To think the level of state involvement many posters expect is bonkers?

[FaeryRing]

It seems like there is nothing the state shouldn’t be responsible for any more! Feeding your kids, getting them to school, hiring ‘behaviour specialists’ for every classroom because parents don’t want to discipline their own children, giving you money towards virtually anything you ask for because it’s not fair you have to pay for anything yourself.. I find it absolutely wild and don’t think it’s at all realistic or representative of what most adults believe?

@MistressoftheDarkSide is spot on isn't she!
Disability bashing is like a national sport for some people on here!
Thank you, she is only 2 and a half, had to wait until 2 for her diagnosis even though the consultant said she was sure that it was CP, since then she has not been supoorted at all, she has been given sub-standard equipment and not seen a doctor in person since before she was diagnosed, she was even given her diagnosis over video call!
She didn't ask to be born with this condition, but she has and will suffer due to lack of care because the nhs is so stretched, that isn't their fault and it isn't hers!

Provide early and effective support. Invest in public services, housing, education and training, and the NHS, and it will pay off. This is relevant for disabled people but also the other social problems discussed on this thread.

Employer attitudes is another issue that needs addressing. Many businesses no longer want or can't afford to provide training on the job. They also don't want to hire longterm unemployed or disabled people. They don't want or feel unable to make adjustments or offer flexible work options. That needs to change. Encourage and support businesses to do this.

Agree with this, @Againname

I'd also add, go after men who don't pay child support when they opt out of family life.

Where I live, the state goes after deadbeat fathers both within the state, in other states, and in other countries. The state tracks them down via postal records, the National New Hire Reporting Service, the Federal Parent Locator Service, the State Parent Locator Service, the state Department of Employment Security (unemployment), and the Secretary of State Office (driver's license and other ID services).

Wages and monetary welfare benefits can be garnished, non custodial parents can be forced to pay for health insurance or add children to employer-provided health insurance, and the courts will issue a warrant for arrest or for contempt of court if a parent goes two months overdue on payments.

Don’t you have one coming up? Do you have US sites where you’re more worried about your own politics
I'm not a citizen of the US so I can't vote.

Or are we to blame for Trump also
I haven't suggested that. I have suggested that there are plenty of people here who would feel very much at home in Trump's America, or in Rand Paul's. Wannabe Texans.

Also what are you suggesting about the op, don’t be coy
That she is spouting minimally digested hate she has picked up somewhere.

Well if you vote him in then obviously it’s your electorate who are keen

I don’t think Trump is as popular here

90% of the people posting on this thread would happily vote for Trump if they lived in America.

The view they are expressing are those of small staters and libertarian conservatives.

And if the parents still didn’t comply ? What then? Remove children into private children’s homes where their outcomes are dire but cost millions ?

Extra funding gained by removing fiscally incompetent Tory government.

invest in whole country not vested interests.

We might afford all that as well if we weren't paying nearly 20% of government expenditure on healthcare.

I think you should look at your own voters, since they are the ones who will get you Trump

You can’t pin all woes on mn threads in U.K.

And no I don’t think you know how they would vote

Provide early and effective support. Invest in public services, housing, education and training, and the NHS, and it will pay off

I don’t actually believe this. How will it pay off? At some point, you are just wasting money and not getting any better results.

yes, I expect state involvement to ensure a basic minimum standard of living for me and my children, but in exchange I'm not going to be burgling your candlesticks

This … doesn’t speak well of you. If all that prevents you from stealing is a bit of dole money, that is not good

My parents used to take me out of school for the last few and first few weeks of every school year! I believe it was a right. You had to fill in a holiday form but the school was not allowed to say no. I missed huge amounts of school.

Free dentistry for all, a GP appointment within 2 days, GP home visits, rural bus services, council housing, weekly rubbish collection, second post, state pension at 60/65, districts nurses, meals on wheels, beat bobbies who would do more than give you a crime number when you got burgled, ambulances that would turn up before you died, council run nursing and children's homes...

I couldn't agree with this more.
I want to go back to the place where the welfare state was literally to fill a gap between jobs or for those who couldn't work due to significant health issues.
Now it is a whole way of life and being employed often feels like a choice not a necessity.
Parents need to parent, people need to follow advice on healthy lifestyle and being in employment should be expected.
education and health sectors could then go back to focus on their core business.

I think this is reflective of a wider trend / sentiment in society. Of course, we all pay taxes to support the most vulnerable and public services. But we've gone way too far. Surely personal responsibility isn't a bad thing!

What is wrong with teachers brushing their teeth? Surely everyone should ?

