Changes to Childcare Costs

Last month, I wrote a post about childcare costs, and how the government's proposed changes were less than ideal.

For once, it seems the government listened to what people were saying, and yesterday's announcement was that everyone claiming Universal Credit would be able to claim 85% of childcare costs. Previously, this figure was intended to be split, with those earning above the income tax threshold receiving 85% and those earning below the threshold receiving just 70%.

I am so relieve they have done this; it will make a big difference to people like me who are working hard to avoid relying on benefits. This will hopefully mean that less of my income will be going out the door in childcare costs (at the moment my childcare bill is around £7800 a year, and I don't expect to earn much more than that in my first year of self employment).

One thing that does concern me, and something they've cleverly left out of all their PR opportunities, is the small fact that at the moment, the only people claiming Universal Credit are a relatively tiny group of single people with no dependents. The roll-out of Universal Credit has been somewhat delayed, and there has been little word on when they expect it to complete. So at the moment their lovely new announcement is a bit... academic, isn't it!

I am, quite frankly, petrified of Universal Credit. When my maternity leave finished and I claimed Income Support, I had a first-hand experience of just how poorly organised the system is. A claim for Income Support takes "up to" seventeen working days. When I got to Day 17 and there was still no money, I called them to ask what was going on - only to be told, oh, the money is here. I've no idea why it wasn't sent; I'll send a BACS payment now. For those who don't know a BACS payment typically takes three working days - taking the total time between applying for money and receiving it twenty working days. Four working weeks. It's not surprising then, that during that time I ended up having to receive a food parcel from the Trussell Trust.

During the time I was waiting for Income Support, I was still able to struggle by for most of the time because I was still receiving Child Tax Credits and Child Benefit. It was a comfort to know that if one incompetent government agency messed up, another would probably not mess up for a while - so there was still a chance of some money, however little, making it into my bank account. If all of the payments are going through the same government agency, the same computer system, where is the provision for when they mess up? I think it's a little optimistic to assume that everything will run smoothly and it won't mess up! I've heard too many stories to suggest otherwise.

Another point about the announcement is more clearly made by the website Mothers At Home Matter. The Universal Credit website gleefully tells claimants that there is no limit to the number of hours they can work each week - but why are we encouraging parents to go to work and spend as much time as possible at work? Yes, we absolutely should be helping those parents who want to work, to make it financially viable for them to do so - but equally, those staying at home are rarely doing so in order to keep up with their Jeremy Kyle fixation. Stay at home parents spend their days reading stories, making models, building towers, explaining, teaching. Why does society put such little value on this? The parents of today are raising the society of tomorrow. If we're not spending any time together as families, I am worried about what the society of tomorrow will look like to be honest.

So yes, well done government, your idea is good in principle - but I think you probably need to put a bit more work in. Could do better!

"Scrounger mum says I want baby number nine!"

I had a call this morning from Nick Ferrari's LBC Radio show about a story in the Daily Star with the above headline. They wanted my comment on it.

I'm still not sure what my comment is to be honest.

It would be easy to say, yes, she gives single mothers and benefit claimants and all the rest of us a bad name... but I think it's probably the paper doing that. After all, they have no doubt paid her for this article, and if they hadn't found her, they would have found someone else to tell the same story. I don't know about you, but if I had 8 kids and no job, and a journalist offered me a few hundred quid for an article 3 weeks before Christmas, I'd probably say "yeah ok, I want another baby and also a new house and an alien in the back yard to go with the giraffe your taxes are already paying for." (extra points if you get the obscure reference to Mark Steele there)

I'm going to stick my neck out here though, and say that even if this particular lady is the scum of the earth, producing babies just to get benefits - she's probably in the minority on that one. Most people don't do that. In that way, this story is unrepresentative.

I think it's easy to vilify this woman, and she's obviously not doing much to help herself in those stakes.

But really, the comment in the piece about "why don't they go after big business instead" is a valid point. Yes, the government could cut this lady's benefits tomorrow and turf her and her 8 kids out onto the street... and their grand total saving would be £40k, maximum. 

If they went after even one company that's dodging taxes or a millionaire with a crafty accountant, don't you think they might make a little more money that way? 

Single mothers, benefit claimants, social housing tenants, people with lots of kids - they're all an easy target for the media, but eradicating them is not going to suddenly change the country, the economy or even the street they live on.

And yes, saying she gets £30k a year in benefits sounds like a lot - but if you divide that up between her and her kids, that's probably not a lot of money per head for food, clothes, Christmas. Yes, she has a lot of kids. Yes, that's probably a bit irresponsible on her part, and certainly in her current situation to say she plans to have more kids (as opposed to "I'd like to, one day, if I can") is a bit daft. But what can you do? You can't make her un give birth, can you? You can't euthanize the children so as to make her housing and benefit needs a little more tidy and convenient... though in all honesty I really wouldn't put that idea past our current government. 

It's easy to get outraged by a story like this; after all, that's what the aim of the piece is. But I think that's just an easy win for all concerned. The paper can't do a story about someone like me - gets her head down, works as hard as she can to provide for her child - because there's no story there. Nobody would read a story about someone who works hard, pays their bills, doesn't deal drugs, doesn't rock up drunk for school pick up. But the sensationalism involved in "your taxes pay me £30k a year for my 8 kids and I'm going to have another! Ha! In your face, tax payers!" is too irresistible isn't it. 

