To wonder what else can be done to break the cycle of generations living off benefits?

[Allonthesametrain]

Sounds harsh because It is. As a former teacher, then eduation social worker, now the past few years more heavily involved with school attendance.

My desire has always been to help children from unprivileged backgrounds to know their worth and achieve the best they can and this has been my career from age 23 to 57.

The number of times I've cried, torn my hair out, is immeasurable. I and colleagues have gone above and beyond to support the families, genuinely care about them, but unfortunately the outcome has been, as I've said in title, it's a continiation of the cycle of being brought up within a small community and low expectations.

So many gorgeous kids (supported throughout their young lives until they leave school) who tell you their dreams of what they want to to achieve in life, we do everything we can to enable it and some have indeed broken out of the circle but unfortunately the reality has been...

Parents who live lifestyles of no bedtime routine, tell their kids not to come back before ...pm, sleep in and don't get them out of bed ready and fed for school and as for weekends, pub and take back a new bloke

Parents who have issues themselves and project them onto DC. The kids soon realise they can stay off school for feigning illness and would actually be a comfort to Mum

The parents who just cba and say shall we just still in bed?

Of course there are so many other mitigating factors but these are the 3 main experiences we've dealt with. Unfortunately it really does come down to poor parenting and no matter what interventions we do to encourage attendance, only a minority are genuine.

So the cycle...DC think education isn't important, parents are hopeless role models and can often be aggressive to teachers, a deflection of blame.

Then oh DD gets pregnant at age 15, DS has been reprimanded by the police for scooting around in a balaclava. Then pure hostility when we try to continue to talk to them and what could be done to help.

Basically it's just such a shame, these sweet young kids who say they want to be ... become so influenced by their homelife, a need to fit in with their family and peers from the same estate, that they ignore the support we give them, don't turn up to appointments etc.

For the genuine cases, DC with SEN, the effort to try and ensure they are in best place is utmost and it's heartbreaking there aren't enough of them. Yes, we do know genuine cases and not just so many parents striving for a diagnosis because they feed DC a terrible diet and let them stay up late so are tired and irritable at school.

Expecting some backlash, whatever anyone says I can reason with.

Couldn’t agree more. But you’re going to get roasted, you know that right?

Can't believe you used to be a teacher. There's so many errors in your post.

There aren't going to be that many jobs in the future anyway with the advance of AI so living on benefits will continue to be a lifestyle for many people I don't think it's going to ease to be honest.

🍿

Change the system itself.

I am now on UC and have more money than what I did working full time in the system as a teaching assistant. 3 children, council house and it pays me MORE to stay at home? Make it make sense. I’m not going to work to be poorer.

Do you have source for this claim that generations are living off benefits?

Lovely ragebait for a Friday night. 🍿

It doesn’t really sound like your post is about benefits tbh.

its not really the case that generations easily live on benefits. This is a very pre austerity attitude- very 90s actually.

you can no longer just not work because you don’t fancy it. Disability benefits are difficult to qualify for. The dole itself, unemployment benefits, are next to nothing.

Not buying it. YABVU. You jumped the shark with “ genuine cases”.

I agree OP. See it all the time on my job too.

Good role models from their own backgrounds can help. I obviously don't know your situation, but a professional who was born into a middle class family isn't going to inspire someone from a working class background. They need to see people who came from where they did and have succeeded. That doesn't mean there's no place for middle class people supporting them, there absolutely is. Building relationships with people from different backgrounds can reduce the feelings of class consciousness and build cultural capital. People from poor backgrounds can feel inferior around middle class people, it really knocks their confidence, it can leave them feeling that they don't belong and aren't able to go on to higher education or work in professional roles.

You fail to mention that the teenage pregnancy rate is considerably lower now than in the 80s add 90s, so it's far less likely the daughter will be pregnant at 15.

Sorry, this isn't the point of your thread @Allonthesametrain but how did you move from teaching into education social work? Did you have to retrain?

This isn’t a roasting, but you should know that your parental type support doesn’t fix the cycle of poverty and deprivation? Dreaming and parental support doesn’t give a child access to educational opportunities, it doesn’t fix the poverty that means they have no way to study(no internet, no electricity) or are too hungry/cold/sick to study.

It doesn’t fix the fact that student loans aren’t enough to fund University to get that pie in the sky job even if you do manage to overcome all odds and get the grades.

It doesn’t fix the violence and crime exposure these children must navigate every day. Often, doing a bit here and there for a local crime boss is a matter of survival not choice. You should know the kinds of things they want boys and girls to do. Parents are largely powerless.

