Universal credit & domestic abuse

[QuarksandLeptons]

Good article in the Financial Times

www.ft.com/content/aaaaf2fa-4c63-11e8-8a8e-22951a2d8493

Brief summary:
10% of the households receiving the benefit are couples. The new system puts it all into one account which means that in the event of it going into the account of a controlling & abusive partner, the abusive partners can end up not sharing the money, leaving women and children vulnerable. There are cases documented of women and children going hungry and not having money for nappies or sanitary items.
Worse, women & children end up being forced to stay in dangerous circumstances because they don’t have the money to leave.

How can changes like these be made to the system without thinking through the real life consequences to huge numbers of women & children? Surely, this would have been flagged up if relevant women’s groups had been asked to comment on proposed changes

The UK govt is getting advised by that PR pig from Australia who came up with lifters and leaners - the fact is where I am most of leaners are male and boast about it and most of lifters are women trying to survive and put food on the table for their kids.

Really this rhetoric should not be allowed. Worklessness - what crap - what about parenting responsibilities, recovering from abuse, equity and security.

Bloody Corbyn is wooing the students to try and get him elected - he's no friend to women from what I observe - bloody hell he never mentions us AT ALL, except when referring to TIMs being women. His first wife dumped him and that's telling...

I mean all the poor would be seen as feckless to these people.

Poverty being a sign of a deficient character.

Exactly, "worklessness" also sounds like "fecklessness". I'll perhaps pick up a tin foil hat later :)

Eresh

"worklessness"

This is a really important term in UC.
Do you know how they define it?

You are defined as "workless" if your take-home pay for WORK is less than £430 per month. That might sound like not a lot of work to some people, but actually, it would be a teaching assistant working 3h per day 5days per week to support a disabled child at primary school.
Such a TA is deemed "workless" and subject to the Benefit Cap!

Christ.

And they want to pressure such people into working 35 hours at minimum wage, even when they have a job and are contributing to society in such a positive way.

I know someone being badgered by their UC work coach to find more work, under the constant unspoken threat of sanctions. She's a single mother of two (useless ex-DH who'll exploit any loophole to avoid paying child support) DCs of primary school age. She works 27.5 hours a week term time only in a school. Jobs like these are gold dust for women in her position. The only childcare she needs is the school breakfast club. I don't see what is to be gained by trying to make her work a few more hours when the (reimbursable) childcare would cost more than she earned.

It's all lunacy and, as Sardine said, absolutely ideological. Nothing to do with saving money and with everything to do with a hatred for working class women who have dared to reproduce.

That's appalling Lang.

Good on buzzfeed for reporting on this. Reading through the account of Barbara, the sheer incompetence of the system and the lazy responses by the various people working with universal credit are shocking. This behaviour wouldn’t be tolerated or seen as acceptable in other walks of life.

The people affected are so busy with trying to survive that they can’t fight back.
We need to get all media organisations to ramp up reporting.

This can also be framed as something that is also a huge waste of taxpayer money.
Another recent thread showed that due to the government not investing in protecting women and girls from violence, they end up spending £40 billion pounds a year! Surely, even from a cold, economic point of view, money needs to spent to help women. Universal Credit should be first on the list.

For anyone reading this thread who doesn't think things can possibly be this bad, look at this blog:

www.katebelgrave.com/category/women/

It's worse.

It's appalling but plenty of people agree with it.

That blog is horrible to read. The system is so cold and bureaucratic and full of gaping holes. And people fall through them.

I’m glad to see this thread.

I’m also not surprised and have been saying these things (since new labour began when I was about 14!) and seeing the results for years.

I have in the past contacted the academics who conducted/wrote research/papers that are being used to justify these things. Their purposes in doing so clearly being to support principles of social support but the resulting work being cited to justify workfare (happened to both my parents’ research) or limiting of welfare (caps, child limits).

My experience of CAB is very different to the one described here but I totally believe it, it is one of the problems of creeping third sector volunteer led responsibility for welfare etc These should be jobs with payment and standards and oversight not volunteer positions where people bring their own politics to them. As a national organisation I think CAB knows that but there is very little they can do other than increasingly use volunteers due to cuts to their budgets... same as with all charities. It was clear to me volunteering there that what clients got out of CAB depended most on which volunteer you saw. Our bureau used to try and set aside particular clients for particular volunteers but this was a personal choice by the receptionists.

