To see benefits as a safety net, not handouts?

[ForGreyStork]

It’s the way benefits are talked about. To me, they’re part of a social security system -a safety net that people may need at different points in life, rather than “gifts” or handouts.
I also wonder whether increasing conditions and restrictions risk undermining that safety net over time.

AIBU?

Shes allowed to share her story just like anyone else on here without being accused of making it about herself. You don't own the thread

Tiny, tiny sample. Difficult to recruit. Interviewees had to be paid. Qualitative research (so unreliable as far as statistical data goes). And questions such as ‘Have you ever worked?’ completely skewing any results.

Find better research, @pointythings .

But the difference now is the wait time can often be 10 years instead of 6 months. You use to be able to have a baby and get a house now it doesn't work like that. Why do you really think teenage pregnancy rate has gone down

You may have made subsequent posts, but I did quote your actual post, so I did read your 'actual reply'.

Thwre will always be more minimum wage jobs than better paid jobs.
The higher you go, the fewer people there are ...
It's always been like that
A meritocracy we are not lol

Your post just displays your nasty attitude.

it's exactly what they're saying/implying.

im not attempting to shut anything down. Why do you think disabled people with lived experience & skin in the game shouldn't post?

Tutorpuzzle · Today 15:06
That Joseph Rowntree research, * was qualitative (volunteer interviews), with 47 people in 20 families in precisely 2 locations. Hardly extensive. You are very patronising towards * ,who, like me, has direct (if anecdotal) experience of families in exactly this situation. YOU ‘do better’.🙄

The Rowntree research actually tried to find people who were from 3 generations of worklessness. But they were so rare to find they couldn't conduct meaningful research on such low numbers. They had to relax the criteria to 2 generations of worklessness and even that was hard to find. They did just review 47 people in 20 families but that's who they found in a large population in Glasgow. 20 families wasn't all they searched through, it was the numbers they found in their criteria. These 20 families had 2 generations of worklessness.

I don't have any skin in this game. I don't know loads of people on benefits playing the system or not. But I do like to get this stuff right.

True.

But it still happens and happened with more frequency a few years ago so they're still people benefitting from the system now.

I mentioned a family I know where the Mother was born in 1971 and had four sons.

3 of her sons are in social housing by having a partner who had kids with them and was claiming as a single parent and they just live there. To be fair, some of those women work part-time but the men don't . Unless you count drug dealing as work. They don't officially live there but do.

One of her sons got a 2 bed council flat due to his' mental health' needs and social care supporting him to have a 2 bed so he could have his daughter overnight as her Mother was an addict who just fucked off and left the child to a Grandmother. He was an addict with a personality disorder too but let's not judge..

He tried to set fire to the entire block of flats while high on crack cocaine and is now in prison.

I'm sure when he comes out we'll fund another flat for him. And PIP and every other benefit that his family have relied on for years.

Oh you're just the gift that keeps giving.

I'm not the only disabled person to have posted.

''I'm not making it 'all about me' it's a thread about benefit claimants, of which I am
now one after 40 years of working. Why shouldn't I post to defend assumptions made & incorrect statements?

your post was nasty.

Well yeah he's sounds quite unwell i don't see how a crack head with a personality disorder and who is also a pyromaniac would cope in full time highly paid skilled work so will obviously need benefits when he leaves prison.

It pisses me off when people who are on benefits and don’t work at all, talk about “getting paid.”
You’re NOT getting paid because you didn’t do any work to earn it.
I don’t say anything to them but I think it!

I pay an absolute fuckton in tax and I work extremely hard. To the detriment of my health, at times.
I’ve worked three jobs before because we needed the money.

I knew someone who got a two week all-inclusive 4star hotel holiday abroad every year and would smugly tell me that she was always organised a week in advance, when I said I’d probably be up all night to get ready for our week in s/c.

She genuinely couldn’t understand why I wasn’t also similarly organised!

I knew her very well and she’d show me emails she’d sent to local MP’s, so that she could get free fencing installed.
Because her DD had high functioning autism and could “bolt at any moment.”

