Single parenet benefits proposed to end when youngest child is 11 rahter than 16

[uwila]

Oh this will be popular round here.

here

There really are no easy answers to this debate. I'm a single working mum & the only benefits I get are tax credits. I am lucky though, I was forced to work hard by my bullying mother & I got a good state education, went to uni & had a career before I had kids. I am therefore able to earn enough by working part-time to keep my head above water.
To get here has taken years of input, a great deal of which I'm not entirely responsible for. Some people didn't get the same opportunities I did & I think when you are struggling to make ends meet & perhaps don't have as much to offer an employer as you'd like - it is hard, very hard to make enough money to get out of the benefits trap.

I want to see more support given to single mums to retrain, to have better childcare and realise their potential.

Lol Caligula, send him round to me when you've finished!

I'm sure actually that my exp would agree with a lot of stuff on here. He told me that because I had left him, I shouldn't be entitled to the sort of life I had before. My punishment for leaving is to have the bare minimum to live on, that's why he pays as little maintenance as possible. Of course it is perfectly acceptable for the self employed to play the system to their advantage though.

noseyoldbag, most of us on here who find ourselves single parents were stuck in awful relationships!!!!! Just because we prefer not to be abused/picked on/treated like dirt/cheated on etc etc etc doesn't necessarily mean we set out to be single parents!

How are these parents stuck in crappy relationships exactly? Have they been told that they're not allowed to separate/divorce? Seems to me that they might be scared of losing their lifestyle, so they put up with it, instead of finding the guts to go it alone. Perhaps they'd rather be unhappy than be poor? Whatever you think of people on benefits, I think people need to realise that you don't get handed over a big sum of money each month, it is the bare minimum. Check out tortoise's thread if you think it's easy street.

Absolutely-I'm damn sure most people don't set out to be single parents. Life throws shit at you,tbh whether you're in a relationship or not. My dp doesn't beat me up, but that doesn't mean that life is a bed of roses all the time either. I'm just trying to make the point that life is tough for many people, whatever their circumstances. But going back to the thread : the debate here is about whether benefits should stop when a child reaches 11 rather than 16 for single parents, and tbh for many 2 parent families this feels like some kind of joke,because they can't afford to stay home when their children are pre-school, never mind 11 years and as for 16....And I think the serious point that people are trying to make (tho sadly a lot of sniping has got in the way) is that this is a stupid and short sighted way to run a country and an economy. Really, I suppose the answer is that the very small well off minority of parents who are supported by someone else would have the luxury of deciding when (if) they ever work. For the rest of us (ie almost the entire population) the govt needs to decide how important it is for a parent to be able to be at home with their children, and til what age, whether 5, 11 or whatever, and then make that situation possible for ALL parents. I just don;t see how anyone can claim that it's fair for 2 parents who have stayed together to have to both work, but that single parents should be paid to be at home till their child is 16.

noseyoldbag, not all single parents are claiming benefits, some are working like you lucky two parent families!
Do you really think most one parent families want to be scraping by on benefits? Do you think they are out there buying Gucci handbags while they have yummy mummy lunches? Its only because life is such a damn struggle they are getting benefits at all!

Income support is £56 per month I think for a single adult. It is bloody peanuts, it is not a big fat handout for sitting around on our big fat arses.

Oh gawd, hasn't anyone read my posts?

The proposal isn't to stop benefits, it's to stop IS. Single mothers would get exactly the same amount of benefits in JSA, the only difference is that it would mean they would have to go into the benefit agency office every 2 weeks and sign on. In other words, it would make sweet FA difference.

LOL, but this is so much more fun Caligula!!!!!!!!!!!! Night all.

Night Bugsy

Yes, and also, isn't comparing single parents to non-single ones a bit daft?

I mean, we swap shifts, too, DH and I.

But there are two of us as opposed to just one.

Duh.

But Caligula I saw that and took it on board but doesn't that mean every fortnight they would be given possible jobs (where there are any) and if they kept refusing them the benefit would stop. In other words they would have that trouble of going to the office every fortnight, helped to realise they are being given money from tax payers, kind of might concentrate the mind a bit.

The person who said the year at home with a baby is the hardest - I absolutely agree. I could never have done it. Working is easier. It's more fun. You have colleagues. You get pay and status and see adults every day. I always worked as a mother not because I had to but because I wanted to. Being home with a baby for me was just too boring to do all the time. Loved lots of it and would have hated not to have had children but to be 100% responsible 24/7 is hard. There are some useful suggestions on this thread about some help for childcare you can get if you come off IS and work and I think it's worth doing the sums particularly if someone isn't really that happy at home with the child and particularly if you can get into something with promotion prospects.

