IDS suggestion if capping child related benefits at two children.

[JakeBullet]

Way do other people think about this?

I am assuming it means that new claimants after a set date IF it ever comes to fruition.

I am broadly in favour of this...not because I don't agree with child related benefits, I am receipt of them myself but because we appear to have a dwindling pot.

On the other hand IDS makes the mistake of thinking that everyone who claims for more than two children has always been a welfare recipient which is not the case....many families have gone under with the current recession and have children they thought they had planned for financially.

Or is this more propaganda?

I know we have had a lot of these threads too so sorry for starting another one but was interested to see there was not a thread about it.

They are only non existent if there are no families in that category. There are some. There is a core number where the teenage chidlren don't work, the parents never did and their parents did not.

This has been gone over before. Somebody on a recent thread, their name escapes me, pointed out that these jobless multi-generational families just don't exist. What we do have are plenty of families who spend time on benefits between short-term low paid jobs. Does that ring a bell?

So you are all agreeing with me? If you think there are hardly any benefits claimants with large families and most are only out of work for short periods therefore limiting benefits to 2 children is going to be totally fine as it will not hurt anyone. End of thread I suppose, Xenia right as ever.

Xenia gaslighting as ever!

I am very sorry to dispel this myth that there are no families where generations haven't worked. There are plenty - I know, I work with their kids. Many have never known a family member to have a job (grand parent, parent, sibling, uncle, aunt - no one), and they don't have a clue about how (or why) they should get a job. It is very sad and we are doing our best to change their aspirations but it's so hard when they can 'earn' more money from the government (if I had a £1 for every time I've explained where the government gets its money from I'd be rich !). Not sure of the answer, just know its not simple, and we will continue to try and change the kids futures.

That is of course what I thought. The Government has identified I think it was 100,000 problem families. They tend to have a heap of problems, not one simple easy one, drugs AHDD, child abuse, a huge range and often many applying to the same family, never mind just an absence of role models. I do wonder if a different environment might help. The concentration of them has never helped, didn't help in London's East End in the early 1900s. Didn't help in tower blocks or sink estates at other times. If they were the only difficult family around and all the neighbour's children were hard workers etc that would be better. Even a move to a Scottish island with a small school would help some.

Although I accept that most communities are not massively happy to have a problem family moved to their doorstep.

That's interesting. I've read different stats saying there are only around 400 families in the UK with 3 generations out of work and all on benefits. Or do Xenia's 100,000 problem families include richer ones because they're not so perfect either (ref Blandfords, the Billington club and far more example than I have time to list)?

Even the Govt is not sure Xenia, the criteria for "problem family" seems to change whenever they discuss it.

Based on some of their criteria I score highly....not currently working (although until March this year I had worked solidly since 1982), single parent, child with ADHD (and autism, dyspraxia, learning issues).

And yet I am not a "problem family", just a Carer to a child with some difficulties I am trying to help him cope with. And when he is older I have a career to go back to.

I don't doubt the existence of difficult families either...I have worked with them too. I even had the misfortune to live next door to one. Honestly nothing will change these people without massive investment in services to support the children unfortunate enough to love within the,...and yet we are cutting these services.

ProblemFamilies is a very outdated term. It was used when I first started social work in the late 80s. As attitudes altered we talked of "Families with Problems" to indicate that they were families first, same with many other term. Think Cameron is now talking about troubled families, but what he really means is troublesome families.

I have spent 30 years in social work and of course I have seen the 3 generation non working families time and time again, and yes benefits just about get them by, but with nothing spare. So these desparate people get loans from companies like Providence who loan then £200 and then when they default on the payments, no problem, cus Providence loans them more and before they know it they are thousands of pounds in debt. Sorry I am digressing a little.

Of course these families have many problems/troubles call them what you will ( and I will do my best to explain. Firstly let's dispel the myth that we are born with "equal opportunities" - something the tories like to tell us, so that they can use the "individual pathology theory" (meaning that there are just some people who just don't care and don't want to better themselves and so they have brought their troubles on themselves.