Whose Job is it to Care?

A version of this post was originally published on the blog I write for my local paper. The original post can be found here.

I spent an hour in my local council offices earlier this week. I claim Housing Benefit, and that means that every month I have to go in and provide proof of my earnings and child care costs. I don’t begrudge doing this; I understand that if you want to receive a benefit you have to prove you need it.

Some of the things I over heard in the office got me thinking though.

One person seemed to be in a position where they were being forced to down-size. She was clearly quite vulnerable and upset by the prospect of having to move. She was telling the council worker that she needed to have her space; she couldn’t cope with living in a smaller place. If she moved to a smaller place she would end up splitting up with her partner because she couldn’t cope with it. She was also adamant that she needed to have her dog with her. And she didn’t want to have to change doctor and dentist and so on; she needed to be close to where she already was. She couldn’t deal with bus journeys and so on.

Your first reaction may well be that of “well if you want to live in a bigger place, go out and get a job and earn the money to afford it.”  But what if she can’t? What if her mental problems are so bad that she just plain cannot cope with the day to day life of working? What if she really does need to have her dog with her in order to have any semblance of wellbeing?

There seems to be a certain sense of “beggars can’t be choosers” where council assistance is concerned. The lady behind the desk clearly wanted to help, but her hands were tied. The most she could tell the lady was to go to her GP and ask him to write a letter confirming that she really did need her dog with her.

I can see how the Council can’t spend all day wringing their hands over whether people get to keep their dogs, or their relationships breakdown because of house moves. They have a limited number of houses, and a limited amount of funds for benefit. It’s not their job to make sure this lady doesn’t end up being sectioned.

But if it’s not their job, where does that duty of care lie? Surely social housing and benefits are there specifically for this sort of situation, where a person is vulnerable and for whatever reason unable to fend for themselves without some sort of assistance? Where does that duty of care lie?

The problem is that the policymakers, the government and the people in charge at Wiltshire Council, have never sat behind one of those desks and met the people who need their help. They’ve never had to listen to someone crying because they have to choose between being homeless and losing their dog. They’ve never had to tell a pregnant woman “just wait until you get kicked out of your house, and on that day we’ll find you temporary accommodation somewhere in the county.”

I’m not saying that people should be able to go into the Council office and dictate “yes, I want to live in this area, in a 3 bedroom house, with a medium-sized garden and a fence not a wall, and there must be roses…” But for some people the very thought of moving house, of packing their entire life into boxes and uprooting themselves, of getting used to new surroundings, of having to get to know new neighbours, of learning a new route to the shops… it’s just too much for them to cope with. What do we do with these people? The current climate seems entirely uncaring: if you can’t fend for yourself, have what I give you and be grateful. 

It seems almost Darwinist, doesn’t it? If you can’t survive on what you’re given, and you can’t cope with normal day to day life right now, then sink.

I understand that the Councils need to have guidelines and cut-off points and means-testing and all the rest of it. It can’t just be a free-for all and there do need to be rules in place to ensure people are not taking advantage. But can’t there also be some basic human understanding and compassion?

This is not me saying I have the answer by the way; it’s me asking the question.

Another Example of the Benefits System Being Stupid

My Housing Benefit is dependent on how much money I earn, and how much I pay out on nursery bills.

Each month, I go to the council office and wait in line to submit my payslip and my nursery bill. This usually takes at least half an hour, even when there is nobody waiting in front of me. Even first thing in the morning, they make you wait.

The council then look at my payslip and my nursery bill and do some terribly convoluted calculation before sending me a coded letter about how much Housing Benefit I am entitled to. This usually takes 2 weeks, so they backdate whatever amendment is made to the beginning of the month. So if they've been under-paying, they'll put a lump sum into my rent account, and if they've been over-paying they'll claw it back by cutting the amount I am entitled to for a few weeks until the difference is made up. When they send the letter, they usually send copies of every other letter they've sent during this financial year, so as the year goes on the envelopes get fatter and fatter. 

Make sense? No? Good. That's what they want. If you don't understand exactly what they're doing, you won't notice when they cock it up. Which they will.

At the beginning of August, I had the usual payslip (I was salaried, so my wages really didn't alter from month to month), but nursery was closed for two weeks, so my nursery bill basically halved. I took my paperwork into the office as usual, and as usual it took them two weeks to process it and come back to me.

My Housing Benefit was usually around £45 a week, but for August, because of this difference in my nursery bill, the benefit went down to around £3 a week. That's fine; I don't expect to be given benefit if I have the money to pay my rent. (I have no idea how the hell this will work next time though, when I'm self employed and don't get paid holiday but also don't have any childcare for 2 weeks)

What happened next though, is a bit of a farce.

At the beginning of September, I got another payslip (same as the others) and another nursery bill (almost identical to every month except August). I submitted them to the council office, and waited for my letter amending my benefit.

At the beginning of October, I'd still had no letter. I called the council and they told me it was probably just caught in a backlog, and that I should go ahead and submit my next lot of paperwork - which I dutifully did.

By last week, I'd still had no letter, and had been unable to get through to anyone regarding how much rent I should be paying - so I was just paying what I'd always paid, and figured it would all even out in the end. Wrong!

