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.

Pick whichever altruistic activity you prefer. The example was simply to explain the point.

Why should others do some work for no pay (taken in tax) to fund others who would rather do nothing? We need to make it clearer to those on benefits where the money comes from. The idea that the government pays them is nonsense.

If you think benefit payments come off a magic money tree then you see it as a victimless claim. If you had to knock on your working neighbours door and demand as soon as they arrived home that they hand you their pay for that day then the claim dynamic might change.

Clearly that isn’t a viable arrangement however people need to understand that is in effect what is happening.

I disagree that generations are living on benefits. So many benefits are claimed by people in work including universal credit. Peoples circumstances change all the time. Many families have limited choices because they don’t have a security of savings. Higher rents, service charges, lack of social housing, cost of living, inflation, zero hour contracts, rising mortgage rates and insecure work all have contributed to the perfect storm of unemployment and loss of disposable income, currently blaming a benefit culture of encouraging people not to work is too simplistic.

I’ve often thought this too. Weekly boarding for children from problem families could transform these children’s lives and expectations. Break the cycle of poverty and low aspiration.

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

Yep. There’s no data demonstrating that generations are living on benefits. The research that has been carried out suggests that the number where it’s even just two generations is probably less than 1%.

I have no idea why people are disputing this I have encountered multiple families who are the third generation of no one working. They tend to start families young.

Almost unbelievable - except sadly it's not - to read that parents who encourage no aspirations at all are "managing expectations out of kindness to their kids"

I guess it's just another excuse for lazy parenting, but how utterly depressing

I knew someone like this, who insisted their deadbeat son had never made any effort in his 29 years because "What's the point when there aren't any jobs?"
Asked what he did all day ... hung around with mates, whatever ... she said he "Couldn't do that because they were all at work"

Mind boggling, but all too common ..

This is my experience too.

Agree with you - but many won’t.

Teacher here, work in a very deprived area, in the top 10 nationally.

I agree with some of what you say, however, I don't think benefits are the problem.

A severe shortage of council housing has led to only those families with the most significant needs being placed in accommodation. This produces an extremely high concentration of difficulties all in one area and what should seem aberrant then gets normalised. For example, we have issues with children not getting up in time to come to school and missing loads of learning. Parents have managed to convince themselves that school is being unreasonable because everyone they know also has kids that only randomly turn up to school and this is totally normal so why are we kicking off about it? Other examples could include the normality of revenge porn, staying up all night to play video games and being permanently knackered the next day, riding around on an 30mph E-scooter with no safety gear, diets mainly made up of Haribo and Monster energy drinks, the list is endless.

Removing money (benefits) and housing from these families isn't going to work, neither is rationing healthcare. Instead, it will just reproduce a historic problem. Elizabeth 1 used to call them 'vagabonds', brand them and force them into slavery. The Victorian East End of London was hellish. Even in the 1980s Thatcher was referring to 'an underclass'. In other words, this is a problem across time, since early industrialisation and the growth of towns and cities.

Most concerningly, the solution clearly isn't education. The multi-generations that you're talking about have all had at least 11 years of education and it just hasn't worked. Punishment doesn't seem to work either. Even at the point over 200 crimes (many of them minor) were punishable by death / transportation, nothing really changed. And our prisons are literally currently overflowing with people who can't think their way out of a paper bag.

I don't know what the answer is either but, in cultural terms, I don't believe hothousing all the problems in one place is a good idea.

1% of millions of people is a lot. I don't dispute that there are cluster zones by the way but that is often the issue with the 'research'. It tries to extrapolate across the country when actually the UK has 4 different countries with very different regions.

Of course you are right OP. Many parents are expected to be good parents whilst dealing with depression, other health issues, lack of ambition, lack of foresight in a better future, instant gratification and...yes, laziness.

We refuse to acknowledge the latter, but it is a big feature of a certain part of our society.

And here you place the deprived children as somehow not having the same emotional range as those of more middle class versions. Without the cultural support for boarding most would hate it and miss their families feeling victimised which would increase their sense of separation from the society you force integration with. One of the flaws in foster care, and sometimes even adoption, is that the children seek out home. The best schemes work with the families - the intervention needs to start long before school. Actually when more of these schemes existed they did help but the funding was stripped out around the time most of the children’s centres were shut or massively reduced their offer.