Let's look at the cycle of deprivation - a child is born into a family - we'll call her A) (or a mother and boyfriend, or just a mother etc) and she was not properly cared for when she was a child. Her family home was a tip and there was never enough money to go round - dad maybe used to drink and there was domestic violence and maybe mom had mental health problems. Then brothers and sisters came along and things got worse, not enough to eat, nobody really bothering about the kids, left to their own devices. Bullied at school because they smelt andhad dirty clothes and hair. They didn't do well at school because no one had stimulated them in their formative years and their mom couldn't read and write very well. A left school at 15 (she didn't bother going for the last year) and had had lots of boyfriends by this time. At 16 she became pregnant and the baby was born when she was 17. She was placed on the 10th floor of a high rise and the baby's father had cleared off and when he did come back he was violent to A but she kept having him back. He dabbled with drugs. There is concern of neglect for the baby and a social worker visits and is able to get A some blankets for the beds, instead of the old coats they were using. She is monitoring the welfare of the baby.

Now how can A be expected to bring up a child in a different way to the way she was brought up. It wouldn't cross her mind anyway - she had got used to existing on benefits. She trundled into the poorer areas of the town, pushing the pram, looking grubby and defeated. NOW who do we blame. A's parents - NO because that's the way they had been brought up and in the main we parent in the way we were parented. A's grandparents NO for the same reason. A's baby will grow and experience the same sort of life that A did, (Born to Fail) the title of a Sociology book in the 70's. And then A's baby will follow the same pattern. It's called the cycle of deprivation and no govt or anyone else has the slightest idea of how to break that cycle.

The Labour party iniated Sure Start which helped a little but this govt closed it down and is attempting to break the cycle by punishing these "troubled" families.

SO yes I know where you're coming from mumsneedwine and incidentally "troubled" mothers need fags for the same reason the middle class need wine. Ah but Xenia has the answer, mix up these "troubled" families with nice owner occupiers who go to work and A might look at them and think "Oh maybe I should get a job and a nice car like next door" - yeah right. But as you point out "nice families are not happy at having a problem family dumped on their doorstep. Your naivety and ruthless disregard for people who live in this cycle of deprivation is alarming. Maybe we should send you and your ilk to live on a Scottish Island.

NanaNina, you have explained it very well....better than I could have done. I have equally met families like this (not as a SW). In one case I can think of the Mum had 7 children with a variety of men as Dads. One look at her SS case file (the one from her own childhood) was heartbreaking....sexual abuse, an abusive mother, domestic violence etc etc....hardly anything had passed her by as a child.. Not surprisingly she found parenting hard.....and I accept that some children could grow up in this environment and make the break in the pattern....but not all can.

David Cameron and IDS can pontificate all they like...they did n have the misfortune of growing up in the circumstances some of these families have.

FWIW, I grew up with domestic violence, experienced sexual abuse and neglect at times....especially when my mother was mentally ill. I am fortunate enough to have made the break from that time.....it turned me OFF of relationships rather than wanting a happy ending (which is what these women are invariably seeking). Hence I did not have my first baby until I was 37!
My friend who went through far worse is mentally ill and not capable of working, on her worst days she cannot leave the house.

Xenia is a very shallow and materialistic person if she thinks that life should revolve around money and social status. Of course we should all strive to support ourselves and our children, unless some unfortunate circumstance prevents it. I think we are spiritually impoverished in our current state and we should really try to shun capitalism, consumerism and stop supporting the very belief system that threatens our planet. Sorry, but if you are for capitalism, that's just not sustainable.

I don't agree with people having more than two children full stop, but this is due to environmental reasons. I have stopped at one child because of concerns about sustainability and because I don't feel we can live as comfortably with another mouth to feed.

I do think there is a lot of social engineering going on, but then there was under Labour.

I think that at all of course. Life revolves around our health and those we love although having enough money certainly helps people.

This Government is be commended in looking at what real practical help it can give to the core problem families.

" Official figures show that 120,000 of the most troubled and difficult families cost the taxpayer about £9 billion a year. Every household is now spending the equivalent of £3,000 a year in tax for welfare payments.
There are about one in five households where no one works and 1.5 million children are growing up with a parent addicted to drugs or alcohol.
The culture of entrenched worklessness and dependency was not just a product of recession, Mr Duncan Smith will say.

