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

[uwila]

Oh this will be popular round here.

here

Dont know if this has been mentioned but I have recently gone into employment after 22 yrs of rearing children.(except for a job, cash in hand at a pub yrs ago)

When the youngest started school full time I got sent a letter from jobcentre saying i had to attend a back to work interview or they would stop my benefits.

Even though i claim no benefits apart from carers allowance as i have a severely disabled son, and tax credits coz dh works.
I went to jobcentre for the laugh and asked them what effing benefits could they stop.
They made a mistake.
But I said i would like to work and if they could sort it out, I would work as there is only so much cooking and cleaning a person can do and I was bored at home.
I would.
It took 6 months of numerous job applications and getting enhanced CRb checks, etc etc
till I got a little job in a nursery.
It is only for a couple of hours but I have a different kind of confidence, pride and I am very happy as I am doing something for myself.It fits around the kids school etc and I feel valued now at home and at work.

Sorry for waffling on but please try and carve out a career for yourself if you can
as you will feel like I have done when the kids grow up and leave.

"Xenia: Goldman Sachs may not directly employ the exploited cleaners, but they do employ the agency that underpays the cleaners. And it does seem reasonable to ask, repeatedly, why a company that can pay its senior staff annual bonuses of over £100,000 (that's bonuses not wages and, for the sake of any slow readers out there, bonuses are on top of wages...), can't afford to pay its cleaners a living wage of, say, £15,000 a year."

The difference is pretty much ANYONE can clean. Not everyone has the skills, experience & even guts (e.g. the risks involved in certain areas of business where one wrong step involves losing everything), or training to do the kinds of jobs that pay £100,000 bonuses.

It's like saying why are pilots paid £50k + a yr or whatever when cabin crew are paid £12k + ? I'm sorry, but it doesn't take a genius to work it out.

Oh yawn another picking on Xenia thread.
Brandy7 - not nice

doormat, that was what I was trying to get at, that work gets people out of the house, gives them an interest and chance to meet other people and is psychologically good.

Re GS, obviously I believe some people are worth more than others. I'm sure the experiment when Chinese dustmen and doctors were paid the same didn't work. There are some jobs most people aren't capable enough to do and some jobs most of us could do and where people have rare skills they will be paid more.

Blondilocks and Xenia, I am not advocating that everyone be paid the same wages no matter what job they do. My point is that it is morally and ethically wrong for a company that is doing well and making substantial profits to pay slave wages to cleaners or any other junior or low-level staff. It would not bankrupt the company to pay a living wage to its employees.
Cleaning may not be difficult work. A cleaning job may be one that most people could do. Do you really think that this justifies treating the people who do the work as subhuman, undeserving of any employment rights, job security - or a living wage?

I know someone from Jamaica who is a part-time computing studies student and cleans part-time to pay her way. She often earns £800 a month. She gets up at 5am, goes to work for 6am, then to college, then back to work at 5pm. Sometime she has evening classes. She also works weekends. She enjoys her job because of the flexibility. She has the right attitude. Interestingly, all the other people she works with are foreign because indigenous folk won't do it.

LVT ive just looked back at my messages and yes your right that was a nasty comment i made and i apologise to xenia

still dont agree with anything she says

speedy, one reason I might be where I am (reasonably successful) is exactly that. Being happy to work to mid night, give twins a breastfeed. Work to 3am, Go to sleep, get up to feed at 6am, (not always but sometimes). Or the years I got up at 5am on Saturday to do 2 hours work before anyone else got up. I suppose people just differ in what they're prepared to accept and do.

m, don't know what you mean by slave labour. Are you saying the minimum wage is too low? It's quite a lot compared with some countries.

brandy, I had a quick look last night to find that comment and couldn't even see it so I can't imagine it was anything that bothered me.

Who looks after her children, speedy?

Xenia, some of us can't function on so little sleep.

In fact, most of us can't.

LOL I was listening to a news report yesterday which was about teachers "slamming" parents for expecting after school clubs and saying why can't lazy parents look after their own kids and ensure that they get their homework done, eat proper meals etc., instead of going to work and expecting someone else to do it for them.

I thought of this thread.

Re a 14 year old letting themselves in and being on their own for a couple of hours - yes of course they're capable of it. But it ain't good parenting. Don't pretend it is.

When I was 14 in the house on my own, I used to smoke, eat cake, make expensive telephone calls and if there'd been booze in the house I'd have drunk it. And if I'd had the opportunity, I would have had sex as well.

Even 14 year olds need some supervision fgs.

This is just ridiculous. Xenia most of us can't survive on 3 hours sleep a night. In fact it is downright unhealthy & dangerous for the majority of people to try & exist on so little.
I've worked since I was 16 years old because it was worth my while. I had a better standard of living by working than I did claiming benefits or not working.
I worked while I was at Uni too, but I didn't have children then.
However, parents need support to work. Those who are not going to earn good money, need to be able to have access to decent, affordable childcare. They should need to be able to know that their children are safe & well looked after.
They need to know that there is some point to working. That it will actually bring in more money than they would get by not working & give them a better standard of life.
Lets try and be realistic here & not pretend that just because a very few are superwomen - that means everyone else has to be too.