Parents have managed to convince themselves that school is being unreasonable because everyone they know also has kids that only randomly turn up to school and this is totally normal so why are we kicking off about it?
It's convenient normalisation. It's normalisation that justified their choices. I don't believe for a second that those parents genuinely believe that it is in their kids' best interests just because the neighbours do the same.

See endless references to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is held by some to "prove" that they don't exist

What they forget to mention - as a PP pointed out - 9s that the JRF is part of a colossal poverty industry, and will hardly welcome anything which distracts from their own narrative or threatens their funding

I believe the stats are that approx 16% of children in some areas are growing up in long-term workless households. If the Op works in these areas then her experience is very real.

Also nearly 1 million people on benefits have £2,500 more than a full time worker on national living wage, after tax. It shouldn't be controversial to state the UK benefits system sometimes encourages poor work ethics.

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

Literally that I’m one who on paper has been successful in comparison to peers in Primary School at least. I live in an ok area, now.

Grinding poverty causes depression in parents which reduces the motivation to get their children to school and look after them properly and feed them well
I know everything that you possibly could’ve told me, but it still didn’t mean at times. I struggled when we didn’t have enough money.

It would never happen. You can't even enforce law breakers to do "Community Service" - which is now called "Unpaid Work".

Because even if they are 21 years and well enough to beat up a homeless man, or their wife, or steal a car, or drive dangerously without insurance, if they are signed off from "work", they can't possibly serve a sentence in that way. So they may get hit by a fine, which will be deducted from their benefits at £20 per fortnight.

The new idea that GPs cannot provide long term sick notes in this way is a much better idea, although lacks a lot of detail on who and how it is done instead.

This reminds me of the boarding schools Native Americans and Australians were sent to though, to “assimilate”. You’d be forcing working class kids into an upper middle class environment in the hope the MC values will rub off on them and they’ll leave more educated and presumably more well spoken. It doesn’t sit well with me at all.

My DH went to private school. No idea why his parents sent him, they were lower MC and could barely afford it. He was always the poor kid as a result and it caused him huge shame and embarrassment. His peers were unfathomably rich, one girl was dropped off in a helicopter ffs. Skiing and polo were totally normal things but ILs couldn’t afford either so he was ostracised for that too.

I don’t think popping poor kids in an almost obscenely rich environment promotes social mobility.

You’ve made a lot of assumptions. I’m a higher rate tax paper and have never claimed benefits.

But I’m wondering what biases exist in your mind if you think pensioners should benefit with free services provided by the unemployed.

There are other ways to encourage people to work, you don’t need to make pensioners the recipient of free labour.

It happens. You must live in a good area to not see it

@BurnoutBee you cant just choose not to work and get UC, you are either signed off for health reasons, or care for someone.

You post is very cleverly worded!

A lot of the cycle will always come back to money. For example, I come from a working class background. My parents and grandparents and now myself lived in rented housing - this means no inherited wealth through the family. This means my children have no helping hand onto the property ladder either at a time housing is even more expensive. They may buy one day through their own hard work but they won’t get a helping hand like those with families who have generational wealth.

There has been no inherited money to help with uni costs so their opportunity to do that is reduced. My children are all working but they will have to work through the ranks as they won’t be able to go into degree entry level work for higher pay. They could choose to do open university at some stage but cost of uni is very high now, especially away from the home area.

The cycles don’t always mean people are lazy or don’t care, they come from generational poverty which makes everything harder as they have to work from as young age as possible. University students with wealthy parents can study without that same pressure to work as those without extra support.

I think you’ve misunderstood what that poster is saying.

France has weekly boarding for pupils at state schools, they are in no way for the privileged.

Apologies OP if this has already been mentioned, but your punctuation is very unusual and it is a bit disconcerting. I agree with some of your arguments, but , everybody has a different story. I'm sure there are many cases of inter-generational welfare, and there was a documentary about these exact situations made in my country ( not UK). It is very sad.

Disconcerted by a wayward comma? I’ve heard it all now.