The Government is planning to overhaul the benefits system with the imminent introduction of universal credit, which is designed to remove financial barriers for unemployed people wishing to return to work. He will describe the current system as one of ?Byzantine complexity?.

?An exemption here, an addition there, all designed around the needs of the most dysfunctional and disadvantaged few,? the Work and Pensions Secretary will say. ?Instead of supporting people in difficulty, the system all too often compounds that difficulty ? doing nothing for those already facing the greatest problems, and dragging the rest down with it.?

Mr Duncan Smith will say that the poor use of government money in recent times has led to people being ?written off?.

?Our failure to make each pound count has cost us again and again over the years, Not only in terms of a financial cost ? higher taxes, inflated welfare bills and lower productivity, as people sit on benefits long term. But also the social cost of a fundamentally divided Britain ? one in which a section of society has been left behind. We must no longer allow ourselves to accept that some people are written off.?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/9631820/Benefits-encourage-problem-families-says-Iain-Duncan-Smith.html

Fair point Xenia, your health really is the most important thing!

I think we should be looking at ways of creating sustainable jobs, and I don't think blaming people for their circumstances is the way to go. If anything it comes down to education and trying to level the playing field for the disadvantaged. Living in poverty breaks people's spirits and damages self esteem, so it's not as simple as telling people to pull themselves up by their boot straps. The problem with this is that this government doesn't want to invest in people, education or to create opportunities.

This is probably a naive and very simple way of looking at things, but I really think that there is enough wealth in the UK to for everyone to have a roof over their head, good health care, food, clean water and education so that they can fulfil their own potential. I honestly think that we could redistribute wealth to create sustainable jobs and opportunities so that everyone can enjoy a good basic standard of living. The problem is that the money is not distributed fairly.

Short of a complete paradigm shift, I don't see how the problems of deprivation, poverty and generational unemployment can be sorted out. You have the haves and have nots and these policies are just going to widen that gap. The result will be crime, poverty and people turning against one another. People without want what other people have, and those with jobs and money are worried about catching 'poor' from the untouchables. It's all a huge mess.

Hi Jake - the Tory toffs have absolutely no idea how tough life is for people who I have described. They often have to choose whether to heat or eat, and life is a constant struggle. Far cry from the lives this shite govt have lived. I'd like them to follow a social worker around for a couple of weeks or better still, get them to live this kind of life for a couple of weeks - the true cost of hardship might then be seen at first hand.

Am so sorry that you experienced such trauma in your childhood Jake, but how brilliant that you have managed to come to terms with it in some way, and not look for "a happy ending" as so many people in this situation do, only to be hurt and traumatised all over again. Hope that you are now more settled and enjoying your own child. You will be one of the few people who will ensure your child is no till treated in the way that you were as a child.

I have a pyschiatric history (severe intermittent depression) so know the horror of mental illness. It is not related to my childhood as I was lucky enough to have loving parents, but related to the loss of my closest and dearerst friend at the age of 46. I know that for many people who have been trauamatised in childhood (especially sexually abused) it is a life sentence, in the sense that they often suffer serious mental illness, depression, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder. I do know how it feels not to be able to leave the house - this is often the case for me.

FunbagFreddie of course you are right, there is enough money in the UK to ensure that everyone has a home and enough resources to make a life, rather than just existing. It's called capitalism and a very small percentage of people own vast quantities of the wealth of the country. Obviously the wealthy have a vested interest in ensuring that this system prevails, and so there will always be this gross inequality.

Xenia maybe you could go on another thread as your comments are fairly meaningless to be honest and it's hard to relate what you say to the reality of the debate we are trying to have on this thread. YOu mention the tories talking of not wanting to "write people off" - OMG this is the biggest con trick of all. They don't give a fig about "writing people off" it's the rationale for pretending they care about people, and sadly some people actually believe this.

Excuse me, Xenia, but ADHD is a Biological condition. It is not caused by being poor. Rich people's children can have ADHD too. It is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, bog all to do with upbringing or anything else.

