In praise of Iain Duncan Smith's Welfare Reforms

When I went to college I was already married with kids. But because I was under 25, the local authority asked for my father's financial details and I got a grant and fees paid because he did not earn a lot and had two other daughters living at home. It did not make sense to me, but I did not object.

Durhamj
As my father refused to undergo a means test my university fees were paid by him. My husband who lived 'over the border in Birmingham' whose father was probably richer than mine! Had his fees paid by Birmingham City with NO means test.

Exactly, Mishap. People cannot say it's okay for someone to have benefits because they know him or her, but not that person over there who looks normal. It's like people having a blue badge for parking. Someone gets out of a car, and you think he looks okay. You do not know that once inside the shop/house, he has to sit down because the pain is too much to stand.
The number of times we were told it was nice to see us holding hands. I was holding him up, to stop him falling over, because the last thing he wanted to use was a walking stick or a wheel chair.
We never knew if his ataxia was caused by falling off the ladder. It did not matter, he still had it.
What do people say when they see someone walking as if they are drunk? Not he might have ataxia or be diabetic and be having a hypo.
They both make you slur your speech as well.
As far as Sure Start centres are concerned, my grandson would not have got the help he did so quickly for his ASD if his parents had not moved into a Sure Start area.
If we are not prepared to help people with problems, then we as a society have to accept the consequences. In my view that means accepting that a few people will try to fiddle the benefit system, in order to help the majority that do not.

DH is an engineer and he was always an advocate for planned maintenance, as a complete breakdown costs more in the long-term.

My career as a SW was centred mainly around people with disabilities, and they struggled to manage. The changes in the assessment system that made it hard for people with head injuries to get benefits created enormous problems. Many of these people looked "normal" but could not remember things, work out what order to do things in, control their tempers - all caused by an injury to their brains. It took many years to get their sort of problems acknowledged by the benefits system and believe me they and their families truly did suffer.

But I have worked with families who were never going to work - they were brought up by parents who gave them no structure or values - it is a pernicious cycle. But they are not to blame. As someone so rightly said, it is the preventive measures that need funding: Sure Start, Home Start, LA family centres, where children get the chance to have good experiences and the parents learn what good parenting is. In my area, all 3 of those options have lost their funding and closed. It is easy to go for the government to just concentrate on crisis intervention, but it is prevention that is needed - giving these children a chance from the beginning will increase the chance of them growing up to be responsible citizens who will have no need of the benefits system.

durhamjen I'm sorry to read that, very sad, both for you and for your late husband. There isn't one person on GN who would wish to take any benefit from those, like your husband, who need it, and it's dreadful that he was made to feel a 'drain on society'.

My point, which I keep making but is largely ignored, is that those who bleed the system (however many that is we can disagree on) are taking away benefits from those who should have them. I can name half a dozen who are fraudulently claiming incapacity benefit, probably more if I sat and thought about it. At least three of these were professional middle class people; two who claim they are incapable due to back problems the other with stress. Plus there are those, like Ceesnan's relatives who have no intention of working if they can avoid it.

But please believe me, my indignation at these people, is because they are fleecing a system which ought to support people like your husband, the family whose bread winner is made redundant, those in areas where jobs are impossible to come by and those who are incapable of working for whatever reason. The more that is taken out of the system by those who can but won't work, the less there is in the pot for those in genuine need, long or short term.

Yes indeed, Penstemmon. And we also have to go by our own experiences and personal knowledge as well.

paragraphs? Who put those in!

I think Ana that much is down to mediation. If there are frequent headlines, articles & TV programmes that focus mainly on the minority of
those on benefits unfairly and also regularly use sensationalist language then some of the people who read/hear them begin to accept it as the norm. You and I know that 'news' is about the unusual not the usual & that
headlines like ' millions of people go to work every day' does not sell a paper! We also know that newspapers have political allegiance so will 'spin' stories to suit the political group they align with. I guess that is why many of us read a range of press coverage to try to work out what the truth might be!