On Wednesday afternoon I had a phone call from someone who was clearly a little power crazed and perhaps not having the best day. She told me she was calling about my overdue rent account, at which point I said "oh good, perhaps you can help me sort out what's going on." She then proceeded to tell me there would be court proceedings against me, and they would be seeking to repossess my property due to unpaid rent. The backlog of what I'd assumed was being covered by my housing benefit had built up to an unacceptable level. She was cross with me because she'd had to call after I'd ignored the three letters she'd sent me. The fact not one letter had arrived at my property was neither here nor there.

After I'd picked myself up off the floor, I explained I'd been waiting to hear about changes to my Housing Benefit after my nursery bill had increased. Little Miss Diplomat looked at my benefit account and told me, in no uncertain terms that no, the account was all up to date, and I was only entitled to £3 a week in benefit and I  had been sent a letter about it. There was no paperwork outstanding, and now I needed to pay what was owed.

We agreed that going forward I would pay extra rent to clear the backlog. She told me I would still get a letter telling me I was being taken to court, but to ignore it; so long as I paid the agreed amount each week she would take no further action. I asked her to put that part in writing!

I've had a fairly worrying weekend, wondering how the hell I would afford to basically pay double rent, and wondering why my whopping great nursery bill no longer entitled me to assistance with my rent when it had up until August.

The punchline landed on my door mat at lunch time yesterday: a benefit letter from the council. My Housing Benefit is now £45 a week, and they've made a payment this morning of £400+ into my rent account to catch up on their backlog. On the bottom of the letter, in bold type: "YOU MUST TELL US IMMEDIATELY IF YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES CHANGE." ... so that we can wait 2 months before doing anything about it, and then scare the living shit out of you.

They also sent a separate letter, in a separate envelope, asking me to please bring in my October payslip and nursery bill.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is where your council tax goes. This is what you pay for. Useless bureaucracy, red tape, council department who work in the same building but do not communicate, power crazed PMT monsters and several pointless letters going to the same address in separate envelopes.

I am now very worried about what will happen when I am fully self employed. Nobody I have spoken to at the council has been able to tell me definitively what I need to do, how I submit my earnings etc. My income is likely to fluctuate more than it did when I was salaried.

And then there's the issue of the nursery closing for another two weeks in December, which means another smaller invoice, another cut in housing benefit, another two months to get it increased again, another horrifying call threatening to kick me and my daughter out on the street.

Here are some other posts I've written about benefits.

More Rantings About Single Parents

I posted last week about how I get irritated with people's responses to some of my posts.

I found for a couple of days after that post, my brain was doing that classic and another thing... thing it is wont to do... so here are some more points I'd like to raise:

• I dislike people who resent me for living in a council flat while they are still on a waiting list, or can't even get onto a list. As if this is my preferred location, as if I would much rather be able to afford to rent privately or even buy, somewhere with a garden, a bit of space. And not a stair well full of piss and neighbours from whom S is sure to learn a questionable vocabulary even if all windows are kept shut.

• People seem to hate the fact I'm entitled to benefits, as if the £71 Income Support or £60 Child Tax Credit was the reason I had a child. You may not get financial help from the state for your child, but you have a husband/partner who, even if he is the most shit other-half in the world, can still be left in the house with the child while you run out for milk, or can still hold the baby or make sure he doesn't fall off something while you nip to the toilet. At the very least, he can answer the door to the postman while you're elbow-deep in poonami. 

• I can't stand it when people think it's ok to question where something I own came from - or even to imply I have stolen it, as in the comments to this post. It is as if my entitlement to benefits somehow removes my right to spend my money as I see fit, or the right to privacy of my financial affairs. The media looks at people who claim benefits, and seems to expect that all claimants should be clothed in rags and living off rice. The fact is that many of us have had reasonably well-paid jobs at one time or another, and in a previous existence were able to afford such niceties as a TV or dvd player.

• It's reasonably well reported that actually, the largest burden on the benefits system is people drawing the old age pension; but nobody comments that an OAP has bought their bingo card "with my taxes!" Do please explain to me how a pensioner is more entitled to assistance than I am. Yes, they may have paid into "the system" for a number of years, but so have I - and I will continue to do so, once my childcare costs do not outweigh my income.

• One of the worst things is when people stand in front of me and complain about feckless benefits scum who defraud the system and get help from "my taxes"... and then look at me and say, "oh, but not you!" As if, because of the circumstances surrounding my becoming a single mother, or perhaps because I work in an office and not an off license, or because I don't smoke, or because of something else I've not considered, I'm a "deserving" single mother. It's ok for the state to help and support me because... I try hard? Because I blog about it? Because I have a reasonable enough grasp of the English language as to be occasionally eloquent in my arguments? Because I use cloth nappies? Why am I deserving of help, and not a blight on society, but many of my contemporaries are scum? At least people who hate all single mothers have the decency to not discriminate between us based on some random, arbitrary standard they are secretly - perhaps unconsciously - holding us all to.

Suggestions for the Government

This government seems to dislike single parents so much, and their plan of using tax breaks for married couples to somehow prevent them... well, quite frankly, it's a bit stupid isn't it. How is a tax break amounting to up to £3.80 a week supposed to encourage people to get married, and then stay married? Surely we could all just stay single, and drink one less pint of beer a week. Or maybe a couple fewer lattes.