It is no different to a diabetic not having enough insulin in their blood.

Not only are you generally insulting about the poor, now you are discriminatory towards people with disabilities too.

NanaNina, you and I have disagreed on the 'cycle of deprivation' before. What the cycle of deprivation means to me is that SOCIETY has not invested enough in the education of these people to SHOW them how to parent differently. (And without being patronising or thinking that there is only one acceptable way to parent.)

My mother came from a very MC background, 7 bedroom home growing up, horses etc. doesn't mean she wasn't neglected after her parents divorced when she was 7yo.

She then continued that with me.

However, a bit of investment in me when I had my DD at 16 has ensured that that has stopped.

I feel glad that my DD was born in 1998, and not now. Because if she had been born now, I would not have had the input I had when my DD was a tiny baby, and I probably wouldn't have parented any differently to my own mother.

I thank the stars that my DD was born at a time when investment in these things was seen as a good thing.

I was taught so many things with the help of the Mother & Baby unit I was placed in, and these things have enabled me to become a far better parent to my own DC's, and hopefully they will then also parent their DC's in a better way than I was parented.

All because of a bit of investment in my family when I had my first DC.

And another thing - if all schools achieved the same results as the best performing ones, then things would be a damn sight more equal when it comes to jobs.

If children in private schools are taught to a much higher standard of education, it stands to reason that these people are more likely up be able to gain a higher paid job and pay more tax.

If the state school in a deprived area had the same strict rules, the same ethos, the same advantages no matter how expensive, then the playing field would be truly equal.

Why should CHILDREN get different educations by dint of how rich their PARENTS are?

If you want it to be the case that EVERYONE can earn enough to support themselves without recourse to state support as adults, then you have to have an equal education for all.

The rich don't want this, because they WANT their DC 's to have every advantage over others. However, if every state school achieved the same results as private schools, there is far more of a chance that this might not happen for their own children.

If state schools had the sane level of enrichment activities, even for those whose parents can't afford to pay, you would be seeing far more DC's from poor families in top level jobs.

A bit of investment in the childhood of these poorer children (0-18) can provide the state with far more people capable of becoming higher rate tax payers, and far less that would have to rely on state top ups to pay for the basics in life, because they are working for low wages.

The problem with this? Nobody would be willing to do those low paid jobs. And somebody has to. If everyone had an equal education to the age of 18, then there would not be enough people that were willing to work for that amount, so the wages would have to rise, thus dropping profits (supply and demand...)

NOBODY'S DC's aspire to clean toilets, or work in a shop. LOTS of people's DC's aspire to become Doctors, or Lawyers. The difference isn't a lack of ambition but a lack of adequate education, starting from the preschool years.

There are two private Nurseries on my mixed estate. One costs £52 a day, and is very play based, no formal sit down learning. The other is £59 a day, and as well as free play, the DC's learn French from 2.5yo, they do sit down formal learning every day too.

So with just a £7 a day difference in the price, why don't the poorer parents send their DC's to Nursery two? Because the parents created uproar when the Nursery was going to start taking the 15hrs vouchers, as it would cause 'rough parents' to bring down the highly sought after ethos of the Nursery. They also claim that DC's with SN's will not cope there. (Read : We don't want DC's with SN's here...)

All of which makes this Nursery unachievable for lower earners, or parents whose DC's have SN's, no matter how much they would rather send their DC's there.

It's not that they DON'T want better things for their DC's, it's that lack of wealth means they can't access them.

When my own DD was struggling with Maths at Primary, I could see how she would have taken to it far easier had she attended Kumon Maths classes. But when you have the choice between sending your child to Kumon Maths or feeding them, it's easy to see why that child doesn't get that enrichment activity.

These parents (mostly, even I don't deny that there are a few families that just don't give a crap) all WANT what is best for their DC's, but because they can't afford it, they can't provide it.

I have instilled my DC's with the fact that education is everything, and that they can never hope to run their own home if they do not look for a way to become employable. And that is even my DC's with SN's. they have barriers to becoming employed, certainly. Their employers WILL have to make adjustments for their disabilities, definitely.