Yes, Galen. Once when I was teaching part-time I was asked if I wanted to go full time. I then realised that every pound I earned would have reduced my son's grant by a pound, so I said no thanks.
I wonder how many of us would have been in the same work if we had had to pay for our tuition at the same rate that they have to now. My granddaughter graduates in July, but she only had to pay £9000 for the three years, not per year, so she thinks she is lucky.

Good post, Iam64 and very interesting.
My husband fell off a ladder and fractured his spine in 1996, and from then on until he got his pension in 2011, he was made to feel that he was a drain on society by the system. He was once told by someone at a jobcentre that they had found a job for him, on a building site setting up the dimensions of a building. He was doubly incontinent and could not stand up and walk over rough ground without falling over.
He died six months after he got his pension, but it wasn't until a week before he died that someone asked for the name of his social worker, and was surprised that he did not have one. "How did you manage without a social worker?" I was asked. I wasn't aware that one was needed.
Being on benefits is no joyride for most people.

Jend
The nanny took most of my income!
But as a partner in a General practice the only alternative was to resign in those days!
People were still muttering about it being a waste of time to train women doctors, as they got married, had children, then gave up medicine!
I was 'bucking the system'!

And I wasn't being personal, Penstemmon - it was a genuine question. The options you give do get the meaning across, but surely if one of those phrases were adopted, it would soon acquire the same connotations as 'scrounger' or 'workshy'?

Genuine claimants would still feel 'tarred by the same brush' as long as there is public perception that there is a percentage (however small!) of claimants who are not genuine.

Ana I did not have any particular words in mind. Also I was trying very hard not to make the debate personal but to keep focused on the subject.

However I have thought about some words or phrases that might do the job of simply describing the facts, I am sure others can think of phrases that would not make genuine claimants feel lumped together with:

'Deliberate or planned work-avoiders'

'Benefit deception/ deceiver'

'Work able but job shy'

I am not pretending to have the answers Ana, just opinions!

Ceesnan's frustration with her relative is understandable. Thanks again to Eloethan for another interesting and well expressed contribution to this discussion.

Like When, I spent many years working with families/individuals on benefits. When I started in sw in the late 1970s, it was rare for me to be involved with a family with no one in work. By the time I retired 3 years ago, that had changed, it was unusual for me to be involved with a family where the majority of the family were in work. There was a class issue that couldn't be ignored. What could be called middle class families were in employment. The families who weren't were vulnerable in many ways. So many more people living in the community, who 50 years ago would have been institutionalised. Most jobs require decent literacy and numeracy. That's hard to achieve if you have learning difficulties, or parents who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. Yes, I did come across bright individuals, who knew how to work the system. It's infuriating, but they were a very small proportion of the people I worked with.

I still feel very sad about what's happened to former mill/mining areas. So much poverty in every possible way. There are no easy answers, but I'd like to see politicians united in wanting to improve the work/employmnt prospects of these people. SW's I know who've met IDS, and discussed their work and the needs of the families with him, without exception spoke well of him. I believe this focus on hard working families is another way of polarising people. We're all aware of the recession, whatever our political point of view. More compassion is needed, alongside attempts to identify the few who just want to take, take take. And, I don't simply mean those who live on benefits.

Forgot to say that one of the things I said earlier is that we could get jobs easily and go to work when our kids were young because we had the support groups. I went to college when my kids were young, and they stayed with friends until I arrived home. In those days they walked to school and back on their own. They had more freedom, and so did we on the whole.
Every thing is different now. People are judged so harshly because the system has changed. Childcare is so much more expensive. Galen, I do not think the people I am talking about can afford a nanny.

The thing is that we do not know all the circumstances of all the people on the programmes that we have seen. We do not know how many of them have tried really hard to get work and failed every time.
My son's partner was out of work for a term and very frustrated. She had eleven interviews and was getting fed up of being told she was second every time. But when she went to the jobcentre and read the news in the papers, she was furious at the impression that everyone who was unemployed was a skiver.
Like Flickety says about computers, she was once told to apply for a job online. When she got home from the jobcentre, a matter of half an hour, she found the job had been taken off the site, so could not apply. She spent the next fortnight feeling very worried that she would be sanctioned for not applying.