I thought I would give our government some suggestions of other things they could do, in order to avoid the social inconvenience of single parents.

• Take the money you would spend on tax breaks for married couples, and put it into schools. Use it to teach children self-esteem and self-worth. Teach them how to communicate with each other effectively. This will help to prevent people getting into unhealthy relationships which they then end up leaving, kids in tow. If someone has a stronger sense of self-worth and self-esteem, they are less likely to sleep with someone for the wrong reasons.

• Take the money you would spend on tax breaks for married couples, and put it into mental health care. Help people to deal with their issues and problems. Make it easier to ask for help, and easier to access that help. Support people in recovery so that they don't end up damaging other people with their problems, or seeking refuge from their demons in a damaging relationship. If you're not in a shitty relationship, you're not likely to end up having to leave it and become a single parent.

• Take the money you would spend on tax breaks for married couples, and put it into building a robust benefits system with the resources to assess individual cases, weed out trouble makers and skivers, and to genuinely provide help and support for those who need it. Make it so that benefits are seen - by everyone, even Daily Mail readers - as a genuine way of helping people to help themselves. Spend money on more individual, one-to-one guidance and assessment so that people are not left to languish on ridiculous help-to-work schemes that don't work.

• Take the money you would spend on tax breaks for married couples, and put it into helping single parents to fend for themselves. Help them to get into gainful employment by giving them access to courses and childcare - so that they are not such social pariahs with awful and largely undeserved reputations.

Since becoming a single parent, I have come to realise two things:

1. Working single parents work fucking hard. We get up early, do everything involved in taking care of the child/children, do a day's work and then come home to prepare dinner, do bath and bed time, wash up, do housework and prepare for the same all over again the next day. 
2. A great deal of people resent us for the pitiful help we do receive. Single parents seem to have a reputation for being lazy, feckless and workshy. If we work, we're considered unreliable because we're the only ones available to do emergency pick-ups from nursery/school for poorly kids. We often don't have anyone else to stay home with poorly children, so end up taking weeks at a time off work.

It would be great (and ultimately very surprising) if this government were to use their collective time in office to help single parents to help themselves, and to maybe gain a better reputation in the process.

Gingerbread: Make it Work for Single Parents.

A while back I wrote a post called The Benefits Trap, with the idea of showing people how difficult it can be to get off benefits and back into work. It seemed to be well received; people seemed to appreciate what I was saying. And then someone commented on another post I'd written that showed an example of someone trying to get off benefits. They seemed angry with me, accusing me of promoting being on benefits, and telling me "everything you own has been paid for by me..."

Leaving aside the fact this person was incorrect in most of what they were saying (they were clearly unaware, for example, that until my breakdown I was in a reasonably well-paid job, and that I do in fact have a job now as well), what was said bothered me because it seems that these things are what a lot of people think. 

They see me: single mother, lives in a council flat, walking around with a buggy in the middle of the day (I only work 3 days a week), and they think: benefits scrounger. Lives the high life with a flatscreen telly while I work my fingers to the bone to pay for it.

The fact of the matter is: yes, I do claim benefits. My childcare bill swallows my monthly income whole, and if I want any chance of surviving, I need to accept help from the state. That doesn't mean I'm happy about it, or that I'm not doing what I can to get myself into a position where I don't need to do it for the rest of my life.

There is also an issue here that's not often discussed when the media bangs on about feckless single parents living off the government. How easy do you think it is for a single parent to find a job? How easily did you find your job? I was very lucky in that when I returned to work, my boss allowed me to tell him which days and hours I would work. How many employers do you think are like that? 

If you don't have a child, and you want a job, you can look in the local paper, send your CV out, whatever. You can arrange an interview for whenever is convenient, and wander off on your merry way to impress them with your mad skillz in whatever it is you are interviewing for.

Imagine being a single parent looking for work. You need to find a part-time job that pays more than minimum wage. It needs to be (for argument's sake) only from 9-3 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays because you've already spoken to the nursery, and those are the only days they have available. You can't work weekends, because nurseries don't open on weekends and you don't have family locally with whom you could leave your child every single weekend for a whole day while you go to work. When you've found this Holy Grail of jobs that fits in with your childcare arrangements, you have to think about what you'll do when your child is ill. It's a well-known fact that when a child starts nursery, whatever age they are, they will catch every bug and cold and ear infection under the sun. In my first month back at work, I spent more time at home with a poorly S than I did at my desk. How do you think a new employer will view that situation? Do you think you will last out your probation period if you're never at work because your child has caught yet another bug?

And does any of this mean you are stupid, incapable of work? Does it mean your degree, your professional qualifications, your on-job training, your years of knowledge and experience are somehow null and void? Does being a single parent automatically mean you are only capable of menial, low-paid jobs? No. Does it mean that's all that's on offer to you? Usually, yes.

Gingerbread currently have a campaign running called Make it Work for Single Parents. Their goal is to get 250,000 more single parents into work before 2020, and they have been campaigning for changes that will allow that to happen.

Contrary to the picture the media portrays, and to what a lot of people seem to think, the majority of single parents are not sitting at home in their grubby dressing gowns, smoking fags and watching Jeremy Kyle. 