But they all aspire to being employed in jobs that are sensible for their own abilities and skill set. Some will earn lots, others not so much.

In fact, the one who will have to put in the least effort into gaining a job at all is likely to become the most highly paid, and be the highest contributing out of my DC's. the one who will more than likely earn the least will have had to overcome many hurdles to gain that employment, and will have worked the hardest to even get to a point where they are employable.

Wages don't reward effort, or my DD would be paid far more highly than her brother. Wages reflect simply the ability to be more academic. Which seems to rate far higher than being practical. But that doesn't make sense because both skill sets are interdependent. Without one group of people, the other would not be able to carry out their work.

*I can't seem to see why those in more highly paid work can't see that their employment is influenced and enabled by the employment of the people further down the chain.

If the shelf stackers stopped stacking the shelves, the delivery drivers stopped delivering, the checkout operators stopped scanning, would the CEO be making ANY money? No? Therefore his standard of living is dependent on those below him working. His job is unsustainable without the jobs below his, and he is dependent on their work to live.

So why does he value their work less than his?

The argument we always hear from the rich is that we should accept our low pay and poor conditions because without them we wouldn't have a job at all. But that fails to see the flip side of the coin that without the low paid workers the rich would have no way of keeping that business open, then THEY wouldn't have a job at all. It ignores the very real fact that one cannot exist without the other. They are interdependent.*

I agree with Xenia. I am the product of adoption. My mother could not have supported me. So she gave me up for adoption 1969. Thank God she did, rewind to today's society and I would be absolutely buggered!

There is far to much focus on the poor having children these days and the working public have to deal with it, teachers, social workers, key workers, all dealing with people that probably should not have had offspring. It's not something that can carry on. But I suspect with the usual left wing living in Chelsea on here, this will be the most abhorrent post they have ever read.

But WHY should the rich be viewed as more fit to have children? In fact, great artists/geniuses/musicians/writers overwhelmingly and disproportionately come from a middle class background or lower - Leonardo Da Vinci, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Isaac Newton, Wolfgang Mozart, Albert Einstein, Jeanette Winterson and thousands more.

CouthyMow hits the nail on the head with her post about the different standards in education and about how the rich make their money directly from poorer people working for them.

Those in stable families and with higher incomes tend to have children who contribute to society. I am not sure I said - the rich - though. The very rich have to be careful not to give children too much as they lose focus and turn to drugs etc. However upper middle class working mothers do tend to produce children who will pay a lot of tax and families in cycles of poverty do not therefore many countries including France with extra tax breaks give those to those who will produce the children the country needs.

ADHD and diabetes both of which mention are much worse if you eat a working class diet and much better if you eat a high fat, lots of veg type diet you tend to eat in families with more money. I am not saying poor families always feed their children high carb, lots of E number diets and middle class families do not but studies show correlations and also improvements for those conditions based on change in diet.

Xenia Thu 25-Oct-12 21:40:27
"Don't we really only want well off educated high earning parents having children anyway as it's their chidlren who will do well and pay a lot of tax and give a lot back? "

I keep asking you this, Xenia, but I don't think I've ever had an answer:

how do you think the well off, educated, high earning people would be able to do their important work if there was nobody there to see to the infra-structure: nobody to empty the bins, nobody to run the sewage system, nobody to do the cleaning, nobody to keep the roads repaired, nobody to porter in the hospitals if they took ill, nobody to do childcare, nobody to load, transport, unload and sell their food?

The truth is that many of those jobs are so badly paid that people rely on benefits to be able to carry on doing them. But we wouldn't any of us last a week without them.

I see Couthy has already asked the same question.

Xenia, my son has ADHD among other diagnoses.....he has always eaten a diet high in vegetables by choice. I admit I have a degree and am aware of good nutrition being an important factor for minimising the symptoms. Many people are not.....and we are not going to change that by decreasing the amount of cash they have available to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. Ironic at a time when the Govt are investing in an army of HVs to work with these families and ensure they DO become aware of nutrition.

