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

[uwila]

Oh this will be popular round here.

here

got to disagree a bit with the financial side of things. I#ll be honest about my finances, which is slightly vulgar.

I earn £1280 a month. my ex partner earned £1000. child benefit was around £180 a month. so, total = £2460. less childcare
@ £197 = £2263

Nowdays, i get £1280 + £180 chb and tax credit of £480 - so £1940, less my childcare of £197 a month = £1743.

I'm £520 a month worse off as a single parent. even if you argue £50 a week for my absent ex for food or (more likely, alcohol...) that i'm 'saving' by him not being there, it's a drop in family income to me and the children of £320 a month. £3840 a year.

now, 25% of his income, as he would have to pay via the csa - if he were working and after earmarking 20% for his subsequent child would be £200. I'm still £120 down. not a lot of money really, just two weeks of my shopping budget at the moment.

LOL at all this!! Yeah - job or man hmmmmm which shall I choose?? And does that mean those of us with both are double lucky or double cursed??!!
But seriously doesn't it all come back to the point i made earlier that every child has two parents and they should have lifelong responsibility for that child whether they stay together as partners or not - and by responsiblity I mean emotional, financial - the whole lot. Yeah i know life can throw shit at you whether you are 2 parent or 1 parent, and the pressures of love, life and the universe make this a damn hard job. Which is why I believe that we need a society that is compassionate and ENABLING - ideally there would be much better support systems for ALL families. I feel like I'm banging my head against a brick wall because this ISN'T just a single parent issue!!!!

But NOB, I think most of us have acknowledged that this isn't just a single parent issue.

At the nub of this IMO is work-life balance, wages versus cost of living and housing costs bearing absolutely no relation whatsoever to incomes.

If these three things were adressed as major social priorities, this would help all workers and all parents. Obviously it would make a disproportionate difference to lone parents, but that wouldn't cancel out the beneficial effect it would have on everyone else.

But lots of people aren't interested in that. They're just interested in complaining about how lone parents are so terribly privileged, or haranguing them to "get off their arses" (because that's where they are usually) and go and do low paid jobs or these fantasy high paid jobs that don't exist. I'm not sure that any of those people have addressed the point I made about a century ago, that if this measure comes in, it will make absolutely no difference because only 4% of the government target, is not doing whatever it is the government wants it to do anyway.

I'm sure I've said all this, btw, but I'm fascinated to see how long we can keep this thread going.

Sure Caligula ... totally agree with you. It's about all these other issues. But one point I will make (and please don't shout me down -this is a simple fact) is that to a certain extent it's inevitable that if a couple split up, one of the consequences will be lower overall income. Most couples I know buy/rent a house on the basis of what they can afford as a family unit. And all the other costs - council tax, heating, food etc are on the basis that they are living under one roof. When they split up, they are immediately moving into two separate households (well mostly - I only know of one couple who continued to live in the same house after separating as a couple). In most case, this is not going to be easily sustainable. I know myself and dp certainly couldn't afford to buy or rent another home and pay the utilities, however modest that home would be. Which is why the safety net of a welfare state needs to be there - but it's not a bottomless purse, and I can completely uderstand why some people get pissed off at feeling they are working to subsidise through their taxes other people's choices. I have no problem with my tax supporting for instance a single mother who has escaped from an abusive relationship and needs some support while getting back on her own two feet. But I DO have a problem paying for people who are perfectly capable of earning a living and choose not to.

Sorry to keep this going... but need to just add that it's the SYSTEM that pisses people off,not people. If benefits could be targeted to the people who are willing to try to help themselves but need some support to get on their own two feet, then most sane people wouldn't have a problem with it. But sadly the system isn't equitable. Just as an aside, my ds1, age 17, has a good friend who gets the EMA - £ 30 per week for staying on in the 6th form. This boy's father is a high earning solicitor (def earns more than me and dp combined). The parents are divorced and boy lives with his mother who does a two day a week job in a dress shop for pin money. Because the boy is living with mother and she is classed as a lone parent, he is entitled to this!!! While my ds with 2 full time working parents gets nothing! This is the kind of thing that grinds people down and makes you think what the f*ck???

I don't think anyone would have any problems with that pov. My point is though, that from the outside it's very difficult to see who is perfectly capable of earning their own living and who is not. With LP's I think when the family split happened is probably one of the most important factors. A LP who split with her child's father when her kids were 5 and 2, and they are now 9 and 6, may be perfectly capable of going out to work because as a family, they've all settled down to the way things are now, childcare is sorted, school is sorted, their lives are stable etc. Whereas one who has split when the kids are 12 and 15, may actually need some time out of the labour market to negotiate the very tricky waters of traumatised teens and the real dangers of taking your eye off the ball when dealing with them. So from the outside, the first family may look like the mother might find working more difficult, while the second family looks like she's perfectly capable of doing a paid job because the kids are older, when in fact the needs of the two families are exactly the opposite.

Re your £30 example, I think that comes down to the unwieldiness of bureacracies - I'm a bit surprised that the absent parent's income isn't taken into account. Couldn't agree more that it is a ridiculous situation, but tbh I expect government bureaucracy to be mad.

And yes of course you're right that if a family split happens, income will plummet. At least, the income of the person with care and control of the kids will plummet. Although I do remember reading somewhere that 5 years after a divorce, men are better off than they were when they were married and women are poorer. Hmm...

