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?

This is not about supporting disabled children(which is not effected by the policy), it is about having more than 2.
And more importantly attaching the appropriate responsibility to having more than 2. Absolutely no one is saying do not have more than 2 but just think about what it entails beforehand.

E.g. get married, have the appropriately sized house, take out life insurance, boost savings

If you understood a little more about economics then you wouldn’t suggest raising employment costs and taxes EVEN more for UK companies.

Yep.

I had a very helpful work coach ask if I couldn't just get a cleaning job in the meantime to make things easier. Make things easier for who exactly?

They only slightly eased up when the hospital wrote them a strongly worded letter because I was beside myself with stress already and them hounding me was tipping me over the edge. It was the last thing I needed, especially during that time.

No you can't just simply opt out of working, but there are ways around it if you really don't want to. Handing in sick notes for 12 weeks at a time, and the applications for PIP soared when the roll out to UC became active and women (or primary carers) were given work commitments once their youngest child turned 3.

If I’m being honest as I said in my last post, the families this policy will target are very very likely to have ‘disability’ at play anyway. I know loads of families with 3+ kids, where at least 1 child has SEN and claims DLA, the parents either don’t work or 1 works and they ‘top up’ and they continue to have more DC regardless. In fact I can think of a good handful where all the children have some kind of diagnosis, ‘SEN needs’ and DLA and this doesn’t seem to have put the parents off having more kids at all.

To be honest, I imagine in lots of these families that you describe that the parents probably are SEN too as we know there is often a strong genetic component and this is probably impacting their decision making process. Either way I don't think just handing these parents extra money and assuming they have the motivation or capacity to use it to tackle the disadvantages that a child living in poverty would ordinarily face is a huge leap of faith. They clearly aren't able to put their children first in their family planning decisions so why would they suddenly start doing it now?

This is absolutely my experience too and I say this as someone who is on long term benefits with a disabled child. I now live in a very deprived area and volunteer in the local school, where there are a number of local families with 3+ DC and at least one of their DC has either ADHD and/or autism. They will be getting several sets of DLA on top of their uncapped benefits but yet sadly I don't think the educational/social outcomes will be any better for the family as a whole.

Well, exactly.

Many on them are getting 1500 in DLA alone. Yet they’re online starting Gofundmes and begging for free items.

I'm pleased to see that this abhorrent post got deleted. Imagine having that kind of an attitude towards disabled children. My respect to those who answered it with composure.

I know there are people in this thread who support keeping the child benefit cap, and that’s a legitimate policy view to discuss. I would invite those of you who share that stance to come forward and make it clear that you do not agree with the ableist and discriminatory remarks made by that poster. I'm aware that one of two have done so already.

Yes other posters won’t believe us but there are loads of families like this! Think how many posts on here there are where every single child has a diagnosis - in fact I’m quite surprised if there are, for example, 3 kids and only 1 with SEN

Well isn't it more likely that you will have one or two children with SEN the more children you have?

I think it can be assumed that posters don't agree with the sentiment of that post unless they express otherwise. It's like asking people to confirm they're not racist, sexist etc just because they don't want the cap lifted.

Autism/ADHD etc can be genetic so it would make perfect sense to me if a family had say, 3 children and 2 had Autism/ADHD or even all 3.

Especially if one or both parents are also Autistic and/or have ADHD.

Exactly. Hand in sick notes for 12 weeks, have a phone call to UC to get put onto LCWRA, stay on LCWRA for the long haul as it’s never reviewed. Job done.

I’m disabled myself and certainly not ableist but we can’t pretend that some families are not absolutely rinsing the taxpayer while continuing to have children with a very high likelihood of SEN. I used to follow one woman on Insta who had 4 children, 2 diagnosed with ASD/ADHD, both on DLA, she was ‘fighting’ for a diagnosis for a third and didn’t work. In total she was getting:

1. A taxpayer funded 4 bedroom house (on account of the fact her kids are disabled and can’t share)
2. UC and 2 lots of high rate DLA - so around £3000 per month in benefits, if not more, including CB
3. 1 child in SEN school with taxis. Through my work I know this would cost approx 100k a year

A conservative estimate would be a taxpayer bill of £250,000 a year, to house and educate and feed her and her kids. The youngest is quite little and I wouldn’t be surprised if she has more.

For context, probably 20 people are working full time to fund her. I find it very hard and even galling that posters would see more kids as her ‘right’

People are free to have more than 2 children if they want despite the environmental disadvantages but they should not expect others to financially support this decisions.

I agree with this.

The cap has done nothing but mean more children are in poverty and I think there is evidence to show it doesn't actually even save any money, once additional costs in the health, education and justice systems are accounted for as a result of the higher poverty numbers.

What happens if they lift the cap and children are ‘still in poverty’ a couple of years down the line, with outcomes no better?

They won't be in poverty because by giving the household money you by default increase the household income to a point where they will be considered outside the measure. The fact these children's lives haven't actually changed or nor have their outcomes doesn't seem to bother some people

Before the cap there were children who were still in poverty. It's not about handing out money but rather what is being done with the money because there are no checks being conducted on what is being done with the money, more is handed out. It is an unsustainable model. At some point we have to say stop and look more deeply into how to realistically solve the issue of child poverty including increased responsibility from parents.

That’s my concern tickly. That our welfare social net society is abused by some. It’s very hard to comment without straying into some dark places / eugenics which makes this very difficult to deal with.

How sad that a system set up to help those in genuine need through no fault of their own is abused in this way. The risk is the tax payer is pushed too far and there is a backlash then the genuine claimants will suffer.

All society can do is try, and keep trying, to improve outcomes for children. Lifting the cap can be one of many measures as part of this.

Putting the cap in place didn't work.

That kind of approach would only work if we had infinite money and could keep throwing jelly at the wall until something sticks without anyone else losing out.

As things stand, we are in horrific debt. Interest alone is costing more than the entire education budget and Reeves is adding to the debt rapidly. She now needs to go back to struggling families to ask for yet more tax, partially to fund this. Other children may lose their homes and miss out on things to fund this. We have to be absolutely certain this is the right thing to do. Are you absolutely certain? Could you look another family in the eye who are having to make painful financial cut backs to find this and promise them it will all be worthwhile?

Perhaps UC should fund 100% of childcare then not up to 85% plus have an additional element for SEN childcare / respite if those parents want to work ?

PP on here explained really well how child poverty is estimated.

So what Labour want to do is to remove the cap and increase taxes on higher earners. Your median level goes down, income of large families going slightly up. Magic - vast number of children are lifted out of poverty.

Did it help those children who did need help? most likely not. Did it take away from those currently better off children - absolutely. So all looks great on a paper, but the net result is worse or the same.