When specifically do you want to go back to?

Because the welfare state, and the state itself, has been significantly dismantled over the last four decades. We have much less welfare state support now than in the early 80s.

Do you want to wind it considerably back to pre-WW2 levels, so before the NHS, before modern education, before housing etc? You want a society similar to that envisaged by the very right wing of the Conservative Party?

Or do you mean e.g. 1970s, where there was much more welfare state support than now?

Or do you not actually know, you're just repeatinv some nonsense about personal responsibility you heard Liz Truss say once?

I feel like it’s a form of blackmail, ‘pay for and do everything we ask or we will neglect our children’. Totally appreciate it’s not the children’s fault and they need to be protected at all costs, but how far do we go with this to the detriment of everyone else? And not just children but the individual too. I see a lot of class A users through my line of work. Each of them must cost the state hundreds of thousands a year - they’re in and out of hospital for fights/overdoses, constant police involvement, in and out of the court system like a revolving door, plus they’re all on benefits and living in supported housing (which they usually trash). It feels like society is now just a big life support system for the terminally needy.

Well said. And I'm sorry you worry for your DGD.

You are correct we had far more welfare state support 40 years ago. Fewer rights in the workplace but there used to be loads more support.
We clearly need:
Social workers - more
District nurses - more
Health visitors - more
Doctors - more
Housing officers - more
Benefits advisors - more
Librarians - more
Teachers - more

This thread is very Liz Truss in tone. Reactionary people talking bollocks mostly. Just repeating failed policies because they heard someone say it.

It feels like society is now just a big life support system for the terminally needy.

Please pick the year you want to go back to.

You're making no sense, because the welfare state is much smaller than it was 40 years ago.

Only those too stupid to understand inflation and house price rises would measure the welfare state in £££. And I'm sure you're not as silly as Liz Truss.

@qwertyqwertyqwertyqwerty
I want a welfare state that's able to be an emergency fall back for people not a day to day provision of everything they want, not need.
I absolutely want people who need support to get it but I also want z as n expectation that you need to work and parent your children and not leave everything to the state and teachers and social workers.
Someone said we need more social workers, nurses etc.
Maybe.
Or maybe we need people to be more responsible and independent and we need fewer of these professionals.

In late 70s, a family could get a council house, get a dentist, see a doctor, get rent or mortgage paid, get unployment benefit, get good school meals, get free milk, see the nit nurse, watch state infomercials, go to uni free, go on training schemes, go to night classes free, go to a library, see a social worker for elderly relatives.

What is this smaller welfare state people are describing back then? I think a lot of people on this thread have taken mind-altering drugs.

The issue now is the three high costs of:
-Pensions (because people live longer)
-NHS (because people live longer plus medical advances)
-Housing costs (because HB goes to private landlords and house prices have risen so high)

Are people seriously saying they want to cut (as the very right of the Tory party advocate) rather than increase the economic health of the nation (as the whole centre of politics and pretty much every economist would suggest)?

This thread is mindblowingly wrong.

You're making no sense, because the welfare state is much smaller than it was 40 years ago.

How are you defining this? Ie what metric says it’s smaller now

State dependency is high

Yep. No one wants any responsibility.

Basically they’re all children who haven’t grown into adults.

Its going to be the mother of all wake up calls when the state finally collapses and can’t do any of the things that are expected of it and these wimps need to fend for themselves.

Yes, this is the sort of empty nonsense I mean. You haven't defined what you mean, it's just words.

Which year do you want to go back to?

If you think the WS is too BIG now, you can presumably identify the year when it was smaller?

Except you can't, because it is far smaller now than it used to be 40 years ago. There is far less support now.

However there is a medical issue sometimes with SEN and that involves low muscle tone. So many kids with neuro issues have this and as a consequence have issue with bowel problems. They become constipated and then have faecal overflow. My son had this and would soil in junior school. He would sit in it for the whole day which was demeaning to him. The school would say that they had not noticed. He was completely potty trained and dry at 2.5 years but for this issue was on a selection of drugs eg sodium pifisulphate, eventually movicol and it was us having to regulate these meds like a chemistry experiment. He fluctuated from Winter to Summer as he was more constipated in warmer weather.

Many kids with low muscle tone have this issue.

Forty years ago he would have died from influenza as he could not swallow for a couple of years so maybe that is a direct cause of more work for schools. Babies that would have died now survive.

Smaller in terms of what support an individual or family can receive from the state.

We have a low wage, high cost economy. People didn't need much state support when we had a high wage, low cost economy.

Trussian economics abounds on this thread.