Totally totally agree - you've expressed that really well. The whole issue is so complex, each family has it's own unique 'ingredients' and there is no one size fits all solution. tbh I (or dp) are seriously thinking about how one of us can reduce from full time working for the moment, as dd2 is going through a lot of problems and we feel one of us needs more time at home. Don't know about the practicalities of it, because you only have the right to request flexible working if your children are below I think 6 yrs. It has crossed my mind to leave dp and claim benefits but don't honestly think that's the best long term solution But it emphasises your point precisely caligula, that for different people the stress points are at different times. Mind you, i've just been reading in the news that there is now a lot of pressure from non-parents that they should have an equal right to request flexible working..... excellent idea i think. As you said, it's about work life balance and i think everyone should be entitled to that. feel a whole new thread coming on.........

Cal, that is only the case where the men earn more. Some women ensure that is not so. Others are happy to be low earners when married without thinking of their position on divorce which is a bit short sighted.

shortsighted PMSL

What's wrong with you lazy lot! You should ALL be out there chasing the almighty £!

the point i was trying to make before was that being in a couple with one person wrking doesnt seem to make much difference money-wise to being a single parent.i think thats why alot of women dont tell the dss (or whatever its called this week)when their partner moves in with them.

it doesnt seem possible in this day and age for a family to live on one persons wage.

and,NOB,you're right,a child starts off with 2 parents so both parents should be responsible but sometimes there are reasons why children are better off without one of their parents in their lives.and as for the finacial side,well,youre getting back to the CSA(whoever they are) then.

got you now divastrop.

the only saving with one wage and one stay at home would have been the mursery fees..

which, of course, made it barely worth working anyway..at least before CTC.

at the idea of how remiss women are to earn less than men.

Lazy bints.

Honestly, they really ought to be planning for that divorce.

Well if there's one thing this thread is doing it's demonstrating that it's not just parents (single or living in the same household) who are suffering with the whole long hours/low pay/overpriced housing problem. OK, so people with no dependents might find it a bit easier to move from town to town in pursuit of work (or indeed take the more logical option of going "F** the lot of you" and departing to live on a beach in Thailand) but people can find themselves stuck in a low pay/low benefits/no prospects situation if they have to look after elderly parents, disabled siblings, terminally ill lovers.. ore even if they just want a life that consists of more than hanging about for hours to say "yes, I agree, would you like to borrow my biro" in company strategy meetings.

caligula! Yes, I really ought to go full-time so that I can earn more than dh and plan for my divorce. Never mind the boys, never mind ds2 - let someone else look after him after school and cope with the seizures. Shucks...... (or words to that effect but beginning with F).

"the point i was trying to make before was that being in a couple with one person wrking doesnt seem to make much difference money-wise to being a single parent.i think thats why alot of women dont tell the dss (or whatever its called this week)when their partner moves in with them.

it doesnt seem possible in this day and age for a family to live on one persons wage. "

oh it does. I have experienced this and I know it does, for a start- no rent-paid by housing benefit- so for us that £300 you dont have to pay. then youve got £83 council tax-council tax benefit pay that, so all your left with is groceries and water/electric/gas. If you go into college/HE you get maximum allowances/bursaries.

It is a poor arguement that that is why people dont tell dss when partner moves in-of course they dont-if they got all the additional help and dont have to pay much, plus have the income of a partner, of course theyre not going to tell dss, they'll be laughing at the amount of disposable income they have

but you dont get full housing/council tax benefit if one of you is working?

what i mean is,if you are a family of 5 or 6 you wouldnt be able to live on just the wages of the person whos working,if they were doing a job which paid minimum(or slightly above minimum) wage.

Busybean: depends what your experience of one person's wage actually is. If the household wage earner is earning £25 k a year it's a bit different to if the household wage earner is earning the minimum wage of about £12-13K a year. As I said earlier in this thread, it used to be the case that men's wages were higher because men were presumed to be supporting another adult dependent, and women were presumed to be being supported by a working male - does anyone really want to reintroduce wage discrimination? And just so no-one gets confused, this was a distinction between wages paid to men whether or not they were partnered to another adult and whether or not they had any dependent children, but not paid to women whether or not they had any dependent children or partners. Do any of you think it's fair for people to be paid more, not on the grounds of the hours they work or on the grounds of needing more money, than people who work just as hard but can't demonstrate that they have any acceptable dependents? Is it really an employer's problem or indeed an employer's business whether or not a member of staff has dependents?

No Madamez, that should be dealt with by the government. Via the tax and benefit system.

No, it's an individual's responsiblity. Employers can't hand out more money depending on personal circumstances. It's not fair.

But the state has a duty to support families.

And it does that via the tax and benefit system.

That doesn't of course, cancel the individual's responsibility for the financial circumstances either, but it is riduculous to pretend that the state doesn't have a role. Unless of course, you're an anarchist and don't believe the state should exist.

Yes. The people who elect Governments choose indirectly how they would like their taxes to be spent. That may at various times be principally on the care of the elderly, on wars or if there are problems with too many babies being born measures to ensure people are very much put off having children or the other way about. In many countries it is felt morally better than individual families care for their elderly and sick but at the moment in the UK most people believe the state has a role to play.

If we can get the income gap between benefits and the minimum wage very high then there will be more of an incentive for those on benefits to seek work. The labour Government has done a reasonable job in making it worthwhile to work.

i think alot of other factors such as the ridiculous cost of housing need to be taken into consideration,and another thing that makes a big difference is maintenance payments from the absent parent-the only way i would have been better off working when i was a single mum would have been if i was getting money from my childrens' father,as these payments are disregarded when tax credits are calculated.

i think the labour government has done a piss-poor job of making it worthwhile to work.

I agree, diva.

I'd be better off on benefits myself.