I don't know the level of IS if you are a single mother with one baby plus CB but you get your housing paid as well. Even after that I'm sure it's pretty hard to get by on what is left. My student children who would always say make a sandwich rather than buy one etc, walk to avoid a bus fare, help even I realise the cost of things.

I think you talk a lot of sense Xenia - tho one thing sticks out in my mind - you say the first year at home with baby is harder than going to work. Surely one of the issues essential to all this debate is that NOT everyone feels the same and therefore it's not helpful to make generalisations. Yes, I agree that some people would prefer to be at work and would find it harder to be at home, but equally I know mums who can afford to stay at home and do so because they want to -not necessarily cos they believe that it's better for the child (tho' again, some do) but because they are happier being able to focus on bringing up a child rather than having the pressure of work as well. And I would bet that most of us fall somewhere in between - there are days when it's great to get out to work, interact with others and earn money, but there are days when it's a bugger to get up in the dark, get the kids to nursery, do a full-on working day dealing with difficult clients, mounds of paperwork or whatever, then rush to pick the kids up and come home to a mountain of housework. Nobody can say 'work' or 'home' is easier - it's too complex for that. The point I've tried to make all the way along is that people should be treated equally, and not discriminated against either because they are bringing a child up alone OR because they've stayed together.

Oh God Xenia, that's such an optimistic view of the system. No, no-one gets given possible jobs when they go every 2 weeks, they have to prove that they've applied for some every few months for a couple of weeks, then they're left to sign on every 2 weeks as before until next time they have to pretend to have done some serious applications, about 8 or 9 months later.

And every now and then yes, someone pro-active and enthusiastic who hasn't yet been ground down by the system comes in and gets interviews for their clients, but LP's who are going to have to arrange childcare and have holiday childcare problems, are not going to be top of the list when choosing suitable clients to go to the interview (don't forget, the jobcentre advisor wants to get positive results, I presume they're on targets too). So call me cynical, but I just don't think it will have any effect except to waste everybody's time.

I suppose it would if the incentives to the job centre staff included more pay the more single parents you got off benefits or if the Government had some jobs they would give you, with childcare, once the parent of the 11 year old had been drawing benefits for say 3 months and not got a job.

As for work as choice I think many parents who work, male and female, would rather be at home. Some couples fight over who gets to stay at home! I am not the same but that's probably just because I like the work I do.

I think there are many fewer people on benefits in the Uk than there used to be and we don't have the unemployment problems we used to have and we're not in recession so on the whole things are better than they have been in the past.

But from the govt's pov, it wouldn't make sense to target lone parents over for example, young single people.

I don't blame them for focussing more of their efforts on them tbh - it just makes sense to put more effort into getting easier to place people into paid jobs. As soon as unemployment goes up, you will find that all these initiatives to get lone parents, disabled people, older people etc. into work, will go by the board. They're almost seen as a luxury, to target when the job market is buoyant. When it's not, they focus on the core workforce.

Sorry Bugsy2 but i really can't let your comment go ananswered! Where in my post did i say that all single parents are on benefits? Or that in all 2 parent families the parents work? Nowhere. Also, I haven't said single parents are strolling around with gucci handbags - your words, not mine. The point i'm making (which you conveniently ignore!) is that this SHOULD NOT BE A SINGLE/TWO PARENT FAMILY ISSUE. There are many many 2 parent families like mine where both parents HAVE to work to pay the essential bills. We are in a classic situation: one income won't support us, and we would get virtually no help via tax credits on one income. So, we both go to work, which means after paying childcare I make a grand total of about £40 per week more than if I didn;t work. And that's for a 40 hour week. £1 per hour. Whoopee. Why don't I say sod it and jack in the job? Because we NEED that £40 - not for luxuries,not for extras but TO LIVE ON!! And the kick in the teeth is that if I were to leave dp, I'd probably be at least as well off, if not better, in terms of disposable income, because I'd have my housing paid for, plus I could be at home looking after my kids! Now, personally i think there are other benefits to working other than just financial -self-esteem, role model for dcs etc - but it does not change the fact that this is a ludicrous state of affairs.

well i only work 2days at the moment but enjoy going to have a break from my ds, even though its working with kids

i do think single parents,like myself, get slated a lot.

the nhs is a sham, the csa is a sham, the amount of foreigners let in this country and gaining benefits and not working is another issue altogether. albeit a realistic one

p.s i had planned on returning to work full time when my eldest was at secondary but had ds now 2.3years and his father is a fuckwit so afraid i wont be working fulltime for AT LEAST another 10 years.

ooops mentioned the nhs, because a lot of money is being wasted on it ,all you full timers taxpayers money of course

xenia, you have ignored my question to you a few times, so I will ask you directly...