The majority of single parents are scouring the jobs pages of the local paper, looking for that mythical job that will help them get back into working life again. 

The majority of single parents hate to be seen as spongers living off other people's taxes. 

The majority of single parents want to claim benefits as a hand up, not a hand out. 

The Benefits Trap

I've written a couple of posts this week about benefits. This post is about my own situation, but I'm hoping it will help people to see why some people may stay on benefits, rather than working.

Here are some figures for you.

When my maternity pay finished and I decided I would claim benefits until my year of leave entitlement finished, this is what I was living on:

Housing Benefit: covered my rent and council tax entirely.

Child Tax Credits: about £60 a week

Income Support: £72 a week, paid fortnightly for reasons known only to The Powers That Be

Child Benefit: £20.30 a week.

When I decided to go back to work, I spoke to my boss and arranged my hours. I spoke to the Housing Benefit people to ask what they needed from me. I spoke to the Tax Credits office to tell them how much I expected to earn for the new tax year.

I returned to work on 22nd April. 

S started nursery on the same day; I couldn't afford to have her do full sessions before I was back at work.

My last Income Support payment was a week and a half before I started work.
When I got paid at the end of April, I should have received around £300 before tax.
My nursery bill at the end of April included the 5 sessions I'd had in April, plus prepayment for all of May: a figure of around £650, due to be paid in full by the 10th of the month.
My Tax Credits increased to £200 per week because I was now entitled to Working Tax Credits as well as Child Tax Credits. 

Even the least mathematically gifted among us can see that these figures do not add up.

Luckily for me, my boss knew (better than I did) the situation I would be in with my first month's pay. He arranged for me to be paid for the holiday I'd accrued in the first 4 months of the year. 

Good point: I had enough money to pay my nursery bill, and afford some food for the month.

Bad point: I now had next to no holiday left to see me through the 4 weeks a year the nursery is closed, and any days I needed to take off if S was sick.

Another bad point: when I submitted my first payslip to the Housing Benefit office, they assumed I was quids in, and stopped paying my Housing Benefit. I explained to them (more than once, in person as well as over the phone, to more than one person) the situation with the holiday pay, but all they saw was the number in the corner of my payslip. The fact most of that figure went on paying my nursery bill (which I also submitted) was neither here nor there.

Now, in September, I am still submitting my payslip and nursery bill each month. My Housing Benefit (and Council Tax Benefit) are calculated in arrears, and I am sent an ever-thickening wad of paper showing adjustments made to previous and current entitlements. Recalculations, references to figures that seemed to have been plucked out of thin air, under payments, over payments. Miscalculations. Plural.

At various points over the course of four months, for the exact same week, I can have been liable to pay rent of £88, £55 or £30. Or more, or less. I stopped looking through all the paperwork after a while. It has changed and gone back and forth between these numbers more than once.

I have no idea how much rent I am supposed to be paying each week. Every now and then I email the rent office and ask them for a statement of my account to see how much is overdue, and then make a guess at how much of a backpayment the benefits office are likely to pay into the account when I submit my payslip at the end of the month. It is, ultimately, a guessing game.

My point is this: 

If I had stayed on benefits, I would be skint. But I would know exactly how skint I was. I could budget to those figures. 

Being back at work, I have had (so far) four months of never quite knowing if I'm going to make it to the next payment of Tax Credits. My monthly wage is swallowed by my childcare cost and rent, and part of my weekly Tax Credits is paid over to rent and Council Tax. I never know where I stand, whether I'm actually any better off doing this. 

I am not writing this in the hope of gaining your sympathy or pity; I just want to try and help you to understand why some people might choose to stay on benefits rather than return to work.

Housing Benefit: Example # 2

In yesterday's post I gave an example of how difficult it can be to claim Housing Benefit and how this can cause problems with managing one's cash flow.

Today, let's look at it from the other end.

Please note: this is not about me. It is an EXAMPLE. 

I am a single mother. I have been out of work for a while. I'm on Jobseeker's Allowance and I have 3 school-age children. My rent and council tax are completely covered by my benefit.

I have been looking for jobs, but I need to find something that fits in with school hours, and pays enough for us to live on. Eventually, I find a job temping in a factory.

The day I start my new job, my Jobseeker's Allowance stops.

I am now entitled to claim Working Tax Credits; to get this, I have to tell them how much money I think I will earn for the remainder of this tax year. If I under-estimate how much I think I will earn, I will receive too much in Working Tax Credits, and will be asked to pay it back in April. Therefore it's better to over-estimate how much I think I will earn. Ultimately though, I'm plucking a figure out of thin air. This is a temping job; I have no idea how long they will need me.

My Housing Benefit continues to cover my rent, until I submit my first payslip to the Council office. Then they take a couple of weeks to re-assess my claim, and I get one of their unintelligible letters. The letter says that since my first day back at work, I am only entitled to Housing Benefit to cover half of my weekly rent. But for the past 6 weeks they have been over-paying my benefit, so for the next few weeks I will receive only a quarter of my weekly rent in benefit, in order to claw back the overpayment.

Last week, I was up-to-date on my rent but now with this amendment in my benefit, I'm behind.