Likewise, I chose to work. although I did not return until youngest child was 4 because of a lack of local opportunities. Never felt a twinge of guilt and was very reassured when DD, when 14, said in passing; 'I prefer having a mother that works, you have more time to talk to me'. She never explained this remark.

I think long time unemployed, particularly those lacking any employment skills should be employed in community work, linked with a small rise in benefits and a reduction if they fail to turn up on time etc.

It is fine telling people without computers to go to the library. That assumes that there is a library within a reasonable distance. So much of what is discussed is fine if you live in a town but if you live in a rural area, especially in more rural areas, you can be10 or 15 miles from a library that has limited opening hours and is not accessible by public transport.

I chose to work and had a nanny. I wasn't going to waste all those years of hard work and exams!

DJ

Nobody in their right mind elects to work and find childcare but it is a choice of millions to provide for their family and that involves the barter system where I work, you give me money, I provide what that money affords me to buy.

It is all very well saying you should not work if you have children but to do so you either have children and expect the state to pay for your entire living, household bills, or if you have enough money coming in through a partner being employed or wealth in the bank.

I am sorry but I had to go to work 40 years ago when my child was born. I would not have started a family if I did not have the intentions of doing so or a family there to help with helping. My child was my responsibility after all.

Now I know you will hit back and say I am not showing empathy but that is not true. I am tired of the lack of responsibility that some people have.

My daughter is getting a divorce, she would be better off going cap in hand to the state but she is determined to show her daughter that is not the way to do things. Is she wrong? Is she a fool? Probably, do I think she should do as some advocate and get every penny she needs from welfare, no I don't.

It is one thing to find yourself in trouble having had your family and times turn against you. It is another thing to have a child having never worked and demand the state has to then provide.

In my little village there is are Housing Association houses and it is an eye opener as to how some families live, whether they be single parent or partnered. It is the case they have lovely homes, holiday's, free school meals and the children don't seem to want for toys and gadgets. No, I am sorry but I feel more sorry for the families who are working and just scraping by.

Take my neighbour. He lost his job at a coal pit a few years ago. They had 3 children and of course a mortgage, council tax to pay for. He would have been quids in had he been on welfare, no mortgage, no council tax, free this and that. He delivered bathrooms, erected fences and dug gardens, anyhting he could to pay the bills and I respect the man for it.

I'm sorry but whilst I do believe that we must as a country look after people who are in trouble , it has to be a two way street. If you are on benefits it is your responsibility to get employment and if necessary use the tax credit system and all other options open to enhance the weekly wage.

The welfare system is abused. It will always be abused.

I agree with a lot of what all three parties are saying on welfare. I do however think that the bedroom tax has been handled badly. I think it should apply to new claimants that the money provided for assisted housing is equal to the money given for private rentals, which is what the bedroom tax is all about. There should be no distinction between the two. I do however concede that there is a grey area which does need sorting and I fully understand that rhetoric is not required but action. I do wonder why some councils are reportedly not taking up the governments funding pot to help some cases.

When I'm sure that you are right in many respects, but in the case of my step daughter your comments just do not apply. I have taken her shopping for a smart outfit for interviews (should she have been lucky enough to get one) only to find out a few weeks later that she had taken the clothes back to the shop, been given a credit note and then sold the credit note so that she could go to a concert in Liverpool. Her mother and my DH are forever handing over cash for food for the children or new school uniforms. This woman is 34 and quite happily admits that she doesn't WANT to work. Her mother and my DH have both said they know they arn't helping by giving her money but say their priority is the two girls. And Durhamjen I'd like a reply to my question please.

Well said, Eloethan. I worked with deprived people throughout my career and saw enough examples of offenders trying to navigate and sometimes 'play' the benefits system because they knew no difference, or were defeated by bureaucracy. I saw many more examples of frustrated people feeling they had no chance of getting a job, or getting their job back, once they had committed an offence. When there are not enough jobs, employers can pick and choose, and pay less than a living wage for the sort of jobs that many need to apply for. People who don't even have something decent to wear for an interview, or don't know how to engage in an interview need help so they can rise above the obstacles of debt and hopelessness.

