"Family Life on Benefits" A Case Study Courtesy of the BBC

[MrPants]

I know there have been hundreds of these posts recently, but is this case study typical? Linky is here.

My first thought was that the difference to the household budget, before and after the £26k cap, is going to be roughly the cost of her 200 fags per week habit - a habit which, I reckon costs around £70 per week, I couldn't justify financially.

My second thought was that, if you took away our two cars (needed to get us to work) and their additional associated costs, and the factor in that we pay a moderate mortgage rather than rent in massively subsidised social housing, their outgoings - or crucially, disposable income - look uncannily similar to our own.

I pay income tax in the middle rate and I'm middle class. It's taken me fourteen years of working very hard to get to the level I'm at in my career and my wife and I decided to wait until our careers were firmly established before starting our family and yet, I can still look at this family and think that I'd be better off if I was in their shoes. How can that be right?

What really grates though, is the emotive language used "If they do cut our benefit we are going to have to choose between eating and heating the house properly." Am I right in interpreting that statement as meaning "My wife could quit smoking but she'd rather our kids went unfed or cold"?

It's nice to know that my family is forced, through taxation (backed up with all the threats and force that the state can muster), to go without stuff just so that some unemployed family, who will never thank me for my hard work, generosity and sacrifices, can sit on their arses all day smoking themselves into an early grave.

If we have to move- we have a lovely landlady but if the lease ended- we would lose the special needs placements that we fought for 6 years to get in place. DS2, who has such a restricted life due to his sibling's SN, would lose the few 'normal' things he has- a few schoolmates who ask him out to play for example.

That scares me.

So the alternative is to have a cap at which people are able to access NHS services, free schooling etc?! Is that what you are suggesting?

Those on an income over £X a year have to fund these things themselves?

Whilst its stuff David Cameron probably dreams of, in reality, it wont happen.

I have to agree with mrsheffley that people on benefits are pampered. It is a disgrace how much people get & a lot of the time it is there own doing I know people who get a job & then don't like the hours or peole or anything to do with work actually & give up & go back on benefits & then there's the ones who don't take more hours at work because there benefits would be cut, well they need to realise that's what you are souposed to do work for all of your money! & these same people have child after child they can not provide for, we might of liked another child but would not have 1 as it would stretch us financially so we wouldn't people on benefits have them & expect someone else to pay.
I do realise there are some people through no fault of there own end up on benefits but in my opinion it's few.

MrsH not everyone gets that much

It is a cap.

Most people will come below it, only families with several children- who DO need feeding- or in the most expensive regions will come close.

it's not a minimum but a maximum: that is a crucial difference!

The clearest comparison is the current LHA housing cap on HB- where I am on a 3 bed it is £512; in some areas it is £1473. It's obvious that those people will ahve very different takes and not all meet the cap.

(That was an area of London but have no idea where tbh as I hot a random place on an LHA map and am unfamilar with anywhere but Albert Embankment where my old HQ was based)

The £26K cap is a start. Minimum wage should also be increased, so that there is a real monetary gap between benefits and work.

Where are employers going to get the money to pay increased minimum wage from?

All it would cause is for more people to lose their jobs.

Raybeth

few? Honestly?

With current redundancy rates?

With unemployment stats of 8.5%, available jobs around the 400k mark and add to that carers, disabled people etc?

Clearly not everyone claiming has done everything they can to work but many are there through no fault of their own.

With 2 disabled children in the house, and me as a carer, we dont meet that £26K cap.

Agincourt not everyone with an HFA; there was research somewhere reecently where they compared behavioural difficulties between people without labels and found the levels of parent reported behavioural difficulties were comprable. Certainly I have one severe autistic child and one with HFA and the one with HFA is more demanding.

Absolutely in general one would expect a child with HFA to work but this is not without exception.

Of course ds3 is an anomally: technically HFA but severe nonetheless due to his presentation. His IQ may be OK-ish but a 2 minute concentration span scuppers it!

"Where does it say his wife is disabled and needs full time care?Plenty of people have bipolar and don't need a full time carer(who would be exempt from the cuts)."

Where does it say she isn't?

Where does it say he can't be arsed to find a job because he is "pampered" by the DSS?

We moved so I culd study (DH's work was equidistant between there and here)- study was worthwhile but in terms of family support etc it has devastated us.

Oh and a carer is not exempt from the cap.

The family of someone on DLA but not a carer.

Now, Mum isn;t on benefits but if she were she would be affected by the cap even though she cares for my Grandad. As he is not live in.