Now the factory have caught up on their backlog, and they don't need me any more, so I am unemployed again. I go back to set up my Jobseeker's Allowance again, but I know this can take up to 15 working days.

Once my Housing Benefit is re-assessed (which they can't do until my Jobseeker's Allowance claim is finalised), it will be backdated to the date I stopped work, and will once again cover my rent. 

Now I am in a position where my rent and council tax are covered, but I'm living on Jobseeker's Allowance, and I still owe rent from the brief period I was in work. 

Housing Benefit (or Why People Might Choose to Stay on Benefits) #1

I want to claim Housing Benefit because I am on a low income/have children or vulnerable adults in the house for whom I am responsible/am disabled or otherwise entitled to claim. I get a form from the Council office, and fill it in as best I can, then return it, along with copies of ID, payslips for the last few months, bank statements so they can see I'm not secretly rich.

I don't want to get behind on my rent, so I struggle to continue paying the full amount each week until my claim is assessed. This takes a month.

My claim is assessed and they find that I am entitled to £30 per week to help with my rent. They back-date this to the date of my claim, and pay a lump sum into my rent account. They send a letter, written in code with a lot of figures and little explanation. Perhaps I am dyslexic, or not good at maths, or just not someone who works at the council; I have little idea what this letter is telling me. Eventually someone who's been claiming Housing Benefit for a while shows me the line I need to look at, to tell me what my entitlement is.

Perhaps, for whatever reason, my income is not at a steady amount each month. So each month, I must take my payslip into the Council office for my claim to be re-assessed. Two weeks later, I get another letter telling my new entitlement. If they have been underpaying in the two weeks since I submitted my payslip, they will put a lump sum into my rent account to cover this. If they have been overpaying in those two weeks, they will take this amount off the weekly amount they will pay.

So although they have assessed my claim and found that I cannot afford to be paying more than X amount per week on my rent, because they overpaid in the time it took them to find this out, I am actually liable to pay X amount plus their claw-back of the overpayment.

Sometimes a mistake is made, and I get a letter out of the blue saying I have been overpaid, and my Benefit payment will go down by £15 a week until the overpayment has been clawed back. I now have to find another £15 a week to pay for something that was not my fault or in any way under my control.

One day I call up Tax Credits to do my annual renewal. We get bogged down in the calculations of what I expect to earn in the next tax year, and the call handler forgets to tick whatever box it is that says I've renewed my claim. I know nothing about this until, 3 weeks later, my Tax Credits do not arrive in my bank account as expected. I call up and resolve the issue; my Tax Credits are reinstated the following week. The Housing Benefit computers have access to the Tax Credits database, though. In a previously unheard of feat of efficiency, they have looked at the Tax Credits system during the time that it thought I was not eligible for a claim. If I am not entitled to Tax Credits, I am not entitled to Housing Benefit. I receive a letter telling me I am not entitled to any further payments; my claim has been closed; I owe them £200 for overpayments they made in error, which must be paid within a month. It takes a month to resolve this issue with the Council office, during which time I receive chaser letters for the £200, telling me I may be evicted from my home if I do not pay.

Eventually, I lose my job and end up on Jobseeker's Allowance. I tell the Council office, and after a few weeks (during which time I have still been paying my rent) I get a letter to say my rent is now completely covered by Housing Benefit. Phew! No more worrying about how much rent to pay each week. 

I contact the Rent office to ask for a statement of my account, so that I can check I definitely don't owe any rent from the period I was liable to pay on. It takes two weeks for them to email me a screen print which appears to show I am £150 in credit. I ask if it's possible to get a refund; they respond saying they will send a cheque. The cheque does not arrive.

Things I Have (and Haven't) Seen From My Window

I live on a council estate. My first-floor kitchen window looks out over a car park, and the back of another block of flats. Where I live is also on the very edge of the estate; most people coming home from town will walk past either the front or back of the property.

Being the mother of a toddler, I spend a lot of time either washing up at the kitchen window, or holding a grumpy toddler up to look out of the living room window at people passing by.

These are some of the things I have seen. 

• Various people coming out of their back door, walking to the edge of their back yard, and throwing whatever rubbish they happen to have in their hand out of the gate. The bins are about 5 paces away, behind the sheds. Sometimes, if their item is a reasonable size (a nappy in a bag, a bottle) they will throw it over the top of the sheds. Sometimes it lands in the bins.

• People come out of their house with a baby and head for the car. A woman I assume is the mother gets into the front passenger seat and straps herself in, the baby in her lap. They drive away.

• A lad walks down the road, past his friend's bedroom on the third floor. Rather than walk around the side of the building and up a flight of stairs to the front door, he stands in the middle of the street shouting the friend's name until he appears at the window. They have a conversation. Both have mobile phones; neither thinks to use them.

• A taxi driver drives past our window at 7:30 am, huffing something out of an aerosol can as he goes.

• Various people walk or drive into the car park and head for a particular door. They go in, then come out a few minutes later. Always the same people; always the same door. If they don't get an answer that door, the same thing will usually happen at a different door, a few houses along.

• A very posh man in mustard-coloured corduroy trousers walks through the car park to the bins and puts his recycling in. He never looks up or to either side of himself. He looks like a dog crossing a motorway. The people in the cottages just outside this estate share our bins.

