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

Yes, this is a great point, remember.

I think the fight against yourself is often neglected in practice even by feminists... it’s manifested by ‘why don’t/did you...?’ Which is very disempowering.

I think it’s important to remember that people generally make the best choices they can at the time within the circumstances they are in. If you can see a different choice that may have been better you are failing to understand the other person’s perceptual bubble/the availability of certain resources to them.

It might salve your anxiety to say ‘why don’t/didn’t you....’ but in the process you are echoing the oppression and invalidating women who are doing the best they can.

And yy remember...

I would never have married H if I wasn’t a single parent on benefits. I would not have agreed to have a baby if we hadn’t gotten married....

Now I’m back being subject to the patriarchal state except with 4 children instead of 2.

In reality most women’s lives are usually a cycle of being dependent on men or the state and they will continue to be so whilst men have entitlement to hold all the resources and control all the power structures.

If men make mistakes they do not generally suffer for them, women who are connected to them bear most of the suffering.

Offred Sorry I wrote the last post a few hours ago and just sent it. I hadn’t seen all the subsequent ones.
Really feel for you in your situation. I hope via these discussions and lobbying the media & politicians we can improve the current system.
In the meantime though, I hope you can find even a brief moment soon to recharge and look after yourself

Even when men murder it is their mothers that face the scrutiny.

Thanks for all the flowers BTW.... I am fine. For that I am grateful.

I have time and energy to talk about my rage about all these things. This is positive for me. There have been times when I could not even talk.

Talking is always a good thing.

I may off myself at some point, I’m not feeling that way at the moment. If I do it will be because of my fundamental belief that as a person I deserve better than what is my life.

The government know and don't care and they are doing a good job making it seem like it"works"

I am a student nurse and due to qualify next year as is my friend who is a student nurse and a single mum to two girls. She is covinced uc is good, she will be better off and she won't have to wait as she's a single mum for money. Says it's all scare mongering

IM about to claim it as partners self employed our business has took a massive loss and struggling to pay our rent at the moment, so the housing referred us to the jobcentre and I’ve to go fortnightly to prove I’ve been searching for work, right now can’t afford a flaming bus fair though no idea how going to afford 2 buses to get there. I’ve been looking for a job since November though it’s going into my account rather than his though but we’ve to wait weeks before it kicks in. I feel bad for women in situations that theyre in abusive relationships and all their cash going into the other halfs account. Worst thing ever was mess about with people’s benefits, I think they hope people will go get bored and not bother claiming. They say it’s to cut down on benefit culture and get people into work, As I’ve typed I’ve been on the job search since November and sent hundreds of applications away...what flamin jobs? the whole system is a joke...

Under labour 12 years ago most of the benefits were going to my FA ex... The difference between then and now is that the CTC and CHB went to me in those days as the main (only) carer and so ex could only drink/spend on other women our HB, CTB and JSA....

We weren’t married so I basically had no right to anything from him even though it was meant to be a joint claim. I found this ridiculous, even more so because of the interaction with utilities, council tax and rent where I became responsible for him having not paid his part when he left (I had paid half with the CTC/CHB plus all food/clothes) even though he was getting the majority of the money to pay it because we were jointly and severably liable for that.

UC makes this worse but it has always been the way that women have been dependent on the whims of men/the state.

Oh and also, another difference; there were more JCPs, the burden of appointments was less, fewer sanctions/conditionality. Generally ALL the services were nearer and there was better public transport, we had childrens centres, legal aid for if things went wrong...

In reality most women’s lives are usually a cycle of being dependent on men or the state and they will continue to be so whilst men have entitlement to hold all the resources and control all the power structures.

Exactly this. The message is: find a man's income to shelter you even if he is abusive or submit to state abuse instead.

Oh and at that time I had a small amount of maternity pay because before DS I had been the only one working.

Benandhollysmum - UC is particularly difficult if you are self-employed. Do as much research as you can so that you are prepared for all the hurdles that will get thrown your way. I wish I could give you better advice.

Council tax actually told me that they were coming after me because I had reliably paid my part and going after him would be too difficult...

The truth is women have been given more responsibilities without being given access to the resources needed to meet them.

This is what has characterised women’s lives since new labour IMO and it’s shaped how men exert power. Now part of the entitlement is that women ‘contribute equally’ to the finances (often actually totally provide for them) as well as doing all the shitwork and as well as being affected by sexism in the workplace.

