To wonder WHY parents can't afford to feed their kids isn't being addressed?

[BearPomBear]

Just that really....

@WhatWouldYouDoWhatWouldJesusDo the mention of a DP in this also helps. Much harder to buy a property alone.

Employers should be made to pay a living wage.
Absent parents should be made to pay for their kids. (The current system is almost voluntary).
Everyone should be made to pay fair tax, and we should invest in our communities.

@chickenyhead if you have one of those fancy 15p ones I hope you aren't claiming FSM!

I’m with @WizWoz this is not a new problem. I have worked in mental health/ social work for 30 years and there has always been child poverty.
The biggest concern that I have is affordable housing, since the incident in the private rental market rents have become uncontrollable with families having to top up their rent.
There needs to be a rent cap imposed by government based on size and location and legally enforced upon. Buy to let market is starving people.

Increase not incident

@Katyppp

You are brave to ask the question, OP!

The question needs to be asked. It needs to be discussed.

Also, to put something else to the list of reasons, I think there is something (as ever) in the late, great Terry Pratchett:

"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."

@Love51

Oh shit!

I am a FRAUDSTER

The only thing worse than that mp saying they should sell pearls is his thinking that child benefit (£20.30 for the first child and £13.??for the 2nd)would feed a child 3 meals a day 7 days a week

35 a week could feed 2 children for 7 days, surely? (Disclaimer what he said was absolutely awful, but 35 a week is just enough to feed 2 kids for a week)

@SandyY2K

It's a sad state of affairs isn't it.

I was thinking this too.

There will be different situations that cause this.

The minimum wage is too low. I don't know how ppl survive on it. It really needs to be increased.

I watch a programme called Rich House, Poor house. Although not always, most of the time the poor family consists of a single mum. It's no surprise they are struggling and using food banks.

Having been on MN for a few years, I see the number of apparent accidental pregnancies, ONS babies and multiple pregnancies with men who are utterly useless.... again leading to single mothers with absent fathers....

There seems to be so little thought about creating a new life and bringing into poverty.

What's more is the encouragement they get from posters to go ahead have the baby...you'll be fine...you'll manage...babies don't need much and the rest of it...even after the OP has said they have little or no support...the father isn't interested and there's very little going for them.

Yet you hear continued encouragement...of "I did it" "You can get xyz benefits" "You'll be fine".

I agree. The larger family threads are astonishing too. It’s a vicious circle.

@Trialanderror02

I will be honest and say as a single mum of 6 year old I am on full benefits at the moment because she is disabled we get more than the normal rate ( by a a lot ) We survive fine on that but when I look at what I would get as a single mum normally i couldn’t cope.

But surely if your dc wasn't disabled you'd be working, so less financial issues? Ive been a single mum since my dc were babies and always worked full time and never been eligible for free school meals.

Of course is nothing new. Marcus Rashford should know about going hungry when he was growing up.

The government seems totally on the back foot over the reaction to the FSM vote and honestly I can’t blame them.

Why are people up in arms that the tories have refused to extend a provision over and above what’s already provided? How is this a shock?

We’ve literally watched as food bank usage has exploded, people being sanctioned left right and centre (even when hospitalised), bedroom tax, cuts to disability benefits, sanctions, universal credit, over a million people in working families living below the poverty line... and it’s the fact that they haven’t provided a meal a day for an extra week that has made people lose their shit?

I don’t understand this either. Where has this outrage been for the last 10 years? Or is it just that this is the first year where a lot of previously financially comfortable people have had to access statutory sick pay or universal credit and realise what an unmanageable pittance it is so now they care?

This reminds me of ‘the things you can’t talk about when we talk about race’ which was a brilliant C4 doc that looked at the stats etc behind the the things people might think but don’t say.

Anyway, my point is, it’s really hard to talk about because there is lots that people don’t want to say, but you have to say in order to move forward meaningfully. anyone who has worked with dysfunctional families knows how very soon ‘sympathy’ runs out. Some are chaotic, grabby, manipulative, ungrateful, entitled. They spew out the damage that is both cyclical and generational and borne from pure pain. So what to do?

Applaud the teachers who work with them and put safety measures around their children.
Absolutely children should be fed through the holidays and it needs to use the means tested system that is already in place. Knowing how chaotic these families are making them get the food needs to be as simple as possible and not rely on them getting it.

There is also a big argument for shortening school holidays so there is not such a lot of time when vulnerable children are ‘off grid’.

@AldiAisleofCrap

Getting rid of the benefit cap , the two child limit, the five week wait for UC and the “getting paid twice in one month” issue in UC would help instantly.