They rightly see a lot of what you do as selling false hopes. You can’t fix deprivation by raising expectations. The parents are managing expectations out of concern for their children’s happiness. That’s why there is the cultural attitudes, it is a defence mechanism for mental health in the face of unrelenting poverty with no access to the opportunities to escape it.

Lower the criteria for social services intervention,
provide parents with support and by that I mean physical support not just a list of things to do.
Parent/child home work clubs.
Extra curriculum clubs for children that are fun and engaging, not just teacher lead ones.
Long term counselling, not 6 weeks.
Work experience
English and maths class for parents
Re open sure start centre’s
Parenting courses for all that need and want, like baby weighing, weekly drop in centres.
change,
Lower the curriculum so children can access it, and let them feel like they have achieved. The curriculum is currently very hard.

Weekly payments rather than monthly
Rent capping

Making the wages for jobs that require no formal qualifications much, much higher. I find it absurd that doctors and consultants caring for the most vulnerable in society get so much more than for example nursery workers and workers in residential care homes getting the bare minimum for also caring for the most vulnerable in society.
minimum wage needs to be much higher too.

Early intervention in schools to identify children more suited to apprenticeships for example to get them trained and working at a younger age and into an actual trade as once they start getting a decent wage and respected it’s transformative

Rough breeds rough, sadly.

How can we honestly expect young children to succeed when their upbringing’s are deprived and broken, any aspiration comes from TikTok and life generally means you need to be earning money as soon as you can in order to survive.

Generations of the stereotypical ‘benefits scroungers’ are endemic in communities across the country, truth be told their skill sets are so feeble that putting them into the workplace would be detrimental to most businesses.

It’s a very different scenario to those on benefits through no fault of their own, ill health or disability- they’re going to ensure their kids do as well as they can.

Yes, some of the experts in the field have said that instead of jobs, most of us would be given benefits and the robots (AI controlled) will look after everything for us, so we can relax. Sounds good in theory, but then they said that tech would make our lives easier than our mums, yet they weren't checking work emails at 10pm. So I'm not convinced yet.

No work? You can't have the same standard of living as someone who funds your lifestyle.

People from poor backgrounds can feel inferior around middle class people, it really knocks their confidence, it can leave them feeling that they don't belong and aren't able to go on to higher education or work in professional roles.

They don’t make themselves feel inferior, they are made to feel that way and they are actively rejected by the middle class. The middle class is shrinking and closing ranks. They are actively keeping as many opportunities for their own offspring.

Studies on classism in the UK show that even a slightly wrong accent or not having been on holiday to the right places can put you out of the running for even entry level for professional roles. Lots of working class kids that manage to get a degree still end up at the Amazon warehouse or emptying bins.

basically we need a whole new economic model, in the old factory days you needed the workers, now businesses are failing because unless you have low wage workers then the profits are there to be made, because many companies need the extra £ for all their mega projects and various research and development projects

DD has been working as a supply TA in a school in a particularly deprived area of Bristol and the stories she has told me are heartbreaking. Cycles of poverty, criminality, low expectations. Very few families with both parents together. Numerous children with poor attendance because parents can’t be bothered to get up and bring them to school on time. Children being given Red Bull for breakfast. Children reeking of cigarette and weed smoke. It’s heartbreaking.

Potential solutions:

1. Payment of benefits contingent on getting your child to school on time.
2. Schools arranging schemes to physically collect children, feed them breakfast and then take them home after school.
3. Increased benefits for parents who engage with parenting classes, adult education, community volunteering schemes etc.
4. Summer camps for children from deprived areas at independent schools - having opportunities not normally available to them.
5. Joined up health, education and social care.

That’s just not true. AI will change what an entry level job in some industries and what some types of role looks like, but it will also open up opportunities in other areas. I work in Governance, Risk & Compliance and AI Governance is a huge requirement. The laws require human oversight, that humans know exactly what the AI is doing, how it’s doing it,when, for what purposes, how well it’s working, if it’s hallucinating or drifting away from its initial objectives, if it’s showing bias or just plain wrong…… It’s not going to do away with all jobs, just redefine some and allow for humans to be more focused on depth than busy work.

music does not help too, the amout of gangsta rap, then films glamourising crime etc, the whole of society needs retooling

As an ex primary teacher...
I think it's trickier for those kids who don't have working parents as role models.
I would hope my daughter sees me going out to work to earn money for the family and aspires to do the same as an adult.