• People on the second floor balcony lean over to shout down to people in the car park. They will have a full (shouted) conversation as the people in the car park walk away, towards town.

• A young lad of around 18 clearly loves to ride his scooter. He seems to have altered something on the engine so that it's particularly loud, and spends hours at a time riding laps around a certain area which includes the front of the flat, the alley at the side, the back of the flat, and cutting through the path at the end. He is basically riding his mum's hairdryer in a ring around my flat. 

• A scruffy-looking man who may or may not be drunk in the middle of the day, walking up the middle of the road, pushing a Sainsbury's trolley from the wrong end. It looks like he's using it instead of a walking frame. He's swearing at everyone he sees.

• A group of young boys who seem to be aged around 7 are having an altercation on the balcony. One of them is calling another a pussyhole. One of them hits another; he begins to cry, and the others run away.

• Around 7pm, a child who seems little more than a toddler runs up and down the balcony, past my kitchen window. He/she is making a lot of noise. Sometimes there is a skateboard involved.

• I didn't see the dog whose shit spent a day a the top of the steps outside; I didn't see whoever cleaned  most of it up (or had the misfortune to tread in it)

• I never see the dogs (plural) who pee at the top of the stairs, on the stairs, and on the concrete at the bottom of the stairs.

• I have not, for some months now, seen the council worker who used to sweep the balconies and mop the stairs with hot, bleachy water. The communal areas have not been cleaned since the council sold the contract to Balfour Beatty, as far as I am aware.

• I don't see the woman who seems to be standing in her kitchen, screaming at her young child. When I say screaming, I mean screaming. It's very loud, but you don't usually understand what the words are. I couldn't tell you which kitchen the noise comes from, as the acoustics around here mean it bounces off all the walls and just seems to be coming from the car park.

There are people on this estate who just want to get their head down and raise their children.

A lot of people on this estate get up every morning and go to work. Their job might be menial or low paid, but they still plod away at it, every single day; the same as everyone else. Many are stuck on benefits, with the risk of delays with housing benefit or tax credits (trust me, they are awful) meaning it's too scary to go out and get a job. Your Jobseeker's or Income Support will stop the moment you start your job, regardless of how much or often it pays; Tax Credits can take a month to set up. Delays in changing housing benefit payments mean your rent can be under-paid or not paid at all, and you have to find that cash, plus cash to put food on the table and electricity on the meter, until cash starts to flow properly.

Many families keep themselves to themselves. Their kids aren't playing out in the street at all hours, they don't come home drunk and loud at 2am, you have no way of knowing what goes on behind their net curtains because you never even know if they're in there.

When I come home from shopping with a buggy laden with carrier bags, most of the people mentioned above have offered to help me up the stairs.

When Jamie Oliver goes on national TV to mouth off about poor people and their fucking big tellies, I can see why he says it. He sees what everyone else sees when they look at these estates. He sees what I see out of my kitchen window. He sees the fucking big tellies and the smoking and the drinking. He doesn't see how difficult it can be to get out of that, and how easy it is to get stuck in a daily rut of apathy and despondency.

But he should know that the sort of people who buy his books or watch his TV shows and interviews, are not the sort of people who need to be spoken down to like that. My address already means I am tarred with the same brush as everyone else around here; I don't need some middle-class, priviledged TV chef rubbing that tar in. 

The Reason I Was On BBC 5 Live on Monday...

According to the Centre for Social Justice this week, one million children in Britain grow up with no contact from their father. They are, apparently, living in "men deserts," with no male role models.

Oh good, another stick with which to beat the single mothers - because the social stigma and benefit cuts are not enough for us to be going on with. We are, after all, the root of all society's ills.

I understand the need to address the issue of young children growing up without a male role model, but this report, and the headlines it is generating, are really not helpful.

Does this child look miserable, disadvantaged and
destined for a life of crime to you?

This report seems to be suggesting that single mothers are in some way responsible for delinquent behaviour. But there is no proof of cause and effect here. Do single mothers cause delinquent behaviour, or does the disadvantage and stigma inflicted upon us cause a situation we are helpless to improve? It sounds to me like the people who compiled the report need to learn the difference between causation and correlation.

According to the CSJ Director, Christian Guy, there is a "tsunami" of family breakdown "battering" the country. Sensationalist statements like this are just not helpful. Would it not be more beneficial to look into the reasons people end up raising children alone, and ways the government can support them in doing so?

Perhaps the absent father has left, and is just not interested in the child. In that case, does the mother who has been left behind, struggling to do her best for her child, really need to be told that her efforts are in vain, and her child will still grow up to be horribly disadvantaged?

Perhaps the absent father is really not a good role model for the child. Perhaps he has had a string of girlfriends since he left, is in and out of prison, maybe he's addicted to drugs or alcohol, or only turns up at Christmas. Is the CSJ suggesting that any role model is better than none?

We cannot go back to the 1950s; these days families are not a man, his wife, two point four children and a white picket fence. More than half the people I know have step-siblings, half-siblings, and any number of weird and wonderful family set-ups. The family is evolving, and the government seem hell-bent on resisting it by punishing those of us who don't fit into their neatly outlined ideal.