Hmm not sure getting rid of the benefit cap would be a great idea in the long run. And the 2 child benefit rule was implemented for good reason.

Paying more than a pittance for the minimum wage would be a good start....

Apart from social issues UK has shockingly low wages compared to other developed countries. I don't work in a particularly lucrative career but when I moved to US my salary doubled and one look at Indeed shows the huge discrepancy between salaries for the same jobs in UK. If wages don't increase significantly poverty levels will always be high.

@WizWoz

Perhaps it’s more a question of why people insist on having children they know they can’t afford to feed? I have sympathy for those who’ve lost jobs or ended up in unexpectedly difficult circumstances, but others have purposely chosen to have children in the full knowledge they can’t afford them and the expectation that everyone else will pay to fund their life choices.

Exactly. Someone suggesting taking away the benefit cap and the 2 child rule 🙄 yeah right- course that would open up the floodgates to be utterly abused.

You’re also right in saying it’s different when a couple lose their jobs for example and have 3 kids. That’s completely different

Or is it just that this is the first year where a lot of previously financially comfortable people have had to access statutory sick pay or universal credit and realise what an unmanageable pittance it is so now they care?

I suspect this is very close to the truth.

Because people live in expensive cities when they can move to much cheaper towns, pay less in rent and have more money to live of?

It’s one solution, but of course it’s not as straight forward as that.

There is also a big argument for shortening school holidays so there is not such a lot of time when vulnerable children are ‘off grid’.

I’ve never heard of this before. I strongly disagree though. If a child/children are vulnerable there’s no point shortening school holidays. Totally pointless the fact that the child is vulnerable needs to be addressed.

I’m a community volunteer, we cover food bank, benefit applications etc.
An example of UC is a single mum plus one child, lost her job, only other income is child benefit, was awarded £1100 per calendar month in one monthly payment, £650 of that is her private let rent, all other bills, food, clothing etc to be paid from £450 including expensive top up meters which can guzzle £40 easily per week in winter. It’s a vicious cycle of what to pay and not to pay and for newly unemployed ppl they often have credit cards, loans to pay that were affordable when they worked.

@Merryoldgoat

Or is it just that this is the first year where a lot of previously financially comfortable people have had to access statutory sick pay or universal credit and realise what an unmanageable pittance it is so now they care?

I suspect this is very close to the truth.

But that’s because they’ve lost their jobs so are having to use the safety net. It fur sure wasn’t a choice and they worked hard to get in to their original position - before say being furloughed.

why people insist on having children they know they can't afford to feed
Perhaps because they see the plight of low income childless? People complain about women getting pregnant to get housed. A minority do yes. However, if everyone had access to affordable housing they wouldn't need to do this would they.

Separately, many people can afford their children - but circumstances change.

Redundancy, bereavement, disability, long-term illness, domestic abuse. The safety net has been slowly disappearing for the past 20 or 30 years.

It started in earnest with Blair's war on the disabled. Followed by Brown putting us on the path to reduced (and now pretty much gone) housing benefits. Their successors simply enthusiastically continued down that road.

We need mass council housing (no right to buy). It won't solve all the problems but it would make a big difference.

@TableFlowerss
I think @Merryoldgoat point is that many people before they were in need of UC/ support they were comfortable and didn’t care how low benefits were but now they need it, the outrage is there.
Also, ppl who were furloughed still has a steady income.

The need for a furlough system showed the current benefits system as the farcical, unfit for purpose system that it is.

If it functioned properly, people would have been able to access funds to keep things ticking over when their work failed for whatever reason, the system would be flexible enough to cope with variable incomes and and nimble enough to cope with self employment.

It’s clear the government thinks people need around £2000/month to live to a decent standard of living. Quite different to current benefit levels.

But that’s because they’ve lost their jobs so are having to use the safety net. It fur sure wasn’t a choice and they worked hard to get in to their original position - before say being furloughed.

Yes I’m well aware that some like you think that the people claiming now as a result of COVID are worthy, and those who were claiming before are unworthy. That’s a very easy narrative to buy into I suppose but it’s not reality.

Only a very small percentage of benefit claimants are reliant on benefits longterm, unless they are disabled, carers or otherwise unable to work. A significant number of those on universal credit are actually working. More than four million working people were living in poverty in 2018:

www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/04/four-million-british-workers-live-in-poverty-charity-says

As a country we prop up private businesses profits through tax credits by subsiding salaries because they are too low.

But sure, everyone on benefits is a feckless layabout - except for those worthy ones who are claiming now because of COVID, obviously