her income - and stated her child benefit was £60 a week.

Er no...your CB for your 2 dc is £33 a week. A really obvious mistake and easy for the producers to check and edit out or fix but no one bothered. Presumably because it makes better TV to bump up the amount of benefits the participants are getting

thenightsky I'm sorry I pounced on you. I came back to apologise.

And no support letters are 10 pages. They are just a paragraph of diagnosis, ongoing treatment and prognosis. We send the letter to the patient explaining that personal information is in the letter, please let us know if any of it is inaccurate. If not, please use the letter as you need

Often these generic letters are part of the problem as they add little to the claimants evidence. They confirm the illness but the DWP have a list of descriptors that a claimant has to satisfy and it takes a more comprehensive and detailed report to provide evidence that will hold any weight in making a decision.

[b]I think the government has a long road ahead if they want to make work pay... and still offer a decent safety net for people who have fallen on hard times or are just not able to work due to illness/ disability.[/b]

Fortunately for the government, they don't want to do that. When they say 'hard working families' they mean 'proper professionals in the top tax band obviously, not people who are too lazy to train as solicitors or work their way up to CEO!' People who are lazy and feckless enough to be disabled are just beneath contempt.

A lot more people suddenly realised that when their tax credits were threatened, but have now conveniently forgotten again as they've not understood that under UC they will end up with the same amount as if it had just been cut now. It's a brief, cynical reprieve that has been spun to look like the government really listen to the voters.

My exbf was included in the Universal Credit trial when it was introduced because of his location. He had been claiming JSA but was left with literally no income for FOUR months while they sorted out transferring his claim over. This was totally an admin issue and nothing to do with any changes in his circumstances. He had no savings and was relying on friends and food banks not to starve. Some of his friends, also on benefits, cut down on food and went into arrears with their bills to help him. After hearing about that I'm inclined to believe all the horror stories; nobody on benefits should be left without any money at all for days let alone months.

I see someone is going on about someone getting a 4 x 4 through motability.

You get a basic car from motability scheme and it's paid for using mobility benefit. If you want a fancy 4 x 4 you have to pay a lot yourself.

Which is fair enough, people with disabilities should be able to pay towards a nice car too.

I was just coming on to say what Nanna50 said. A paragraph just confirming diagnosis, treatment and prognosis is of little use. As part of my job I sometimes help claimants with MRs and we write a letter for them to take to their doctor a bit like a form, to tie in with the descriptors they are challenging, e.g. 'our client informs us that they cannot do x, is this consistent with what you know about their medical condition? yes/no, comments.

Obviously this is extra work for doctors and they should be reimbursed for the time it takes. It's beyond shitty that the cost falls on the claimant though, often at a time when their benefit has stopped.

Entitlement is not a right

What does this even mean?

It means someone watches benefits programmes on c5q