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.

And if someone can't find work?

Who carers? Would cost a fortune. People in mw jobs? Someone needs to do these jobs. Disabled who would hire them?

Social housing is mixed with owner occupied housing. Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on how well, or not, the properties are maintained and the courtesy and consideration all members of the community afford to each other.

I grew up in a working class household and was the only girl in a large extended family to go to university. It never occurred to me to do anything other than work hard. When I was teaching, I was disappointed by the lack of ambition to forge a career, or even get a job, amongst some of the pupils. They came from several generations who didn’t work, other than in a gig economy. They had no expectation of looking for work on leaving school, no motivation to achieve exam success and saw no need to do anything other than follow in the footsteps of their family members.

Of course I see that if you have more money on benefits, there’s no incentive to work, other than for your own feelings of worth and purpose and that depends on the individual.

The THIS HAS BEEN DEBUNKED posts are becoming just as irritating as the clickety-rage-bait posts.

Researchers may have drawn particular parameters (Teesside University, Rowntree etc) and studied the prevalence in a particular area. If that criteria was '3 generations who have never worked' then it's entirely possible they didn't find this. But there are thousands of households where adults, over more than one generation, have barely worked. This is a massive problem, particularly in some areas.

We know that generational fecklessness exists. We know that generational poverty which leads to children having poor outcomes and repeating the cycle exists.

Anyone who works, in schools or social worker, in areas where this is a problem will see it constantly, so yelling "this has been debunked!" and denying informed people's experience is not conducive to solving the problem.

My sister works in a deprived area primary school. Some of you have no idea what those little children's life can be like. With the school's input, some of them do quite well at school at first, but then by 10 the school's influence seems to lose traction and they start falling into the same mindset. It is a national shame and we need to address it. We can't address it by pretending it never happens and it's a figment of the imagination of the OP/ Daily Mail/Reform.

It doesn't surprise me at all. The kids I went to school with who weren't interested in learning, actively intimidated those who did and the teachers half the time and whose parents would 'come up the school' and threaten and abuse the teachers if they dared to finish their little shitbags are all stuck in the same cycle according to the Jeremy Kyle type shenanigans on their SM profiles.

This is not about class. There were plenty of working class kids whose parents did low paid or low skilled jobs (the majority, actually). Some have fared better as adults, having continued in education or are in trades and doing well, some are also doing low paid, low skilled jobs, but they are playing their part in society and are normal, decent people.

Of course there are families like this. Go to the rubbish schools in deprived areas and you'll find exactly the children OP is talking about.

Agree! I almost never meet anyone who has read it but I always advise it whenever conversations around class or even vehement towards migrants comes up. I don’t think many listen but it’s one of the best books ever written and explains the poverty trap beautifully.

If you are going to make someone work for their benefits, then you give them a proper wage and all the benefits that come with such as sick leave, annual leave, pension etc.
People on benefits are not untapped source of free labour. Remember Workfare?

Also, "people on benefits" covers a huge range of people. UC itself covers at least 6 different types of benefits. There is no typical UC claimant.
If you mean people on jobseekers (or people on the standard rate of UC who have full work search commitments), they they already have commitments that have to fulfil to stay eligible for the very small sum they actually get. Why should someone on jobseekers be taken away from their home an family and forced to live in a camp? An utterly bizarre suggestion.

Very rare to have more money on benefits maybe if you live in london so high rents but the majority of people on benefits get no where near the amount a person working gets.

I was going back further than that

Children in general only imitate what they’ve witnessed from birth (this has been proven by cruel ‘scientific’ experiments on monkeys). Hence if a baby isn’t itself breastfed, it will, if male, find it difficult or ridiculous to encourage his partner to breastfeed; or, if female, will have difficulty or not even want to try to breastfeed her own offspring. Similar applies to cooking food for family meals; with many parents working, children don’t live alongside (an almost old fashioned) full time functioning kitchen & on reaching adulthood can only imagine picking up complete ready meals is the only food available.

