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?

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Discuss.

Expats post at 23:47 hits the nail on the head.

ahhh how lovely it would be to be equipped with the life skills that most mumsnetters posess.

the truth is when your on benefits it is so very easy to mess yourself up financially - your credit rating becomes shit and things like crazy georges sounjd appealing - then the prudential come to your door just before xmas when things are reaaaally tight and your children can see what the other parents can afford and they always get shit - tiz v. tempting to take the prudential loan at ...wait for it...130% interest.

there are some people out there who can manage finamces & benefits well. But then there are others for whom we know not what tragedy or life circumstance has happened their way. I for instance had a home reposessed in the property interest hikes of the early 90's. suddenly there is a bank wanting thousands of pounds you dont have. you find you can afford to eat - basic foodstuff pay basic bills, until something hits you like more clothes or new school shoes ( the ones you got fromt he scoial shop knackered and they dont give you any more) are my childrens feet as important as your childrens feet? but i can't go to clarkes becuase if i do i wont be able to pay the gas & electic - which is on a meter...when i can't afford to pay - we sit in a place thats cold with no light. and wait for it......we get charged extra for this privalige of having a meter that you pay into - so out electricity and gas bills are higher.

the poor get shafted and thats that.

And postcode discrimination. Oh, yes, it's alive and well and living in Britain!

We found that out the hard way.

Not to mention, it's expensive being poor.

You can't get a nice bank account to set up direct debits - cheaper to pay bills - and if you do and your tax credits are put in late all of the sudden you owe hundreds in charges for going over your overdraft, if you even ahve one.

You get to pay utilities by meter - a very expensive way to do so.

Then there's sourcing quality food.

I lived in a ghetto here. There was a KwikSave, but it closed. The next nearest supermarket was 1.5 miles away.

I won't even touch upon the quality of schools in the area.

The idea that most parents who are poor spend their money on chippies, booze and fags or drugs is a myth right up there with the one that everyone who is debt is there because they spend frivolously.

Benefits work very well as long as there is no prior debt - that is, if you assume everything was peachy and sweet financially BEFORE the police had to come and take Daddy away...

However what often happens is that 'Daddy' had signed the family up to it's financial limit long before he was made to leave, so you then get single mothers locked into contracts they can't afford to maintain .... like my blardy 18 month Sky agreement that they WON'T cancel, despite pleading.

I am lucky, I had a reasonably tight rein on the finances - as tight as it could be - but as I found out when he left, we owed on the phone bill, the rent, the Sky (which I didn't even want) and he had lied to me about it all.

Neverthless, despite it being his fault, it fell onto my shoulders.

I was lucky. I didn't already have a smoking addiction to fight with (because God knows if I still smoked I wouldn't have been able to quit!) and I didn't have very much debt, and I was able to stay in our rented house.

I think it is the children of abused women who are most at risk of child poverty. It's abused women who need to start again from absolutely nothing - and it's their children who suffer the consequences.

Totally agree with Expat on this.

Polly Toynbees book see here is a very good descriptione of why and how the system does not always work to provide the safety net it is meant to.

Luckly I have never had to cope with living on benefits and bringing up children. I have known periods when finances were tight and IME its the unexpected that tips the balance horribly - children losing a bit of essential school uniform, an emergency repair to the cooker etc. Even if you save for birthdays and christmas, there are always unexpected child related expenses, like contributions for school trips. If you are talking about child poverty, do you risk stigmatising your child by refusing to pay? In some cases, this will mean you child misses out on the activity or trip.

And things just wear out. It's one thing IMO living on little for a couple of months, if you have decent clothes, a sound home and all bills paid up, but doing that for year after year is quite another matter. Any safey net you have is eroded.

Also, I think parents on benefits face a much tougher time financially if they have no familiys nearby to take the strain - no one to let you use their washing machine if yours breaks down, give you a lift in their car, lend you £20.00 at no interest.

And it's not just people on benefits, it's the same situation for the working poor.

There is also the point that things that were considered "luxuries" in our parent's generation or 20 years ago
mobile phone, washing machine, cars or taxis etc are now pretty much essentials when there are no public phones, laundarettes and minimual public transport. In LA for example it is oftern the very poorest that have to use taxis, the rich have their own cars, the middle classes live in areas with good public transport networks where the poor live far away from tram or bus stops and/or need to work at times when they are shut down.

