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.

The whole system needs overhaul, I’m not sure it’s only generational benefit families that are the problem. I do know one that never worked - on purpose - and now her daughter also doesn’t, but strangely enough this woman came from a working family, she’s a complete outlier. No one knows why she just decided “she’d never work”.

The entitlement is off the charts. Just this week I’ve had 2 coworkers (that I’m sort of close to, which is why I know the details) trying to apply for PIP because “they don’t want to work FT”. I presume they’ll be denied and then go on to whine that they “don’t fit the part”.

I also know a few other bizarre cases of people that are (imo) receiving money they don’t actually need. I don’t know the solution, but there needs to either be stricter guidelines, stricter inspection… something.

I’ve seen similar in my years at work.

Easy answer - no benefits before age 25. None at all, unless severely disabled.

@nomas I’m half French so know the system well, boarding isn’t common whatsoever. It’s usually rural kids who live far from the local secondary or occasionally kids who excel at sport and need to be in the school to partake.

We have very few boarding schools here in the UK so unless you propose the government builds more to house poor kids then… Sorry, it’s already sounding like a workhouse as I write it!

Of course I happens, and very frequently, that poster knows full well you can’t supply a list of names or some kind of ‘study’ so will pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s been a massive problem ever since we closed the mines and factories.

What do you mean about receiving money they don't actually need?

I want to live in a country that supports vulnerable people but people must take personal responsibility, so how can it be fixed?

We need enough jobs of all kinds to be able to get people into roles that suit their actual capabilities, instead of paying them not to do jobs and live in ways that break them.

We must return to face to face interview for all first disability payment claims and annual face to face reviews thereafter for all conditions that are capable of improving.

We need a huge increase in mental health support instead of PIP payments, including executive function training for ADHD.

It's a huge task, we need a lot more than that.

Too simplistic.

• You will always have feckless parents, and that is not limited to people on benefits. Neglect and abuse of kids can happen in any kind of household

• Life outcomes also depends on where you live. Kids who grow up in places where there are job opportunities will do better than kids who grow up in a small town in the middle of nowhere

• You are ignoring the bigger context: many sectors have disappeared over the decades or become automated and opportunities for entry/ lower skilled jobs will continue to be reduced by AI

• Women are usually left with the kids when feckless men decide they are done with family life/can't be bothered and that often leaves them dependent on benefits. Society still does little to condemn the men who do this but vilifies single mothers who pick up the pieces

• There used to be more support for parents but the Tories decimated these schemes and youth community centre

• If you are disabled or have a disabled child you often need to rely on benefits because employers are reluctant to employ disabled people and provide reasonable adjusments and support for disabled kids/specialist education has again been cut due to austerity

• tuition fees are discouraging smart but poor students from going into higher education.

Frankly I am getting tired of benefits being blamed for everything when we have some of the lowest welfare and pension payments in the UK, services that can help have been cut and there are very few jobs that offer parents flexibility or very few jobs at the moment, full stop.

It needs a big societal change if we want to make sure that all kids have the best possible start in life beyond the simplistic right wing media rethoric about scroungers....

You must live in a nice area. It happens a lot where I live and has happened in my extended family. As an example, one of my female relatives left school at 16 in 2011, immediately got pregnant and hasn’t worked since. She did this as her mum told her too - as she had done the same thing 16 years earlier. My relative’s son is now half feral, failing at school as the mum doesn’t make him attend and aspires to be a local hard man. He’s said he has no intention of working and will go on benefits once he is eligible after leaving school. It is most definitely a generational thing.

A relative of mine has rarely worked since they closed the colliery. He still claims he is a miner and has the attitude that because they closed the mine, he shouldn't have to work. It was over 40 years ago, and he was an 18 year old bathhouse attendant, he never worked down the actual pit. Meanwhile his older brother took his redundancy payment and got another job within weeks and worked at that job until retiring fairly recently. It is not healthy for people to be paid to not work and to be seething with resentment towards those that do, while at the same time those that work resent those that do not but still receive money from the state.

I’ll read this book!

@WaryCrow In recent times unemployment rates have been extremely low..indeed we have immigration to keep the economy going.

I'm from an immigrant background and growing up had circumstances that put my family into poverty. It wasn't in our culture to have benefits so the expectation was we had to work, no other choice.

I know exactly what you mean, and people who think it’s not true are very cosseted from reality

But can you imagine the furore this would cause, from some of the middle classes who pay for their children’s education.

Re the boarding school idea, plenty of posters on mn are horrified at the idea of boarding and say it causes life long harm and anyone who send their dc to boarding schools aren’t fit to be parents and so on.

Even on days at home when I choose to slack, I start to lose respect for myself.
It must be a very draining, in more ways than one, way to live.

Brilliant! It was written over 100 years ago but the routes of poverty sadly never change. The Road to Wigan Pier was great too and I love Orwell but obviously he could go home and live in comfort whereas Tressell actually was WC, he was buried in a pauper’s grave in Liverpool.

You find it absurd that doctors and consultants get paid much more than care workers et al? Seriously?

“There’s” so many errors in your post. 🤦‍♀️

The poster a few posts up has explained that she's better off not working than working.

Sadly, I can.

Meh, let's put in place proper mental health care and support for those with substance abuse issues and then let's talk.

Oh and how about some state run childcare for children with special needs so their parents can work (and get some respite)?

There are solutions but they cost money.

I agree OP. There needs to be some sort of work for benefits scheme. You get a lot more from work than just money - community, purpose, developing social skills and basic things like being on time. All of these other benefits of work make people better parents.

I also worked in a very deprived school and saw what has been described here - children dropped off to school hungry, late, having had horrible dysfunctional mornings at home. Our council offered free school holiday sports clubs to kids on the estate, but the kids who would have really benefitted from it didn't get to go as the parents weren't bothered dropping them off.

Half the problem is the disadvantage of difficult lives and half of it is the fact there literally aren't enough roles in the country for all kids to walk into. It's dog eat dog and guess what, the rich and comfortable bite hardest.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is an amazing book and should be on the school syllabus. If only I’d read that at school…..

🙄🙄🙄

The quote didn’t work but this was in response to the ludicrous comment about no benefits under 25.