For some yrs, I used to help with listening to children read individually. 1 child in particular, about 8yrs, had really got to grips & improved during. the summer term. Come autumn, this same child refused to read, I suggested trying different books & etc, etc, c/;but still wouldn’t even look! The child’s mother had, “said I can’t read, I’m no good at it”. As layperson I told teacher, who just shrugged saying what can you do? …have to take a different child!!
I actually felt there was no point in me wasting my time there so gave up.

OP I don’t think much can be done, some people don’t want change, can’t be arsed. I grew up in a household like this, I luckily got out but my siblings all live like this including my mother, I’m low contact/ no contact with most of them, they don’t want education, they don’t want training, just an easy life with no responsibilities. They have no mental health or physical issues, they are just lazy. They live in an area where living on benefits and getting a council house is deemed normal so they think people like me who got an education and a career are mad They also think it’s weird that I have only one child at age 38 and they all have multiples from different dads by the age of 20.

I grew up in social housing. My mum worked. Her neighbours worked. There are absolutely areas where poverty affects schools. I lived in an area for 25 years where almost 90 per cent of people lived well below the line. The school had lots of issues - my mum actually taught there for her first job and at the time she tried to get a flat in the area as they were sought after but over the years it became a place where people who were anti social were housed if they had been evicted.

Not everyone was like that but some of my neighbours were hugely problematic.

The school I went to was around two miles away. It had a bigger catchment area. I went to school with people who lived in council housing and people who didn't

Of the group of friends I went to school with. Four lived in council housing and three didn't. All of my friends who lived in council housing have a degree. As do two of the people who didn't and the other girl whose family were middle class worked in insurance after leaving school

I still live in council housing - my area is a mix of council houses. Buy to lets and people who bought their homes to live in.

The area my mum lives in is nice. Much nicer than places I have lived previously and it's very well sought after.

Cut the benefits and force these people back into work but the government is too scared to do this so they all wager away with it … looks at the child benefit allowance, max. 2 kids and now been scrapped 🤷🏻‍♀️ No incentive for these people to go to work.

I’m a teacher, from a working class single parent background (although not on benefits). My Mums Mum was on benefits. So I guess there was cycle broken there. Having said that although my Mums parents were divorced, her Dad worked hard so she saw that route too. My Mum did ok in school but not amazing, her Mum would let her doss off school and she often did. She said she didn’t know higher education was an option. Yet in my childhood In my mid- terraced ex council house I knew I would go to uni from a very young age. My Mum encouraged me to do well, although did not micromanage me as I would be alone at home in the afternoons/ evenings while she worked.
However my Auntie had a different Dad to my Mum who was absent. She said as a child that when she grew up she would be on benefits. She is, as is her grown up child. I don’t see that cycle braking. Her child was useless at school, really struggled but was never given any realistic routes into work. He wanted to be a chief investigator for the police. He was heavily overweight, inactive and low achieving.
There are exceptions to every rule, but in all the years I have been teaching my experiences would mostly lead me to agree with you. But we still try everyday, because every child saved, no matter how few, are worth it.

I've never felt inferior to anyone who is middle class in my entire life. My mum went to uni at 17. My brother went at 17. I didn't start my degree until I was 20. There were many working class kids in my year at school who did exptionally well and who went to uni at 17 or 18.

What to the poor houses? I had a feeling that might be what you were after

There is not enough jobs for people who are looking for work. 2.6 job seekers to every vacancy.

Taking everything into account I'm better off keeping my hours down.

So why can’t you work?

How?

'There ARE so many errors'
Not "there's so many errors"

If you are going to be a pedant at least try to be correct.

They can if they try! Just too lazy or too picky!

I can list everything that's given free/discounted if you're on UC if you like but just as a quick example.. the more I work the more my council tax reduction goes down. And if I worked over a certain amount of hours/earned over a certain amount then I would lose all of the help (which is a lot even down to DC getting trips/kits for school/college free) completely.

Did you miss the part where I said got disability benefits because of a triple leg fracture?