Im sure people with twins learn to live on three hours of sleep a night

Agree with you Bugsy2 - it's about enabling people to fulfil their potential by creating a climate which allows this, ie affordable childcare, decent wages. Then people will actually reap the benefits of working - and I don't just mean extra money to enhance the quality of life, but the self esteem, learning new skills etc that goes with working. But we need to keep this rooted in the real world - totally agree that we can't all be superwoman.
DON'T agree Caligula that allowing a 14 year old to be alone in their house is bad parenting - in fact i think that's a terrible sweeping statement to make. My own mother was a typical SAHM, always there, even when myself and siblings were in our teens. It might have been fulfilling her idea of being a good parent, but I hated it. When I left home and went to college it would have been with a great deal more self confidence,not to mention independence, if she'd allowed us to stand on our own two feet. She'd also have benefited from not being there for us 24/7- she is a capable and intelligent woman who now has an underlying resentment that she didn't achieve more with her life. I think there's a world of difference between neglecting the emotional needs of your teenager (which let's face it can happen when you're sitting in the same house as them) and allowing a healthy degree of independence.

I certainly can't cope on 3 hours sleep a night. Sometimes the adrenalin of exciting work means you can work late and on deals or whatever and you cope but it's not sustainable. My daughter's friend whose graduate starting salary is £60k (he's very exceptional in all ways) this weekend he was leaving work at 6am, sleeping to 7.30am and then going in..... but they'll finish what they're doing and then he'll catch up on sleep. I suppose all I meant in general is that some people seem to do things in periods of their lives like take two jobs or work incredibly hard and they can personally long term benefit from that. I was most tired and exhausted when home with small children. Work is a complete picnic compared to 24/7 childcaring.

Glad to hear that you do understand that, xenia, since you sometimes imply that childcare is skivving. I know a few people who work long hours to get out of childcaring because it's too hard.

Xenia, you exasperate me! I'm sure all of us can think of exceptional times in our lives when we have shifted our butts bigtime to do something.
However, relating one off experiences is of absolutely no assistance whatsoever, to people who will be taking low paid jobs because their qualifications or situations do not permit anything else.
I hope you will not take offence, but your experiences seem so very far removed from other peoples.

Why is everyone suddenly talking about 14 year olds? I thought we were talking about 11 year olds which is completely different.

Yeah, agree, there can be a world of difference between 11 and 14, but then so come some 16 year olds be incredibly self reliant and confident and others aren't. (Actually i know a few 40 year olds who aren't but that's a whole new thread!!) I was simply repsonding to Caligula who made the statement that allowing a 14 year old to let themselves into their own house and spend some time by themself (or with siblings/friends) is not good parenting, which I think is a dreadful thing to say.At 14 years I would have given my right arm for the chance to have a front door key and the house to myself on arriving home from school. My teenage son gets home, makes himself a snack, cheese on toast or something similar, loads the dishwasher for me (sometimes!) feeds the cat and then has a bit of chill out time before I arrive home. On a good day he might even have pot of tea ready for me and we'll sit and chat about our day.I like to think that I'm instilling some kind of self reliance into him which will enable him to look after himself when he leaves home, rather than thinking some woman is always going to be two feet behind him attending to his every whim! Sorry Caligula if you think that's poor parenting - but I think my son will make a fantastic partner and father in years to come!!

And mine who is a bit older now may get in and cook regularly for his two little brothers, although I'm often in the house and frequently there's someone else too. I think the idea is that you find someone to look after your 11 year old which is what most parents in the UK whetehr single or not manage actually to do believe it or not - they either pay a child minder or use an after school club use a relative or do a child swap with another family.

..though vision of my 8 year old balanced on a chair trying to check if his chicken pie was cooked last night because I couldn't be bothered not sure if an example of good or bad parenting; although even there ability to learn how to deal with hot ovens not necessarily a bad thing.

agree with noseyoldbag - when I was 14 I was doing the food in a pub and/or baby-sitting the kids (baby and toddler)

Expat, she lives in a house divided into bedsits so share kitchen and bathroom. There are others in her situation and she shares childcare with another woman who works different in the kitchen of a hotel. So when she is away in the morning, this woman takes her child to school and then when she returns in the evening, this woman goes for her late shift and she looks after her child.

It requires a lot of juggling but when you have to do something, you make it work, especially as the only money they get is what they earn.

my sister and i used to walk home from school and get in about half hour before our mum when i was 11(sis was 14),and my mum used to work 7-9.30pm 3 nights a week,leaving my sister in charge from the age of 15.i was a s scared of my sister as i was of my mum so i always behaved myself,and my sister used to make the odd phonecall and smoke the odd fag in the back garden but that was it.i thik it depends on the individual child/teenager whether they are mature enough to be left.

..and sometimes if I have to leave at 5am for some work thing or other and no one else is here the 8 year olds get themselves up, dressed, have breakfast and walk to school which is only at the end of the road and they and I are happy with that. Doesn't happen that often.