Offered, you are not wrong

I’m not going to give you flowers. What you need is respect and you have mine. So eloquent. Don’t “off yourself “ please...whatever that means...

It’s become such a common MRA narrative that women are ‘money grabbing’ if they don’t pay exactly half of everything (except childcare, they usually expect women to pay ALL of that).

They do not accept taking on a bigger burden re shitwork/caring but then demand 50% of the time with their children on divorce and call the courts sexist when during the marriage the woman was expected to do all of the childcare because it is a woman’s job.

None of this is any surprise to me, I've lived it.

I had £1.77 to last me 9 weeks - over the Christmas period, so that made it even more fun with a small child who was sooo excited because he'd tried so hard to be such a good boy so Santa would come (had to go into school as weeks of Christmas themed activities had wound him into a frenzy and I knew we weren't the only family in that situation).

I came home to find British Gas had broken into my house and installed prepay meters, as I couldn't pay the bill with £1.77. No letter received warning of this, despite their claim to have sent them. Couldn't prepay for any gas or electric either, during the coldest months of the year. BG did then give me an 'emergency once in 12m only' credit meant to last the estimated 6 weeks until I got my UC. Ran out after 4.5 weeks of only heating the house for 30 mins a day, as it was -10C!

The food bank were lovely, but each time I left with a couple of bags of tinned spaghetti hoops and cheap bread that lasted about 3 days max. You can only go to one 3 times in 6 months. So 9 days of food to last 9 weeks! And not a single fresh fruit or vegetable, as they can't store them.

I fed my kids and basically ate very little apart from porridge for 9 weeks. I lost 1.5 stone and I am thin to begin with. Developed anaemia, and Vit D deficiencies. And when I did get paid, I owed so much for bills that went unpaid while I waited that it took many months before I was anywhere close to managing to feed, clothe and keep us all warm again.

But it's supposed to be like this, it's specifically designed to be, to put people off claiming at all if they may find work quickly. It 'encourages people to work', see!

I remember being threatened with a sanction as I couldn't attend a JC interview at 3.10pm (had to collect child from school). I just laughed and asked what on earth she thought she was going to deprive me of as I was getting fuck all anyway!

If I'd had an abusive ex hanging around wanting to get back together, I would absolutely have gone back to them, for the sake of my hungry kids who literally sat in the dark shivering! I'd have put up with anything so they didn't have to go through that.

Thanks fascinated! I am not at risk of offing myself currently. Respect is appreciated.

Don’t want people to think I’m going to off myself imminently or anything. I’m actually off all my anti-depressants and feeling pretty happy in myself since I saw a psychiatrist who said ‘you’re not mad, you just have a really difficult life, you don’t need these ADs IMO’.

Roomba - I want to say how appalling that is but like you say it is what the system is designed to do.

Offred, you're right - it was under new labour that women stopped being able to claim income support until their child was 12. It reduced to 5yo, then it's 'get on with it, get back to work and earn your keep in society'. Now it's UC (which was planned long before the Tories got in, IIRC) and women are being told to look for work once their children are a year old, in some circs.

No one is making men take any further responsibilities for their children though. The efforts made by CMEC to get maintenance from my ex are so laughable - if he owed the same amount in court fines you can bet they'd be sorting it asap.

Yy roomba....

I have tried to have this conversation about replacing IS with TC with labour people and the effect it had on women and how it prepared the way for UC so many times and been shouted down about ‘New Labour’s achievements in govt’...

It’s just infuriating... The reasons I have lived experience of it, being a woman living with economic insecurity, are the same reasons no-one will even listen to me about it.

The philosophy behind UC was New labour and new labour policy re workfare, IS/TC, sanctions etc prepared the way for it and plenty of labour people I knew thought UC was a good thing ‘to simplify the system’ when the tories were bringing it in... They would not even engage with me on it being bad.

Under New Labour loads of research was being done into ‘worklessness’ and the benefits of work and many people were pushed onto sickness benefits because unemployment was being heavily stigmatised. Lots of people who did the research didn’t cotton on to where this was all going, the WC/UC who knew about it were telling them but the political/academic classes are in their own bubble.

I do believe at the higher eschelons of New Labour it was deliberate, influenced by Giddens and third way crap Blair agreed with.