Troubled families have too many children ?

[BridgetJonesPants]

AIBU to agree with this article written by Louise Casey, the Prime Minister's troubled families tsar?

uk.news.yahoo.com/troubled-families-too-many-children-022219547.html

Although I have no idea how you can get 'these mothers' who have probably had a chaotic upbringing themselves to take responsibility for not having any more children.

How much support are 'looked after' children routinely given once they are 16? It seems to me that most people need parenting (financial support, a place to go in an emergency, advice, love,practical support) long after they legally become adults. Does the government provide any support for fosterers to maintain contact with their charges when they are young adults?

The law (Leaving Care Act) is well written around this but underused by SW's in some LA's. There is finacial suport available,upto 21, including the LA paying for passports, driving lessons, but unless you know about it,you cannot ask for it and every LA isn't as forth coming as others.

How much money has been wasted on these people in the last 10-15 years.

We pay our taxes to provide a better standard of living for people, not to build monuments, or go to war etc, there would be riots and revolutions if the working poor were cut out of the benefit system. It is stupid to suggest something that would in the end cost more.

So by the time they are 10yo, having a third DC won't cost you any extra? What if your first two were girls, but your third was a boy? Are you not going to need different clothes etc? I think that is an extremely short-sighted view, given that DC grow, and cheap supermarket clothes are rarely able to be used for more than a maximum of 2 DC due to lack of quality.

And what about if, like me, you have a large gap? I have over seven years between DS2 and DS3, and have NOTHING left to hand down to him. I have had to start from scratch with everything for him, as I wasn't planning to have any more DC's. (Contraceptive failure, mini-pill, condom AND MAP didn't work...)

It has been like having my first DC over again. I didn't even have a baby bath or a single vest left. I had donated everything that was still usable to the local Women's refuge and local Mother and Baby unit when DS2 started Reception...

If I hadn't had extra CTC and Child benefit for him (I was living with my Ex-P at the time he was conceived and born, until Ex-P left when DS3 was 4mo, and Ex-P was working FT, albeit for a low wage), then where would I have found the money for all the equipment I needed for him?

Oh yes, it would have come out of the CTC and Child Benefit that I was receiving for my older 3 DC's. Leaving the family as a whole in poverty.

Yet I can SEE the potential benefits of a policy like this. I just don't think it matches up to the reality of these situations.

I couldn't have had a termination, it would have left me feeling like I had murdered one of my DC, and would have left me with severe MH issues as it so far against my moral code.

This would mean that under this policy, I WOULD have been putting my existing DC's further into poverty.

But the choice would have been a poverty- stricken family, or severe MH issues for me! Neither is a sensible option...

Just don't pay them any benefits after two children and make failure to pay maintenance towards your child a criminal offence punishable by prison.

The men are not in work (or already in prison), so often cannot contribute, but that aside, if makes real financial sense to not pay £100 a week in benefits, but instead pay £400 a week to incarcerate the father, doesn't it?

That will do so much for the father and child relationship.

there is 10 years between my dc, so like i said i understand there would be cost involved for a newborn. But you have nine months to prepare. There are plenty of second hand baby goods that are extremely cheap. When i was pregnant with dc1 i was on just over £40 a week (and a one off payment of £200), and i still managed to get everything i needed for him. Ds2 is 18 months and I have just managed to get a years supply of 2-3 year £60 (this wasn't one batch but several bundles bought over time).

that should be a years worth of clothes btw

I don't agree about girl chidlren needing different clothes. If the poor in the UK have got to the point when they need frilly pink stuff for girls they need to be forced on feminist education classes for a start. There is nothing better for a little girl than to wear gender neutral clothes. Most of the squeezed middle believe it or not do pass clothes down to children of different genders. Don't the poor? Wow.

But if they DO have frilly pink clothes for the girl/s they had first, what do they THEN do if they have a boy.

And unsurprisingly, most poor people on benefits don't have access to buying things online, as they only have 'basic' bank accounts with a cashpoint card only. They don't have access to car boot sales, as they can't afford a taxi to get there.

I have just found out that over the summer holidays, my bus companies have changed their policy that means instead of buying an 'all day ticket' for DC's that you can use on ALL buses for £2.20, you have the choice of buying one for ONE bus company for £1.10, or both bus companies for £3.40. This means that to get to Aldi to do my shopping there over the holidays, as I HAVE to use both bus companies to get there, will cost me £13.60 instead of £10.00. I have also worked out that as a taxi fare is £6.50 each way, it will actually be cheaper to spend £13.00 on getting taxi's there each week. But that is £13.00 less food I can buy.