If the doubters would take a closer look at the daily lives of those they regard as not being genuine claimants, they would perhaps have more compassion and want to help. It's interesting to observe how clearly we can see the boundaries to certain behaviour (unsupportive spouse criticising the state of the house - if he doesn't like it, why not do some housework himself?) yet when we see unemployed people, or those appearing not to need the benefits they are paid, no-one wants to help them so they can cope better and begin to stand on their own two feet. We expect the state to sort that out, and some governments do it better than others. Many assume they know what all benefit claimants are like from seeing a few examples at close hand. I expect we make assumptions about all very wealthy people from the few examples we see. Some, fortunately, have admirable qualities and try to use their wealth for the good of many. Anyone can help - if you're chucking out decent clothes, find out if people seeking work would be able to use a jacket and trousers, or blouse and skirt. Probation offices, social services and job centres will often know a clothing store that needs more clothes. When you're on benefits, jogging pants and t shirts are more practical and cheaper for every day wear. Or, how about offering help with reading, IT skills or practising interviews? Even taking food to a local food bank to help a local family.

I read the DM, and many other papers, online. I get angry with the DM because I have personal experience or in-depth knowledge about some of their stories, which are too often factually inaccurate or downright lies. Their double standards about women are appalling. I don't doubt some of their sections are very good, like finance and sport. Other papers also don't bother checking the facts, and are infuriating. I go looking for myself, to see what other accounts there are of such stories, as I don't tend to accept what any reporters say unless I have found out more. It isn't about being a DM reader, it's blind acceptance because it's in that paper that undermines other posters' arguments. Same goes for any paper when a reader blindly accepts everything in it.

Posters trying to outwit each other and using sarcasm when someone comes along with a genuine response could channel their energies into looking at it from the perspective of the people they are talking about. It's a miserable existence for the majority of people living on benefits.

Excellent post, Eloethan. I have never understood why single parents are told to leave their children with someone else and get a job, which rarely fits in with school times or childminder's holidays. Then when they get these low-paid jobs, we have to subsidise anyway, because they still do not have enough to support the family.

Personally, I think we have to accept that some people - and I think they are a very small minority - have, from childhood, led such disadvantaged or chaotic lives that they have not acquired the basic skills that would enable them to hold down a job. It is sadly probably too late to help them, but more help for their children might break the cycle. That was part of the purpose of the Surestart scheme, many of whose centres have been closed by this government. In my opinion, there is no point trying to bring these people into line by docking their benefits, etc., because in effect this is also punishing their children.

My view is that the vast majority of unemployed people would prefer to work, not least because unemployment/claiming benefits is increasingly portrayed as indicative of a person's unwillingness to work and inherent laziness. I think there is enough evidence to demonstrate that, generally speaking, this is not the case. When quite modestly paid jobs are advertised in areas of high unemployment, thousands of people line up to apply for them. Surely if it was so great being on out-of-work benefits, there would not be such a huge response.

I also think that if a single parent would be earning roughly the same working as he/she would if staying on benefits (considering the extra costs of going out to work, such as transport and child care and the additional strains on family life), it is quite understandable that they would be reluctant to work - particularly with the advent of zero hours contracts where working hours are very low paid and unpredictable.

It seems to me that all the jobs that are essential for a decent society to operate but which cannot command high profits - such as bringing up children, caring for people who cannot care for themselves, keeping our environment clean and healthy, etc., etc. - are undervalued both in monetary terms and in terms of status. Young people who are not academic - or who have been denied an academic education - are portrayed as "failures" and, to my mind, it's not surprising that they feel they owe nothing to mainstream society from which they have been largely excluded.

Well said POGS
I'm a telegraph person myself, but occasionally glance at the Daily Mail or The Times. Can't stand the spelling and grammar of the Grauniad.
Non of the above are the answer to life the universe and everything and I'm certainly no Deep Thought.
I prefer to make up my own mind based on personal experience and the clearly expressed and reasoned opinions of others.