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.

going by your "constructive" reply im assuming you're the sort who she's on about

Tripe. My mum worked for almost 50 years with the minimum of support from my dad and none from my brothers.

It's interesting, isn't it, that when mechanisation and robots came for the blue collar car industry jobs that was "progress" and all good.

Now AI is coming for the white collar office jobs there is panic.

I worry where the jobs are for cohorts of pleasant but unqualified young people to get. We know it's hard for graduates. What about folk with a couple of GCSEs?

Even driving jobs (bus/lorry) require classroom work - pretty sure back in the day this wasn't needed.

I'm not saying send everyone back down the mines - but large employers were often a route to a proper life, rather than cobbling together zero hours contracts in cafes

Stopping benefits would push more people into poverty. No one should have to be married to claim benefits. And of course. Let's just thrash kids. That will teach them. My mum and my brothers dad weren't married. They split because he wanted her to have an abortion. Should she just have married him anyway incase she ever needed to claim benefits?

I'm a qualified youth worker. Some of the most challenging places I have worked in have been well off places where parents have thrown money at their kids and let them do what they liked of an evening.

I work and claim benefits im significantly better of then i would be if I didn't work

I get no freebies - as a single person I get council tax reduction. Anything else I get is because I'm disabled not on universal credit

That’s not generational though is it?

I think you are missing the point of my post, I lived in (still do) one of the most deprived areas of the country and the way my friends and I got better lives was education and a fundamental desire to have more than our parents which was nothing. I didn’t just join a rising tide it took a lot of hard work and I know some people who never broke out of it back then despite being a boomer. But now I see what the OP describes, a lack of aspiration

That’s not generational though is it?

What an absolute load of bollocks! 😂 As I said, you clearly don’t live anywhere near me.

It is a fact and many of us see it on a daily basis. It is something I witnessed in my previous role as a teacher and now in my current job. To claim otherwise is completely delusional. The government is concerned enough about it to be bringing in measures to tackle the economically inactive, especially in those under 30 who are thirsty generation unemployed. I’m assuming they are basing this on actual data.

Maybe job dependant then? I'm on MW and get more help the less I work.

@SouthernNights59
Exactly! They clearly don’t live anywhere near me.

PIP payment levels have increased since the pandemic (which nobody wants to think about any more). There’s a significant number of people living with Long Covid who became disabled after having the disease. It caused previously healthy people to have strokes, heart attacks, chronic lung problems and conditions like ME/CFS. Other people have suffered continuing mental health problems because of the lockdown restrictions with very little NHS support to help them. In the UK we have handled the aftermath of the pandemic very poorly.

You should get (and deservedly so) a lot more help than just the CT reduction while disabled and on UC.

I agree too. I used to work with some vulnerable people and it was like a revolving door. They didn’t know anything different.

Read @BurnoutBee 's post and stand corrected then.

I work with children in a safeguarding role.

Whoever these researchers are who "couldn't find" any examples of families where no one has worked for 3 generations, I wish they'd come to me. I could have introduced them to at least 10 families in that situation!

BUT benefits are not what keeps the cycle of poverty going for those families. It's intergenerational trauma that keeps it going- issues like Domestic Abuse, Mental Illness, Substance Misuse, Neglect, Crime and antisocial behaviour. These things get passed down from generation to generation and become normalised. Children who are born into chaos and grow up never having known anything but chaos will often go on to have chaotic lives as adults and the cycle continues.

Taking benefits away won't magically make those complex social issues disappear, it will more likely result in a greater number of children being removed from their families and placed into a 'care' system that is already barely functioning as it is. There needs to be much greater investment in services like DA, Youth Offending, Mental Health Services, Children's Social Care, Early Years and Substance Misuse services so they can actually achieve meaningful and sustained change. But that would require the Government to step up and commit to properly funding public services, and listening to the people who actually work on the front line of those services rather than spunking stupid amounts of money on pointless initiatives and reforms that sound good but don't work in practice whilst talking about pulling the rug from under vulnerable families by making it more difficult for them to access benefits.

Seeing things through your narrow sphere of experience isn’t that meaningful at a societal level

Is that the one that’s not generational? Apologies as I posted this last night and there are 12 pages since then

I'm actually on benefits. I was turned down for lcwra three times. I was also initially refused disability benefits after a triple leg fracture and had to go to tribunal to get it. One person's post on an Internet forum doesn't mean that's everyone's lived experience.

I personally know of one family like this. Kids dead or in jail. Dad dead from drug overdose.

Girls of the family pregnant young. However most of the people I see around me, including single parents are working part time at least. There are lots of people who grow up in poverty or in dysfunction who don't fit the three generations on benefits narrative

And if people think disability benefits are easy to get - that wasn't my experience in the slightest. It was a horrible process that made me feel worse than when I started

@sparrowhawkhere

I am the person who worked full time for many years as a teaching assistant. I then had a period of burnout so I applied for UC.

I was shocked to discover that I am roughly £500 a month better off staying at home (I get housing element etc). YOU asked ME how I am a role model to my children?

In many ways actually. During my time as a TA whilst raising the three of them, I completed an OU degree. My eldest is on track for some fantastic GCSE results judging from his recent mocks.

I am not going to remain on universal credit forever as quite frankly there’s no challenge for me. But, currently, at this moment of time I can only apply for jobs in the higher paying brackets as I am NOT going to work to be poorer.

Why am I going to return to work as a teaching assistant and go back to counting my pennies? It’s a huge relief now to go into a supermarket and buy good quality food for dinners. Meat etc. Benefits my children much more it seems not working. You’re on cloud cuckoo land if you think I’m going to give that up.
My next job will NEED to pay me more for it to be worth it. Like I said, I’m not dragging my arse out to be in a defecit of £500. I’d have to be pretty stupid to do that tbh.

True but in the past they would have to work to survive

Also in the North East and much experience of working with families that have experienced generational unemployment and criminality.

Teachers trying to teach when some children reg to even sit at their desk. Children out to all hours, setting fire to bins. Many on illegal electric scooters and bikes that their parents bought for them. Fathers and sons going to their unpaid work requirement together. I’m sure other parts of the country are the same.

I worry for the future because it really seems to be everywhere. Children growing up in chaotic homes has a detrimental affect on their future.