EVERYTHING is more expensive when you are poor. Even shopping around for cheaper food.

I am luckier than most, I have an account that CAN be used online, and I frequently have friends paying me cash while I buy the things they need online. I am the only one I know willing to do this for those that don't have that access.

I only have this account because I used to be fairly well paid. Those of my friend's who have always worked PT around their partners shifts for NMW and are now unemployed do not have access to these accounts, because they have never earnt enough to qualify for them. Most banks now say that you need a minimum of £1,000 PCM going in to your account to qualify for an account with a card that can be used online.

Try buying cheaply when your only option is cash...

It's true that girls can usually wear boy's clothes, but you need to be pretty forward thinking to only buy unisex clothes if you have a girl on the off chance that you might have a boy in the future... Of course, this is all just society's prejudices, but still. I also agree that clothes don't always last more than one child.

I don't see how the cutting benefits thing works in practice. On the one hand you have parents who routinely expect either the new baby/an older child to be put in care when they have another child. On the other, you may have a mother with 5 children who, despite making unwise family planning/relationship choices is still the best provider of care for her children.

I can see that the threat of benefits loss might encourage people to change their behaviour, but where children are concerned I can't see how it can be more than an empty threat. Either somebody provides good care for their children or they don't. Putting well cared for children into care to punish the parents would cost more money and not help anybody.

I think you could provide a financial incentive for using birth control/sterilisation. However, I am sure this would involve plenty of pitfalls, e.g. somebody is sterilised then changes their mind, somebody suffers health problems because of contraception.

This isn't about pink and blue clothes.

Most of these families live in substandard private rents, they don't get their deposits back, so lose out on each house move.

The houses are damp and costs more to heat, they are also not well decorated or have flooring etc.

The constant moves make life very difficult. The non access to any credit accept 200%+ interest rates, makes life very expensive and the poverty cycle continues.

These families live very unstable, chaotic lives.

cm, there are a host of prepaid cards now with no monthly fee, just an small upfront fee of usually around £5. That said i usually pay by paypal online and it doesn't even come off my debit card, but straight from my bank account (like a transfer). There are hoards of local facebook pages where people sell their unwanted baby stuff where it is usually cash exchanges.

If the poor in the UK...

As ever you keep me guessing, xenia. One minute I picture you as a corporate lawyer, the next as a character in a Victorian novel.

Not that I'm ungrateful for the entertainment.

perhaps someone does need to strongly recommend contraceptive injections to some of the women (i know it doesn't work for everyone) but surely it will work for some.

perhaps we have been too liberal as a society. I don't advocate a return to the Magdalene nursery mentality.

the offspring may cause problems. I have seen this in secondary school where i used to work. Too many kids in places, overcrowding causing problems with school work and impacting on other students e,g, disruption

Mouthy I admire your stance on being ceibate. you have alot of guts

sorry celibate

I am certainly not suggesting life is easy if you don't have money. We got all our first baby's stuff second hand, in fact the church jumble sale ladies were so good they held things back from the sale to offer to us for virtually nothing but there may not be church jumble sales in poorer areas and when everyone around is poor there is probably very little jumble. However my gender neutral is very important. If we want the daughters of these poor families to end up as leading bankers on £2m a year we really relaly do need their mothers not to buy them pink clothes (although I suppose for some the best route out of poverty is marrying well so attracting a richer man might be an easier route than 11 A and A* at GCSE... although they can go together as plenty of people meet their other half at university).

You could pay women to have the contraceptive injection. Those needing money for drugs might jump at the chance as might those who hardly have enough to feed their current children never mind more (just as some anti abortionists in the US pay mothers if they don't abort a baby).

On access to the internet for those rich enough to own a smart phone or computer (not everyone can afford that) or able to cycle or walk to a library with free internet access, some will be on a credit blacklist so unable to buy on line. I think as someone said there are pre paid cards. Even my older children with no job have been given debit and credit cards but that may be because they were/are students.

If we want the daughters of these poor families to end up as leading bankers on £2m a year we really relaly do need their mothers not to buy them pink clothes...

xenia you are truly the gift that keeps on giving. And not just at jumble sales.

plenty of people meet their other half at university

Half a mo. This is a line from Four Weddings And A Funeral.

You are Richard Curtis and I claim a £5 gas meter token

If we want the daughters of these poor families to end up as leading bankers on £2m a year we really relaly do need their mothers not to buy them pink clothes...

So really its my mums fault im not a leading banker...