Care applications are rising because of all of the cuts combined.

This awful language is being used at every level. Basically totally getting rid of social care for children with disabilities in my LA was presented for consultation (as always after the cut was made! ) as ‘empowering communities’ and I was so enraged by the labour councillors not challenging this gaslighting. Obviously cutting social care for disabled children results in more disabled children in LA care.

It’s happened across the board in all public services. In health they replaced LINk (volunteer led and independent) with Healthwatch (those being scrutinised appoint the chair etc), public health at a LA has basically disappeared. They gave GPs commissioning responsibilities under the guise of them being ‘more connected to communities’ but it has meant commissioning has been put behind layers of bureaucracy and is an ‘old boys’ club now, most CCGs have no/tiny representation of women and if they do they are often forced out after having been given the ‘women’s and childrens’ briefs.

The police have basically disappeared... there are only 2 now on duty at any time in my town of 100,000 people. They are now attending calls alone, they are now being expected to be the bin for all the other services who are failing so their workload has increased and diversified. Instead of increasing numbers of community police (a significant factor in how the MEN attack was not prevented) the govt have trained a small number of armed police to shoot terrorists once they have already killed people, ordinary police are being given weapons like tasers etc to cope with working alone....

My friend was on hold on 999 for ten minutes the other day for an ambulance. I have been on hold for 60 minutes for 101.

Waiting lists for assessment/treatment from the NHS are massive, you can’t get a GP appointment and then A&E is being overstretched.

Schools are being expected to take on SC responsibilities AND increased bureaucracy AND cuts to budgets.

EVERYTHING is broken (haven’t even got to CPS, HMRC, housing etc) and it is OBVIOUSLY the groups of people who rely on services the most who are suffering the most; that is the WC, women and children etc

People ‘who matter’ are insulated from the consequences.

Ridiculously people actually think things like ‘there isn’t any destitution in the UK! Don’t be ridiculous!’

it is one of the problems of creeping third sector volunteer led responsibility for welfare etc These should be jobs with payment and standards and oversight not volunteer positions where people bring their own politics to them

Brilliant post altogether but I think this is particularly pertinent. The whole "Big Society" bullshit. More newspeak.

Oh and don’t get me started on ‘worklessness’ in safeguarding SC actually include whether someone has a job or not as a factor to be assessed in ‘parenting capacity’ I.e. a single parent not having work is considered a mark against her ability to parent her children well. Early help etc are paid by the government based on how many people they ‘get into work’, the meetings about cases have a focus on ‘getting people into work’... Never mind that if your DC have disability you no longer get any help at all to work.

Apologies I haven’t got time to read the whole thread as I have to run out but can someone clarify the £430 cut off a month? I earn just under that as a LP and one of my dc is disabled so I’m his career..... we don’t have UC here yet.... what will this mean for me??

a single parent not having work is considered a mark against her ability to parent her children well.

That's awful Offred. It is in no way in a child's best interest to remove from a loving parent who is trying to do the best they can to place them in local authority care. And it's deeply unethical to use it as leverage to threaten and coerce people.

llmb as a carer you will have no work conditionality . Any money you choose to earn is up to you.

Llmb - I am in a similar position, I would lose a couple of hundred a month if transferred to UC

Eresh - in reality that by itself isn’t resulting in losing children. What it is doing is making SC into the job police when much of the legislation requires support from SC to help people have the ability to work and these services (respite, childcare etc) don’t exist for parents of disabled DC and most SW don’t know their responsibilities to CWD because the CWD social workers have been cut and safeguarding/early are now responsible for managing those cases. It is also resulting in case management being geared towards getting parents to work rather and success of intervention being heavily based on parents having work and not on outcomes for the family.

*early help

I’m particularly worried about payment based on how many parents in contact with EH/Troubled families (horrendous name) get into work.

It’s bad for the services and the service users because the other services needed to support working parents aren’t there and it may not be the best thing for the families to be in work so it has the joint Tory aim of making the problem worse and creating an opportunity to cut whatever is left of early intervention when it ‘fails’.