Poverty is a relative concept and plenty of poor families are not entitled to any benefit - my SIL is a single parent on a low income and with tax credits takes home more than someone earning over £30k, her xp also helps out. My SIL has calculated that if she and her xp were still together they would both be financially much worse off. People do not consider that two parent families are likely to struggle but I think that many do.

That said, any child in the UK that actually goes hungry is likely due to neglect on the part of the parents.

Upwind The state gives extra money to single parents becasue their living costs are so much higher. They find in much harder to work. A married woman for example can work in the evenings or at weekends, a single mother cannot without paying out for childcare. Also living costs of a couple are much lower than the living costs of two single people. Just because your SIL and XP would get less money comeing in if their were still together does not mean they would be worse off.

We're a two parent family that struggles. We get by.

How is the living cost lower for a couple?

There's another mouth to feed, for starters.

The rent's the same on a two-bed flat no matter if it's a lone parent or a couple with kids.

No council tax break, either.

wasn't there some ghastly tory politician a few years ago who lived on benefits with his family for, ooh, a fortnight or so, just to show the rest of us how easy it was? Totally agree with everyone who has said there is no safety net if you're on benefits. any change to the status quo - christmas, birthdays, growth spurts, worn out stuff - and you can be in financial trouble so fast...

He went and lived as a working poor. The mother wasn't entirely on the dole. She was a single mother of four school-aged children who worked in ASDA part time.

He changed his tune PDQ, though. She had £80/week after bills for everything - food, clothes, school trips, football club, etc.

For all 5 of them.

sorry i meant the living costs were lower for two people living as a couple rather than seperately. One rent rather than two, one council tax, one set of bills.

Very often children in povertty are those whose parents work and cannot get benefits. I was reading recently about a woman made homeless after splitting from her RAF husband. He got the RAF accommodation and her and the kids had to rent even though she was employed by the RAF as well. She had to take a second job at the weekend to put food on the table. An unexpected expense - a fine for illegal parking, say - meant no money for food.

Another example is a friend whose ds died. They got into debt to pay for his funeral but she couldn't claim sick benefit b/c she'd missed a month's NI contributions during a job change. Some parents who lose children are expected back on the job market within 6 weeks or they lose benefits.

Only about half the people claim the tax credits they are entitled to.

my friend desceded in chaotic poverty after years of frugal living when her dh got cancer. There was no help available to her , she qualified for no benefits as she was working and they were married.
He got some sick pay but had no insurance. She had to drive her dh to hospital for ongoing chemo and radiotherapy over a long period of time, so she could not work. She was in a realtively poorly paid position and though they were sympathetic, she lost her job. She had no money for childcare and so her dds had to travel to hosp every day with them. She was fortunate to have a car ...then the car blew up. She was fortunate to have a mother able to lend her £1000 for a 'new' car. I had to give her money for petrol. There was no help anywhere for her...someone found her a one-off grant of £300. But it took over a year for her husband to be able to go back to work.
it has taken them 3 years to pull themselves back upto 'average' living standards. This could happen to anyone.

Witchandchips - I have checked with my SIL, she worked out that on her own, with one child and a low income she brought home 1.9k, not counting her xp's contribution.

Before the split, their combined take home pay was 1.8k. She always looked after the finances (xp being generally inept), so previously had to pay for food, council tax, entertainment, clothing for two adults and a child. Now she has more money and only needs to consider herself and her ds. She is financially much better off now.

So it makes sense that it is often the two parent families that really struggle.

Exactly, filthy!

As for tax credits, ever been on the receiving end of one of their cock ups like tens of thousands of British families have?

There's a reason we no longer claim them.

And that's why.

If you want proof of this go to www.entitledto.com and run a few scenarios. Being in a stable relationship costs a lot of money these days

we struggle financially (my 'fault', my choice. I took 5 years off work to raise kids and then got out of the 'proper' job loop.)
but I (maybe foolishly) will not apply for tax credits. nearly everyone I know seem to have had a miscalculation resulting in them taking money back. We never have any money spare to give back!! I don't have any debt though.
I live in a very affluent town where they will not let us have Surestart or anything usefull, as per capita, the town is too wealthy. So consequently, there are sad pockets of deprivation and someties a horrible sense of 'them and us'.

I won't apply for tax credits either, the odds of them cocking it up are too high.