And what if your DD DOES want pink clothes?! Admittedly, my DD wore mostly unisex clothes, and they were often handed down to DS1, but they were second hand when I got them for DD, they weren't going to do a third DC. So I had to get more clothes for DS2 - not that was a problem at the time, his clothes were Next, Gap etc, but I WAS earning £42k back then...

I got rid of them thinking I would have no more DC's.

And when your DD is 14yo, you would be hard pushed to get her to wear unisex clothes, only to be taken the mickey out of on school mufti days, and outside of school. Being a teen with LD's is hard enough to fit in, without your parents making you wear boys or unisex, non fashionable clothes!

So now there is no way I can hand down DD's clothes. DS1's do DS2 as well, but are only fit for cleaning cloths after being used for two very active boys...

So DS3 needs new clothes. And in the local Charity shops, there is never anything for boys over 2yo. It all goes to the refuge, as they put bags through the door. That and the fact that our council recycle clothes, so lots of people put theirs out for recycling rather than selling them.

Xenia, you never fail to raise a wry smile on my face when I read what you have written in here.

I can bet that your DD's did not wear boys clothes when they were teenagers.

And if you weren't earning as much as you do, which of your 5 DC's would you have chosen to terminate on finding out that you were pregnant? The fourth? The fifth? The third?

That's the choice you expect other people to face, when faced with an accidental pregnancy. Whether to terminate the life of their unborn child and still be able to look their other DC in the face, knowing what they had done to their sibling.

I couldn't do that. Hence having kept my fourth DC, despite my Ex-P and I being reliant on TC's at that point. It's also why I am staying celibate for now. Because I know I would never be able to look my other DC's in the face had i terminated the life of their sibling.

It's REALLY not an easy choice, when it precludes me from having any sort of proper relationship with anyone. Leaving me very lonely once the DC's are in bed.

Going back to the original poster
I have had 11 children 3 homegrown 8 adopted so we have too many children we are not a problem family. Our adopted children all have SN and sadly 3 have died. If we had not adopted these wonderful children they would have cost the tax payer over the years £5,000,000 +
So Louise Casey stuff it

Well said 2old. Those idiots really cant think outside those narrow little boxes can they?

2old given that you are on mn articulate and lucid, one would assume that you are not one of these "problem families". Furthermore, she actually stated that it wasn't about large families per se, and, for the final nail in the coffin - ironic isn't it? That you adopted 8 children I mean - did they perhaps come in to your life from "problem families" ergo reducing the burden upon them and actually giving these children a chance?

As usual on mn, this entire issue has been muddied by the "Yeh well I do x, y and z", so desperate are they to say "nay" without realising that they are of course not the intended subjects.

It means that these topics never get discussed thoroughly.

FWIW I don't think it's worth sending a skeleton crew of 4 social workers (38) to each of these families for a decade. And it would need to be 24/7 as birdsgotta* said previously, secrets come out of the woodwork years later.

Just get the children OUT of those hellholes and stop pussy-footing around the issue.

I listened to her talking about this on radio four and I was very impressed, tbh. She seemed to really care about what was happening, not blaming the mothers left behind, but recognising generations of issues. And if you can't afford children, ie to provide for t hem, then you should really think hard about having them. I stretch this to all people.

The way to stop babies coming into the world would be to give men a contraceptive injection, if there was one, after all they can fathr far more children than these women can carry at any one time. Also if we inspired our daughters to. Get jobs and be something then they wouldn't be seeking love froma baby.

Actually my daughters virtually lived at their riding stables in their teens and that was all about riding fast and hard, power, speed, jumps, danger, getting very muddy, shovelling excrement. I highlly recommend it. It also was a group of mixed people - they got to talk to the stable girls on the minimum wage, saw the rich lawyers with their horses, worked in the tack shop and cafe, got to talk to people of all kinds, saw those people putting every last penny into a share of a horse who didn't have much and those with a lot. So actually when my girls were not doing competitive sport in their teens they were in very very dirty riding gear. However yes they did when out of school uniform sometimes wear dresses for parties. They didn't have boyfriends though until university and I suspect the reason they can earn £50k to £60k in their mid 20s is because of that type of thing - girl power, tom boy stuff, academic work (and of course all the other advantages they have).

However for many pretty very poor girls their only route out of poverty is using their sexual capital so I am not suggesting that be ignored - it's one reason there are more female than male millionaires ni the UK now as some of the women get the money through hard graft as I have and some through giving good sex and being pretty and snaring a rich husband. Women have both routes to riches. Men don't. We should use our advantage more.

Tehre is a reference to a baby bath above! I am pretty well off and we never over five children ever bought such a pointless item. You bend over the normal bath and wash them in there unless you have money to burn as these benefits claimants seem to....