Child Poverty. With our benefits system ie. Housing, council tax, income support, child benefit. Is there any need for a child in the UK to be suffering from this?

[Bubble99]

Discuss.

Save the Children say, measuring income and deprivation, that there are 1.3m children living in poverty in the UK. That equates to £19 a day after housing for a family with one child. Three quarters of those families cannot afford to replace worn out furniture, apparently.

Also: "Children's deprivation appears to be less than their parents. Research has repeatedly shown that parents take
significant steps and undergo personal sacrifices to
protect their children as much as possible from the
material impacts of poverty."

mumto. Do you pay for rent and council tax, too? Or is that covered?

£170 cash to buy food with and pay bills with with rent and CT paid is equivilent to going to work for £500 a week after tax week and paying your rent and CT round here.

Can I also add, that anyone posting on here can afford the internet.

edam. Is that £19 a day after bills etc have been paid for? Is this for a family receiving some kind of benefit and child benefit?

Are STC taking into account children from families who do not qualify for any benefits?

Damn. Wish I could read that link.

I get housing benifit and tax benifit, im not in poverty, i have a tight sqeeze with money each week as i owe £6000 and im paying it off, but my kids never go with out there well fed and have lovely clothes

no, that's £19/day for a family with one child AFTER housing but BEFORE any other bills ie £19/day for food, heating, water, electricity, clothes, etc. etc. etc.

The PDF is much too long to cut and paste but try looking at CPAG here

I cant afford the internet. And i dread to think what penaltys will be lumped on top of my next bill when I dont pay as ive recently signed an 18 month contract.
Im too scared to look.
I have put 40 and 50 on my gas and eleccy meters so i dont run out in the next few weeks.

i owe £120 on ntl for my services have done for 2 eks i cant afford to pay it at the mo

The thing is with being on a low wage or on benefits (or a combination) is that you have, in general, no safety net. So any kind of unexpected expense (broken window, DCs losing or destroying items of school clothing, illness that means you can't work and lose some pay, illness of family member that means extra expense on fares to and from hospital etc) tends to mean you end up borrowing money. And if you are poor, you'll end up borrowing money from somewhere that charges high interest rates - if not an actual loan shark then certainly a sub-prime lender. And so that debt will accumulate and linger, and there will be another bite out of your weekly budget. So if you're managing on less than you're 'officially' getting, because a chunk of it is going to pay off a debt, or even if you're just screwed right down to the margin anyway because this is the month the gas/electricity/water all needed paying at once, and then one of your sources of income is a couple of days late, or even one day late, so all your standing orders and direct debits bounce and the bank immediately charges you about £100, then yes, well, you might have a day or two where you might have to give the DCs bread and marge and not eat at all yourself.

ANd don't ever think this sort of shit couldn't happen to you, because it could. Very easily. All it would take would be a wave of redundancies in your industry, an illness or accident that stops you working (either because you're disabled or a family member is in need of constant care), some trend or technological advance making your whole line of work obsolete when you're a bit too old to get another job on anything like the pay you were on...

I am assuming that those of you who can't afford the internet have children. Shame on you. 10 years ago people didn't have the bloody internet anyway, we did everything else, like meet up, read books etc. Your children can get free internet at the library.

It all boils down to that state of housing here.

Ineuqality in housing and extraordinary house prices, which in turn equal high rents as well as tenancy laws here translate into huge social problems.

You get people ostrasized onto estates where they're deprived from the get go with poor schooling, crap housing, shite school, poor services.

And you get this cycle that goes on and on.

Also there's no 'living wage' so often times, work makes you just as bad off as benefits financially.

I believe that it's because of this fucking advert to the right of this fucking thread.

I am off to bed.

Not that one, the fucking Panda one.

What advert?

"10 years ago people didn't have the bloody internet anyway, we did everything else, like meet up, read books etc. Your children can get free internet at the library. "
But now it is a part and parcel of life. You are disadvantaged if you don't have it. You are.

I have lived on benefits (long time ago) and it was hard.

I didn't want to be there, but I was.

And as as someone else said, as soon as there is anything unexpected, something goes wrong, or your child goes through a growth spert, you are fucked financially...

Nite Marrow.x

Thanks for that, edam.

Interestingly. our nursery will be (as of June 2008) opposite a new children's centre in a poor part of a wealthy London borough.

The new children's Centre will provide health visitors and community midwives in addition to a 'back to work' scheme.

I have talked (off the record) to the senior MW for this centre ( I, am a registered nurse and we have met over the years) and she has said that one of the primary objectives is to promote family planning for a generation of girls with 'poverty of expectation.'

I truly believe that, from what I can see in our area, 'children having children' can often ((but not always) be seen at the root of many cases of child poverty.

Girls who have not had the opportunity/time to learn any skills for the job market, having babies cannot (with, of course, some fantastic and, usually, family supported exceptions) be a good thing for anyone involved.

I split up from my partner when dd was 9 months old. He had bought a top of the range dvd player among other things on a catalogue in my name. It took nearly 3 months for any benefit to come through. I had to move because he refused to. I ran up £1000 debt for living costs, furniture, moving etc so had to pay that back as well as catalogue bills. I had no money for clothes or toys for my dd so bought more things on buy now pay later on catalogue and so it continued. However we were not desperately poor, we did have food and some new clothes and toys. You have to make tough choices about what you really need/want. We managed ok but it wasnt fun. But I think debt is the reason people can be in poverty as benefits do not take this into account.

Likewise people who are working earning a reasonable wage and so do not qualify for any benefits but have huge debts to pay. It may be their own fault they have those debts but whatever the circumstances the end result is the same.

New rules on child support. CSA can force an absent parent to sell their own home to pay back arrears, even if they're cooperating with an existing arrangement. So the CSA/Government is now making children homeless - yes child povery can still exist.

poverty even.

Why do we villify the poor so much, though?

Honestly, in the UK and America, it's like a national pasttime.

Meanwhile, greedy fat cats and tax dodgers are seen as clever and admirable for getting rich off bribes, corporate welfare and legalised scams.

Is it because the poor are more visable and the super rich can afford to cloister themselves away?

I think that's it, really.

I think it's because otherwise we'd feel guilty. Shifts the blame for inequality to the victims.

There is this pervasive, 'If you're poor, it's ALL your fault,' attitude in both nations. And this idea that it's as easy as 'bucking up' or 'picking yourself up by the bootstraps' to change things.

Maybe that was true a while back, but honestly, it's not so simple anymore, especially when there are young children involved.

It's like the idea that people in Britain or other industrialised countries don't need help when floods turn off their water or foot or ruin their crops and mouth devestates their livelihood.