benefit changes??????????

[mummylou85]

Just wondering if anyone else is worried about changes in income support. I think by 2010 the age will be brought down to 7 if not found job benefits be stopped then if not found job it's job seekers? what do you all think of these changes. i'm happy towork but I have no family to look after my daughter? so in sept i'm goingback to finish my course in child care but what if I don't get job out of there. my daughter only 3 now but it's hard out there to get jobs these days especially to fit around children.

I know on job seekers you have to go on many courses, what if these are not child friendly but you have to go you get no money.

staying on benefits is not long term thing for me, I have worked payed taxes in past. but is anyone worried about future, in past didnt matter on what job i did and hours but now fitting it around my daughter. I really scared about job seekers are they child friendly. I stress about everything i'm sorry, but I think these changes take away your rights on how to parent I really think these changes in benefits wont work and i'm worried. i am stresser though x

But being on benefits means you have limited access to credit/mortgages/loans so itsa hand to mouth existence really. There really is nothing left once bills are paid.......and no security of an overdraft or overtime for extra......there is no flexibility. If the washing machine breaks then I'm stuck! And a social fund loan takes weeks to come through. It's no picnic.

and you think being working poor is a picnic? You think they have money left over at the end of the month incase the washing machine breaks. chances are their credit rating is probably just as bad as yours, if not worse as quite often their net income is less than someone on benefits.

chances are they won't be able to get an overdraft, and they have no access to the social fund

Tiffany, I'm doing an OU degree as well! It is my way out of this situation, a complete career change. Was thinking when I finished that I could also do some p/t work with the OU (alongside what I plan to do) as they then allow you to do a course per year for free - bonus!

As for the Lone Parent Advisors, some of them are as much use as the careers advisors were at school (chocolate teapot springs to mind.) Luckily I have a new one who doesn't see my OU effort as a "hobby" and is quite happy to let me go ahead with my plans as they are with as much help as she can give me when needed.

Tiffany, if you are looking at prison work and that work is as a prison officer, you will earn too much to get very much TC help for childcare. It will be the minimum(30%)which is why I am on a career break. I can't afford the childcare costs. I don't know where you are and what sort off costs your area CM's are, but here in the SE/London the costs are huge.

Bedfordshire/bucks Borders. Right, so the tax credit argument would be invalid for me. It would not help. That's even if I could find childcare. Living in a quiet village means very little childminders etc

So perhaps you need to look at other work to do until your children are old enough not to need childminders, and then do the prison work while they're older?

Instead of pumping money into the stupid banks that caused the recession we are in now I think the government should be pumping more money into childcare options regardless of where you live and pushing more companies to offer home working to give people the option to work. We live in an age of fantastic technology which should be able to facilitate home work in many more areas of employment than it is currently doing. Businesses also could save from needing smaller premises.

I say option when it comes to work as I do not think that every single parent should be forced to work if they have young children as I am a child who grew up with a sahm and will testify to the benefits of that myself.

I unfortunately have to go back to work to pay my mortgage cos couldn't afford it otherwise but I would love for my DS to be able to come home from school to me being at home rather than having to go to my mums which is what will happen.

I think you have to be earning over a fairly high threshold before child care costs are reduced significantly. Don't know the figures off-hand, but whilst the working tax element is reduced incrementally, the more you earn, I was fairly sure that the child care element stayed about the same.

Sorry FAQ! Didn't mean to ask a question then run!

I am not the op, but was wondering how people managed with no family help. The case round our way is that the majority of people do have lots of family help, so that means there's nt a great demand for out of school care.

I used to be a single parent on IS, and always wondered what I'd have done when DD1 was at school. This was 5 years ago though when the age was 12 (?) not sure about that though!

I don't think a 'one size fits all' approach is needed, but do think that most people could cope with going back to work when youngest is 7. However, provisions and resources need to be made wrt parents who don't/can't manage as well.

My youngest is 7 this December so Oct 2010 I will be switched to Jobseekers.

Tbh it doesn't bother me because I am activly looking for work anyway so it won't really be any different.

I am planing on starting a 2 yr college course this Sept, and I think, so long as I start it before I reach the cut off point then I can carry on claiming IS for the whole of the duration of the course, even though my youngest will be 8 during the 2nd yr.

By the tie I finnish the course, my mum will have retired and is more than willing to look after my kids before/after school and in hols so I am lucky.

No family help here either I'm afraid.

And how can I find a job in my line of work which isNOT 9-5 Mon to fri!!

oh absolutely agree that the provisions need to be there, I have no family near-by at all either.

Tiffany - not sure I understand you question there.

But what I was suggesting last night was that if you line of work means hours that are going to be nigh on impossible to fit childcare around then perhaps look for something different until the children are old enough to not have childcare needs/or the older ones are old enough to look after the younger ones.

