Do you think we should life the two child benefit cap?

[Marshmallow4545]

I believe that the majority of people think that the cap should remain and child poverty should be tackled in different ways.

Personally I would like to see children on FSMs allowed free access to after school extracurricular clubs and activities. I would also provide more poor families with access to food banks and would look to stock these with a range of healthy and nutritious options either through donation or state funding if required. I would also look to recruit volunteers to offer advice on health and diet in these places. I would provide clothing and school uniform banks with high quality, second hand clothing that kids would actually want to wear. I have some branded 'fashionable' stuff my kids have grown out of that's still in great condition that I would happily donate.

All of the above in my view is preferable to lifting the cap and would be more effective in tackling the impact that child poverty has on the child.

So AIBU that the two child cap should remain and we should look at other more direct ways to tackle child poverty?

Kids in general have life due to their parents choices. Vegetarian parents don't generally feed their kids meat for example.

No on
e us saying the kids can't eat , merely if the parents want freebie meals then they have to get over their issues with it. Otherwise they just have to pay or send packed lunch like anyone else

Completely agree

Anyone who thinks opportunities or money available to children who's parents received benefits are at all comparable to those with working parents earning a salary are absolutely delusional. You know it's not true yourself which is why you said it provided extras for your children, that was literally your incentive yet you're acting like people have no incentive.

Personally for all the demonising of poor or disabled parents on here I'm much more concerned for the poor children being raised by grown adults who find it impossible to empathise with children in poverty. If you're a parent and resent another child having a free school meal or meals child benefit that might make their home warm at night, you've gotta be extremely cold inside. Hopefully your own children never have any ill physical or mental health or disabilities that prevent them from working or working full time lest you start considering them scroungers too.

But sadly load s of people don't give a shit about the kids. They just want to show the parents a lesson.

These parents could be carers with children in receipt of dla though ? There are so many possibilities other than choosing not to work (which you can’t as you’ll get sanctioned ?)

Would that be optional or forced?

Then there is money from the DLA

I’m really torn on this issue.

As a lifelong Labour voter, I am deeply concerned that the number of children living in poverty remains stubbornly high. But we are told time and time again that the economy can’t afford the current welfare bill. So can we or can’t we afford it?

But I don’t think scrapping the cap will change things for the better for children. Before the cap, we had hundreds of thousands of children living in poverty. Why would it be any different this time?

What we need to do is to do things differently.

Rather than lift the 2 child limit, I think I would prefer to see more being done around free school meals. That more families should be eligible (but not universal). That more money should go into school meals to ensure that the nutritional quality and amount provided is increased. There should be more funding to increase availability of before and after school clubs to provide nutritious breakfast and teas.

Yes, I am aware that I am suggesting that the state should pay for children to have 3 healthy meals at school. That this will cost a lot of money. That parents should be providing this but the reality is that some can’t. But if you really want to lift children out of poverty, good food and being in school is a bloody good start.

I say all of this as a child of the 70s and 80s who grew up in relative poverty. We survived on my dad’s low wage and the Family Allowance. No benefits for my disabled sister (except the nappies provided by the NHS). But she did go to a fantastic all through SEN school. That’s what helped us.

You do realise there are lots of different working patterns, and lots of professional jobs aren’t 9-5? I started work today at 7am, I will finish at 9pm, I do not need to be working all hours within those times.

That’s needed for extra costs due to disability so can’t be factored in completely to replace the UC child element

Disability is already an exception to the two child cap so those families wouldn't be impacted.

No it’s not ?

you can claim a disability element but not child element for a third or subsequent child

She can't be bothered to actually research the issue while she wants to decide poor people for having an aversion to experts or something...🙄

Disability isn’t an exception to the 2 child cap. My DD doesn’t receive the child related element of UC but she does receive the disabled child element.

My DS who is also disabled receives both the child element and disabled child element as he is my second child.

My household is exempt from the benefit cap but not the 2 child cap. Is that what you meant?

Which is fair. You can have some benefits, but it's less due to your financial decision. The taxpayer will not suffer.

I'm so tired of posts like this. They are just so naive.

When we talk about a child living in poverty what do we mean? That their needs aren't being met in some key ways? If we were to list the needs of children and look to directly meet these needs with specific provision around food, clothing, access yo clubs etc then this would ensure the needs are being met and would alleviate the parents from meeting these costs freeing up more money in the household to meet other less specific costs.

The idea that you can just pay out loads of money to families that for whatever reason chose to have more than two children after a cap was imposed is incredibly risky. You'll always get a lot of the whataboutery but most of these parents will have been living in poverty and chosen to have more children knowing that they were driving their existing children into further poverty. This is not the kind of responsible decision making that we would expect of a loving and responsible parent. Why do you think they will spend the extra money they receive in a financially responsible way?

Hopefully lifting the 2 child cap goes ahead

Yes apologies. That's what I meant.

The is very simple answer to this - can we afford it? If not, then they shouldn’t lift it.

If they do lift the cap which we can afford then its obviously to soften the blow of increasing all other taxes.

No it shouldn't be lifted. People not on benefits don't get a raise because they decide to have another child.

We would then be in the position of the already squeezed middle earners not being able to afford children themselves, while at the same time paying for others to have as many as they want.

100% think they should remove it. It hasn’t done anything but ensure more and more children are living in poverty and has reversed all the gains made on child poverty in the Blair/Brown years. When children live in poverty, the impact is felt throughout all of society and ALL of the evidence shows that it’s worth it. Every £1 invested in children saves up to £6 elsewhere. The only reason to not invest in children is ideological and comes from a place of categorising people as ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving’. Instead of funding more food banks (the huge number of which is one of the most egregious outcomes of the last 15 years), just give people more money. The belief that it isn’t spent on the children is not borne out by the evidence.

No.

I badly phrased something. I find it ironic that you have picked up on this as your post is almost incomprehensible

Why do you think they won’t? I think that once this is lifted that parents who have been struggling will be overjoyed to be able to spend that money. Not on unecessary things but more food , having the heating on longer, maybe a dehumidifier if their home is damp. It’s not all about clubs and enrichment activities to lift children out of poverty. It’s about children having a warm meal and getting into a bed that’s not cold and damp. It’s about their parents not being so overworked and stressed and they can maybe then have time to do their homework with them etc.