To not understand benefits of £7k a month!

[CoastalWave]

Awful story in the paper today (apologies, Daily Mail! But I'm sure it's in others)

Beyond distressing what has happened to the children (and the dogs) and I'm delighted this pair have been jailed.

But what also stood out, was the comment that they received £7000 a month in benefits.

How?

When my DH lost his job during cover and we only had my part time wage to live on, we were told that £1k a month was absolutely fine for a family of 4 to live on and we were entitled to nothing. Zero. Nada. Out of that £1k a month was our £600 mortgage, £200 council tax, £150 gas/electric etc etc. Basically there was no bloody chance we could live on £1k a month. We lost all of our savings and we're still paying back the debt we accrued now.

How do scumbags like this even just get handed that amount of money per month? And moreover, no one is bloody checking up on them clearly. Those poor children.

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Can someone please enlighten me as to how these even happens/is allowed? What on earth is £7k benefits made up of? Are all families with 7 kids and not working getting £7k a month because if they are I'm sacking off work and popping out a few more children.

It's not even subtle.

Successive Tory governments have attacked and stigmatised disabled people, and benefit claimants in general, openly and constantly for years.

People have seen the stories about people dying while waiting on appeals. They've seen posts from those of us who actually have to try and navigate the system, but they buy into the sensationalist stories or the 'well my sister's neighbour's brother's friend's cousin claims for a bad back and I saw him on a ladder on Thursday so there's obviously plenty on the fiddle'.

In some cases it's because they are clueless and have no experience of the impact of disability or ill health on their lives, but in many it's because they're judgemental twats who think that they'd do it differently and better if it was them and therefore everyone else should do it different. People are also very complacent that it'll never be them that needs the rapidly diminishing safety net.

That the thread on her was started about the money, and the OP has repeatedly shown the focus is the money, says it all because the OP sadly isn't unusual.

If its so difficult to get these benefits why did these fools get it?

Presumably because they met the criteria.

There is an underlying tone throughout that they should not have got the benefits and were claiming fraudulently. Except none of us know that to be the case. The fools probably got the benefits because they were entitled to them.

It's so sad, those poor children.

With regards to the benefits we don't know why they were getting that much in benefits. We assume that some of them might be disabled. It might be they receive a lot in housing benefit or childcare costs.

With regards to checks being made on families, I have dc with disabilities. 15 years ago when my eldest was little there was so much more support and home visits than there is now. I had homestart, the children's centre, barnardos, a HV, portage, the family fund, community nurse etc. At one stage I had various professionals visiting us daily. Last year my son tried to kill himself during lockdown. He was physically patched up, seen once at camhs, school pastoral care lady kept in touch by phone for a couple of weeks and that was it.

If we don't want children or vulnerable adults to slip through the net like this then we need to bring back the services that have been cut.

One of them had a low IQ but if a PP is seriously saying that they are entitled to £7k in benefits per month and they live this sort of life for years on end with no flags being raised then something is clearly wrong with the benefits system.

Neglecting kids and pets is nothing to do with the benefits system.
It is a failure of those around them, schools, social services.

Sorry but £7k per month is an obscene amount of money regardless of your family size. If you can play the system like this and get more and more for every child you have regardless of whether you can afford it then yes - we do need a review of who gets what.

Are PP saying all of them are disabled, all of them have SN, all of them cannot work and actually if they have another child with a disability they will get even more. Then I am sorry but we need to take a careful look at our benefits system.

No, if they were entitled to it because of multiple disabled people in the home and there was no help then it’s a massive failing on the social system. Not the benefits system.

No, we don’t need a review of who gets what.

We need another review of why children who should be on the radar because of their needs and living conditions have slipped through the net again.

Pushing the focus onto the benefits side simply allows the actual failings to be ignored again.

But we don't know whether they are disabled or why they are claiming that amount of benefits. It's all speculation. And in this circumstance if it's true that they were receiving that much in disability benefits, we should be questioning why a family with that many severely disabled children were getting so little practical support that no professionals noticed that the children were being severely neglected.

cross posted with @JustLyra

The original story notes there were 10 people in the household, presumably 3 adults and 7 children. That's £700 a month for each person including housing costs. Not exactly an excessive amount if several were disabled. They were living in a 3 bedroom property!

I remember the Tories bleating about Broken Britain in the Gordon Brown era. Well it truly is broken now, broken by the Tories themselves. Social Services are so underfunded they can hardly function, and as for housing, the tales I hear on a daily basis are heart breaking.

Are you refering to Williamson or Johnson please?

A child with higher rate DLA will also entitle the family to £414 a month extra in UC (higher rate disabled child element), on top of the child element of £290 (first child) or £244 (subsequent children), and the carer element (approx £170).

The local housing allowance (ie, the maximum that benefits will pay) for a 4-bed property in Eastbourne is around £1,200 a month.

To get £7k a month, they would have to have more than one family member with significant disabilities.

Pretty damn difficult.

I work in welfare rights, and my team does a LOT of PIP/DLA applications. We have around 60% of PIP applications refused, and we're specialists at them. We have 100% success rate at appeal though, so that's an awful lot of claims being refused incorrectly.

Every application is accompanied by evidence that confirms diagnoses, but 60% are still refused.

The health assessors' reports are laughable. They cut and paste standard paragraphs, and it's not uncommon for them to change the gender of the client several times in the course of one report. They also include things like the client appearing well dressed, when the assessment was done over the phone.

They also include things like the client appearing well dressed, when the assessment was done over the phone.

That happened to one of the guys in my elder DD’s narcolepsy support group. He was “well dressed” and apparently “enjoyed spending time in his garden”… which is interesting for a phone assessment done while he was in hospital and when he lives on the 7th floor and has no garden.

Then again the DWP themselves have on one occasion, that like legend on that group, described narcolepsy as not disabling as it’s “predictably unpredictable”.

You wouldn't get that even in London unless there were significant disabilities involved.

The highest LHA rate comes to nearly £1,600 a month, the child element for the first child is £290 and the standard allowance for an adult is £334-something.

The max payment for childcare costs is £650-ish, so the maximum a single person with one child and no disabilities/health conditions could get is around £2,884, less 55% of their net earnings above the work allowance of £344.

If they're not working, and don't have a disability, their benefit income would be capped at £442pw.

Someone is pulling @CrossStichQueen's leg, or she's got it very wrong.

"and actually if they have another child with a disability they will get even more."

You think people 'order' a child with a disability so they can get benefits.

The important question here is why the children were left in this situation.

Absolutely this.

I wonder if they were attending school? And if not, why didn't this attract the attention of the council?

I can't imagine that this level of neglect would have gone unnoticed by a school.

@LakieLady

I know!! It's awful.

I know of one man who was told he didn't SOUND like he was in pain - was he supposed to say 'ouch' at various times throughout the call?

I know a lady who was told because she could get into a car she didn't need adapted cutlery - she has severely deformed hands.

I also know of someone who was told because they worked until recently they did not need any help with any of the descriptors. They had lost their job due to becoming disabled.

I once had a client whose report included that she had no difficulties reading, getting around unaccompanied etc.

She had an ophthalmology appointment 3 weeks after her assessment, following which she was registered blind.

Do are you advocating sterilising women at risk of having more disabled children or leaving children with disabilities in poverty if too many of their siblings have disabilities?

Whatever you mean your views are contemptible

No-one on benefits should be getting £7000 a month after tax.

The End