Exactly reality, my youngest 2 have had rotavirus last week, lasting for 7 days, plus the 48 hours after being sick before you can send them to school/nursery.

If I was working, I probably would have been sacked for having the time off, oh and they had it staggered too so would have meant more than 10 days off in a row!

BUT, the government needs to find ways to help parents like that! Making it illegal to sack parents who have time off with children being sick perhaps? Esp if you get a sick note from the dr.

I realise that some people will take the piss and still screw the system, but there will always be people who do that!

Hi Tiffany. I do that work and as far as I can work out, I'd be entitled to 30%. My childcare costs would be in excess of 1500pcm and that's with one 10yo(obviously less of a cost and also I'd have to find a willing CM)and a 2yo. The shift working is long and hard and if you get a security lockdown, you are stuffed if it's at the end of your shift. It happened to me once and I was working for 23 hours. I was lucky that at the time my Ds was with my parents as they used to care for him.
It's not the easiest choice of career to mix with having a family when you are a lone parent. There are of course work life balance options, but it's a nightmare every time you have to think about it. You have to reapply every 6 months. You also have to give a business plan(for you and for the prison)and after 3 months you hear the outcome. If it's against, then you can appeal, but tbh, it's all stress on top of a particularly stressful job. You have to apply 3 months in advance of the time you want to start WLB too, so basically, you have to remember to deal with it every 3 months ~ that's 4 times a year. It's a nightmare! Oh and colleagues that don't need it or have kids think you are swinging it and out of order for even considering having WLB, not to mention children! they can't hack the fact that you get any help with taxes...Not trying to put you off, but it is crap. Not like the old days

Just to add that a few years ago(before Dd), my dad was taken ill and I had to have Ds at home and get him to school myself. I managed to find a friend to take him in and pick him up, but for a couple of days I was going to be a couple of hours late into work. I went through the wringer. As well as a verbal line managers, line managers, line managers chat(yes really), I got a written 'talking to' to say that it wasn't acceptable to do this and that as my father was elderly, perhaps I should find an alternative for the future. Bloody hell! my dad was in hospital and that was the help I got! Tis crap!

Can I point something out?

There were 3 jobs advertised in my local paper this week, down from an average of 40 three years ago. 2 of my friends have just been made redundant. I can't do one of the jobs - can't drive - the other is rolling rota flexihours (incompatible with having anything else to do, EVER unless you have a frickin WIFE), and the third is night shifts - in a nursing home, so even if you COULD get childcare overnight, and afford it, they would have to be prepared to look after a suddenly sick child unless you fancy walking out and subsequently going to court for dereliction of duty.The non driving ones are both a minimum of 1o miles away.

It's not as easy as it looks, on the face of it. I have been on benefits, I have been single parent working, and I have been part of a working poor couple. Being on benefits made me ashamed, being a working single parent made me physically exhausted and I had to leave as I was never finding time to sleep, and kept falling asleep when I should have been supervising the children, and being part of a working poor couple made me very very angry.

See, it's always so easy looking into the goldfish bowl eh coldtits? unless you actually live the life, you just haven't a clue. I didn't have a clue until I went onto benefits. I don't feel ashamed though. I paid into the system for 28 years. I'm just taking a little back. Being a single working parent made me ill and I'm still suffering that illness now almost 10 years on. It really is not easy.

Before children I worked in the travel industry, not office hours and weekends a requirement. That is why I'm doing the OU thing and I've made plans so I can actually earn enough to support my dts and to work from home.

But there seems to be this rush all the time, I don't know if other single parents have felt it, that you should accept any job regardless of suitability just "because". Perhaps it is guilt because for the first time ever I'm having to depend on the state.

Just think of all that unused potential out there because of one simple problem - decent, affordable childcare. You would think the effort would be made to find the solution rather than bully vunerable people. The government don't seem so keen on going after the large number of young people who are unemployed and who don't have these issues to contend with. And yes, I did have a little rant last night, because I'm sick of being portrayed in such a way.

FAQ........change jobs to do exactly what??? I'm not qualified in anything else!!! And as someone pointed out,the job pages are diminishing!!

Whoever said that about sainsburys etc coming down hard on you, then I'm shocked!! Thought employers were more child friendly. There's no option there for me then, with 5 kids I have someone Sick or off sch every week.

And no, will not be letting the older ones look after the younger ones!!! That's so unfair! They have gcse study as it is

The NHS is not imo family friendly either. I recently had to give a job up there after 2 weeks because they put me 4 weekends in a row with 3 of them being both Sat and Sunday and I couldn't do it.

I was more than willing to do my fair share of weekends but not every one. Their attitude was 'well you knew it involved weekends'

Agree with Reality about sickness too. I worked for Wilkinsons before I split with Xp, and had to ring in sick one night because xp wasn't back and Ds was too ill for me to leave him with neighbour.
I got hauled into the office to explain my absence and told that if it happened again they would have to review my position.