Do you not think that reather than cut benefit, a more realistic way to get single parents into work (and indeed, 2 parent families) when their kids are school age would be to force employers into being family friendly?

I know you have never needed this, you are very fortunate, but a huge amount of people aren't able to get jobs they are able to stick at or indeed be happy with because of the flexibility problem.

please answer, I am genuinely interested in your pov on this, as you seem to disreguard any other level of work ethos than your own.

No. That's too much of an interference with the free market and most employers in the country have between 2 and 5 staff I think and they already wrestle with a disgusting amount of red take and regulations as any of us who have had nannies off on maternity leave will know only too well.

if the country thought it could afford it I would not be against universal good childcare along the lines they manage in France and other countriesand I suspect we're going that way anyway as Blair has talked about before and after school care - fine to say I won't take that because I want to be home because my husband can afford so I can be there but not fine if you expect the state to pick up the tab so that's one way to go which is where we're going. Another is the changes we've had which see chidlren I think all of 4 is it guaranteed a half time or full time nursery place? That's been another change which perhaps takes us closer to the European model which seems to work well for many parents abroad where they feel they have more of a choice about working than we do here.

But we are a very long way away from child care for under 3s costing £2000 a year or whatever it is in some countries. Obviously that makes things a lot easier for working parents of either gender.

I would quite like what they do in some countries in Scandinavia which is force fathers to take on 50% of the childcare role after divorce or at least taht be the expectation which would make it easier for many single mothers who of course all have another half who could pull their weight or pay for the childcare when it was his turn to have them.

I don't quite follow my own post there.... laughing... but I hope anyone else can.

I have tried to plough through this thread but only got so far so I hope I'm not repeating anything in what I'm about to say.
I am a lone parent. My dd was born at the end of my first year at uni, she is now 2.5 and I graduated last summer. Despite being a graduate, I am on a wage of only £12000, which leaves me £831.00 a month after taxes. My housing benefit is laughable. I get just under £100 a month to put towards my £600 rent. It is very depressing to see those figures written down, but the fact is that if I was on benefits I would be £70 a week worse off than I am in full time work( I had a calculation done at the job centre.) It seems to me that many, many things need changing, but this proposal is just ludicrous. More support needs to be given to the people who are actually trying. £70 a week to many would be no incentive to get back to work when the government looks after them doing nothing. The amount of rent the council makes me pay is laughable given my wage and the amount of money they give to people not working. I am not saying that everyone should work- if I could afford to I'd love more time off with dd, but it's just not financially viable. They need to be taxing lone parents less for a start.

i started reading this the other night but now its too big !

when i was a single mum i used to go and see a lone parent advisor at the jobcentre every 6 months,who would always work out that i would be worse off working than on benefits.that was before ds2 started nursery though.

i grew up just outside london,there was very little unemployment and everybody i was at school with expected to either go to uni or get a job when they left.

where i live now,in a former industrial town which is now a place of high unemployment,it really is difficult (impossible for some) to find work,and inflexible single mothers dont get a look in when most employers get hundreds of applications for jobs.

having said that,i dont see why,once your youngest child is at senior school,you should still get IS,as that is a benefit for people who can't work.i think its perfectly fair that single mums should have to claim JSA instead from that time.

I certainly agree we should tax lower earners less. Woudl be good to start people off paying tax on £10k a year and not lower or pay everyone in work or not a sum per week once they turn 18 to death instead of all pensions and benefits and claims but a lot of benefits advisers I suppose would lose their jobs.... I think 100 years ago most workers did not fall within tax bands at all. Didn't they introduce income tax as an emergency measure to fund the Napoleonic wars or something?

There is a very great difference around the country in terms of jobs available. I notice the contrast between the poorer bits of the North East when I go up there and London.

Do we need more of the moving to where the work is thing that people have always done? I suppose that happens anyway - people move where the work is.