(my fence cost me 2k)

Funny how she never supervised any of her DC out in the street, particularly when this girl had a go-kart that she’d race around on the ROAD with.

Happy for the benefits system to support those who need it. Just not chancers/lazy fuckers.

I agree.

They are a safety net and normal in any decent society that does not want to see people become homeless/destitute/starve.

Also, we are asked to pay income tax and national insurance when we work to contribute to that safety net. I have done that for 25 years and paid into the system.

So I would have no issue whatsoever with claiming benefits if I cannot find a job/lose a job or become too unwell to work and certainly would not consider them as 'handouts'.

Social housing is council and housing association. Its very similar HA tend to be newer properties. The fact you dont even know this just highlights how ill informed you are. Theres a housing crisis. Ohhhh and single mums pay tax too.

Honestly do you honestly just believe everything you read? Yes there will be a small group taking liberties just like in ANY other area of life. That doesnt give you the right to cast judgement.

Doo you wish your children where disabled?

If you’re seriously saying you think minimum wage workers, disabled people and carers are lazy, I’m sure we’d all be riveted to know what you yourself do for a living.

You think that you cannot privately rent for less than £1500? Don't be so ridiculous. I also wonder how many people would be in council houses if they had to go through a thorough reassessment every year. We have regular threads on here from people asking if they should go private or hang on to their council houses. It's morally bankrupt.

Not working at all - I think you might be right, I'm not sure. But it is perfectly possible to claim benefits for many, many years by working part time whilst expecting the rest of us to pick up the bill of their top ups. Again we regularly have threads on here with people providing advice on how to keep your earnings down to maximise benefits.

We hope my young adult DS will work sometime in the future, but he’s been disabled since birth and any work he can do eventually will have to be heavily supported by very understanding and flexible employers. I don’t see him ever coming off benefits. We’ve just had his LCWRA claim approved, having gone through mandatory reconsideration because the phone assessment person didn’t have the faintest idea what they were talking about and ignored everything I said. They clearly wanted to save DWP a few quid by denying my son a thorough assessment. There was a poster on here recently, claiming to be an assessor, and they knew as little as our assessment man did.

@HoskinsChoice How much do you think a private rent would cost? They are start from £1050 upwards.... in the city I live. How much do you think they cost??

To spell it out to you I do not have £1000 plus to spend on rent.

Im not sure how much you think people get in benefits ?
But i certsinly cant afford a two week all inclusive holiday and my child gets the highest rates of DLA
The last holiday we had was a week in a caravan two years ago
Im also wandering why she wrote to her MP for Fencing 🤔
I got ours through the occupational therapist.

Why should people who are permanently unable to work through illness or injury be expected to live on less than minimum wage?

I don’t know but she absolutely did. Every year. It was paid for but not by her.
She told me and she also showed me the emails.

I do NOT grudge people being giving benefits but that, and the smugness, annoyed me.

Seems a strange way to go about things
Im really not sure how an MP can help get fencing
An OT asaessment would seem far more appropriate ...

No.
You have spectacularly missed my point. Quite deliberately, I imagine.

Her child was disabled enough to need a fence to stop her from “bolting at any minute.”

Her words.

But she wasn’t disabled enough to need supervision out in the street. EVER. (Funnily enough, I was the only parent who ever supervised their DC outside.)

And not disabled enough that she wasn’t allowed to career around on a very low-slung go kart. Which you could NOT see over the bonnet of your car as you drove round the corner.

She’s lucky that the girl wasn’t injured or killed tbh

No i agree with you. Some people can't work,others can. I dont have sympathy for skivers but want proper help for those that need it

I dont know why some people on this thread keep saying it’s very unusual to have generations not working. That survey was complete garbage.

If you have a parent/parents who don’t work and you see they do ok, maybe some cash in hand jobs why wouldn’t you think why bother.

If those parents didn’t think education was that important and they know the ways to fill in the forms, the right things to say at any benefits interview then are you likely to do anything different?