Hi Couthymow - I think the problem is that I should always make it clear when talking about the cycle of deprivation, that there are always going to be exceptions. Thing is that a child's future is dependent upon the their formative years and especially 0- 3. There is evidence that the patterns of a child's brain are formed for the better or worse in those years, and that forms the foundation for later life. Again I am not saying all children abused or neglected in those years are going to be doomed to failure, but sadly the vast majority are I believe (I don't have statistics but in 30 years of social work I have seen this cycle going around and around) and the sociology book (Born to Fail) although old now, makes this point far more elequently than I can and is backed up by research. I'll see if it's still in print or there is something similar more up to date.

Your main point that society has not invested enough in the education of these parents to show them how to parent properly. I can see that on the face of it this has some validity and moreover that was the case for you as you were helped as a young mother, and so have been able to change the parenting pattern for the better. However I think you are the exception to the rule, and yes there will be many others out there who have been helped in the way that you describe. I have seen out of control teenagers placed with specialist teenage foster carers who have turned out to be so much better mothers than they would have been had they been left in their own families. Some of these foster carers kept the young girl and her baby in their home and treated the girl like their daughter and the baby as their grandchild, and became a "family of resource" for these girls, which is hugely important as they had no support from their own parents.

Sorry I am digressing. You see I don't believe that in the main that good parenting can be taught in schools (of any kind) in the way that history and geography are taught. Schools can only work with the "raw material" that they have and the child who has been abused/neglected is not going to be "school receptive" at 5. He won't have had any stimulation in his formative years and may have been plonked in front of the TV or left to "run wild" (I have seen this so many times - truly) so he is not going to develop in the way that the child who has come from a loving home and played educational games, read to etc" is going to, and this pattern continues throughout his school life. These children usually manage in primary school but by the time they are of secondary age, they often are the children who are suspended for being disruptive, or else they just don't go to school and parents aren't bothered one way or the other. (In the 80's we used to take children into care if they weren't going to school) and this didn't really do any good at all, and the practice has stopped now.

However I can agree with you to some extent, that if children had the same facilities as private schools (own swimming pool, large playing fields, music and drama studios etc) they might enjoy school better. My son and dil are both primary schools. My son's school is in a fairly deprived area and he often talks of the lack of facilities for the kids. However I have to go back to my belief that the die is cast by the time the child is 5 and all the swimming pools and playing fields are not going to make any difference. You mentioned school ethos. I was a wc kid who passed the 11+ and went to grammar school in the 50's and came from a respectable wc family but I couldn't cope with the school, cus all the other girls were "posh" and spoke differently to me (most of them had come from private schools) and whilst I made friends, I went to their big houses and never invited anyone back to our humble semi (rented not owner occupied) I couldn't cope with the ethos of the grammar school because most kids were MC and I was WC and I left before taking O levels. When I started doing sociology I came across a book called "Why WC Kids fail at grammar school" and it was like reading my life story. Exactly the same thing happened to my partner too.

I must stop but I do agree with a lot of what you say, but I don't share your belief system. I think you have proven that you are the exception (along with many others I'm sure) that have risen above what might have been. The very fact that you write so well and are obviously very intelligent (oh god I don't want that to sound patronising) proves the point you are making. But all the mothers I visited over the years on run down council estates wouldn't have a clue how to write as you do, and they were most definitely trapped in a cycle of deprivation, that I witnessed before my eyes, I stayed around long enough to see 3 generations......and it was so sad and these people were defeated by the system, they had no voice no suport and were exisiting on the margins of society. That is still going on in the country I'm sure, only much worse now because of IDS and his ilk punishing these families for being poor.

Sorry so long. Would be good to have a face to face chat.............!

It's important to remember that child abuse and neglect isn't just something that happens in poor families. People don't want to admit that it goes on in nice middle class homes too.

My son that has been dxd with hyperactivity 'with a high priority of ADHD' practically lives off fruit and vegetables, through choice and also because he has severe allergies.

And I go to great lengths to ensure that my DC's all have a minimum of 5 portions of fruit and veg a day, and a healthy balanced diet, which is why 75% of my (low) income goes on feeding them.

IMO it is very important for them to have this while they are growing.