DLA- protection; CA- not.

I'm not a benefit basher but I can see where this is going. If the cap comes in what families like this will do is split up and both claim as single parents which ironically will cost the taxpayer much more than continuing the status quo.

Charlotte you may be right

We worked out that we would be better apart financially; not a hope though, kinda like each other and besides, not what we wish to teach boys.

I know families who do that already.

Sadly dp working away is something we'll have to consider if needs be.

My BIL works away, they haven't split up though, very different thing.

We thought about DH working away but I just do not think I could cope with the boy's needs. For a few weeks perhaps but with no family or even real friends here it would be truly awful. I certainly could not leave the house any time they were home, not with all of them it's not safe- we need at least one adult per autistic child!

In fact BIL now commutes 75 miles each way as it didn't work for them either- sister works shifts and was close to being sacked because of her inflexibility to take on last minute shift changes (she works as a Vet Nurse Team Leader). OTOH my other BIL flies around the world at short notice and as her hours never vary- 7am - 6pm Mon Fri, Nursery Manger, it works for them. They don't like it, but they can manage.

People's lives are so variable, there is no one size fits all solution. I'd love to try abroad- DH can get work more easily and it's relevant to my degree (thinking of a particular place)- but sadly there would be no provision for the boys schooling so not doable. Yet, anyway.

Conveniently though, the headline news after the BBC posted this 'article' was just 'MPs back Ministers on Benefits Cap'. All the more palatable when you've just read about Mrs Raymond's 200 a week fag habit.

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect families to be able to cope on £26,000 a year.

It's not Hungry but it needs to be abcked by availability of housing is all

It's no good saying live in cheapest % of houses if they are either already full or the LL won't take HB (extremely common)

We live in a cheap area, yet you will struggle to find a house within LHA rates because of those reasons... they are snapped up or unavailable to people on HB. So people end up homeless (which costs FAr more) or in more expensive houses making it up from their food budget.

Now, the Government COULD continue to pur cash into private Landlord's pockets via HB and into the black hole of homelessness and all that costs longer term in education, health etc

OR they could build more social housing (which after all is a real asset rather than lost cash), make it available to people on lower incomes and pocket the rents.

the latter, it would appear, is too obvious. So you get cities like mine with 30k on the waiting list, full homeless accomodation, and LLs who KNOW people will be desperate enough to pay top ups they can't really afford from their HB even if the house is falling down.

Absolutely £26k is an amount that should be enough. But if every home under the rent limit says no ta to social tenants, that's what pushes costs up.

And as for moving- my area is an area that technically the government would want people to come to, cheap and all. We have NO housing, NO jobs, ridiculous waiting lists, full GP surgeries and schools..... where shall we put them? Why should a working family here suffer reduced access to services so a family living somewhere more costly can get the poor out of their area?

The problem with these people is that the benefits system reinforces their despair.

People NEED routine, they need to get up in the morning and go to work.

This bloke has got computer skills, he could do many jobs, but he's enabled to fill sorry for himself by the benefits system which means he has not motivation to do anything. He should have retrained 10 years ago.

Their lifestyle is profoundly self-destructive and depressing, and it's one largely created by welfare dependency. 10 years not working and watching Sky TV is going to fuck anyone up.

The benefits system does need changing that is a fact. It needs to be fairer. Someone who is a carer has not got £100 per week to spend on fags and booze.

It is freezing cold right now and I am absolutely sure that there are families who have not got the heating on and are freezing cold because they cannot afford it, they would much rather have food in their families stomachs. I know when I was growing up it really was a choice between heating and eating.

Change needs to happen, housing needs to be cheaper, I live with my dp at my parents house because we need to save for a deposit on a rental house.

Maybe this story is false and is planted, If so then they need to look at the outgoings of carers, of lone parents and of people with disabilities and see what the cuts mean to them.

To see a story where a family gets enough money to have mobile phones, sky tv, fags and booze yes it will get my back up and I believe justifiably so.

I find it sad, that someone "looking" for a job gets £100 a week but a carer who is doing a "job" that saves government stack loads, gets £55 a week

I agree with the first part of Mr Pants post "I know there have been hundreds of threads like this already" blah blah. You're right there has indeed . Yawnnnn

rship, too true

What this does show is that the cap shouldn't be at the same level across the country, not as long as it includes HB. The rent this family are paying is minute in comparison to a family living in a more expensive part of the country.

That man is pathetic though to have just sat down aged 34 and thought 'oh there is no work in my field'. Why hasn't he updated his skills?