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a woman in an abusive relationship. Perhaps your partner beats you, rapes you, calls you names, doesn't let you out of the house. But you have children with him. He is their father and they love him. You have stayed with him and put up with it for so long, "for the children," because you don't want them to suffer. But now, you have a black eye and bruised ribs, and you really want to take your children and go and live somewhere safe. And now, the media is telling you that if you don't stay with this abusive man, your children will fail to make friends at school. They'll be likely to engage in crime as a teenager, to become pregnant as a teenager, and generally live a disadvantaged, miserable life.

Is it not hard enough for women to leave abusive relationships as it is, with all the cuts to funding for charities who help in these situations? With the changes to Legal Aid entitlement? Now the women who are trying to leave in order to give their children a better life are being brow-beaten into staying, with their children's welfare being used as the stick.

Single mothers are already battling benefit cuts, proposed cuts to free school meals, childcare costs, returning to work on reduced hours and woefully low wages. This government already treats us with utter contempt; we are already at the lowest possible point on the social scale, being battered from all angles. Please, CSJ, do not give the right-wing media something else to throw at us!

Rather than demand the government promote family stability, why not demand they provide single parents with more support to raise happy, well-rounded children?

If it's such a problem for one million children to be growing up in a single parent household, why not help us to make a single parent household a better place to grow up?

Why not petition the government to encourage male teachers into primary schools instead of blaming single mothers for their children not having male role models?

Oh, wait. I know why you won't do those things. Because you were set up by Iain Duncan Smith, who has already shown his utter contempt for anyone less well-off than himself.

I guarantee you that my child, as the product of a single parent family, with no contact from her father, will grow up ten times happier and more well rounded than if I had stayed with him. Surely it is better for a child to have one good role model, of whichever sex, than two bad ones?

I spoke briefly about this on Five Live on Monday morning; I'm glad I had that opportunity, as this is something I feel very strongly about.

If you liked this post, you may also enjoy Single Mothers: The Scourge of Society?

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Further Adventures in Benefits

This post follows on from one titled Adventures in Benefits, wherein I explained the fun I'd had claiming Income Support. This is what happened next...

I made an application for Income Support at the end of January, after I'd received my last payslip from  work - as I was told to do when I phoned in the middle of January. I was told to allow 14 working days. On the 14th working day I'd heard nothing so I called them. My application had been declined because the money I was paid at the end of January would last me until the end of February. I could re-submit my claim again at the end of February.

Now, I understand that they don't want to be paying me benefits while I still have wages - that would be stupid. But... well, when you start a job, you work a month in hand, right? Your monthly pay is a month in arrears. And benefit payments are also made fortnightly, in arrears. So realistically the money I received at the end of January covered January and not February, and I should have been entitled to benefit from mid-February. That probably sounds a bit money-grabbing, but it is also basic logic as far as I can see. 

I called back at the end of February and re-submitted my claim. They sent me a form to sign again, and I sent it back again. And so began the 14 working day waiting period. Those of you keeping up with this may have noted that by this point, I have gone a month and a half without money. The Working Tax Credits people don't take 14 working days to process the fact you are not working; that money was stopped from the day I called to tell them of my change in circumstances.

Eventually, after 14 working days, my claim was processed and I was awarded Income Support at £71 a week. The claim was back-dated to the end of February, and a payment was sent - by BACS, which takes 3 working days. So that's now 17 working days.

In the meantime, it was a particularly cold spring, and I still have a hole in my ceiling from the earlier issues with the roof, which means that my heat mostly goes out of the hole and into the roof space. My bedroom is never warm, and I have an electric oil-filled radiator in there at night to keep S from freezing. My gas and electricity could not wait 17 working days for me to top them up and a lot of the money I did have went on that.

My daughter is currently munching her way through as much as she can get her hands on. I tend to be picky about what I let her get her hands on, so my money was going on making sure she had decent food to eat.

Towards the end of that 17 working days, when my bank balance was practically non-existent and the

kitchen was looking a little too Mother Hubbard-ish for my liking, it occurred to me that benefit reforms are due to come in. Now, aside from whether I think they are a good idea, or I think I will be better or worse off with the changes (really, they're so opaque about how these things are worked out who knows until the new payments are made?)... does anyone realistically trust this government to make the transition to Universal Credit smoothly? I sat and thought: do I want to be relying on these people for the only money I have coming in?

This was not helped by the fact that when it got to Day 17 and I checked my bank account, it was decidedly bare. When I called to enquire as to where the hell my money had gone (perpetually paranoid that my application would be turned down and I would be penniless), I was told by the call handler that she simply didn't know why the payment had not been sent, but she would send it now. Doesn't fill you with confidence, does it.

And so, I decided that I would rather go back to work and have benefit help me pay for childcare, than stay at home and rely on benefit to live. It's not very reliable, as it turns out, and that makes me nervous. It was ok to be skint and live off rice and beans when it was just me, but I have more expensive and varied tastes for my daughter. 

From the end of April I will be Single Mother At Work. Expect a lot of griping on the blog as I come to terms with leaving my precious little S at nursery, with getting us both up and out of the house on time, and with covering baby food marks on my work clothes. The nursery settling in session start next week, and I am petrified.

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Work and Benefits for a Single Mum

Last week, I was offered a job.

That makes it sound a bit like I was headhunted doesn't it. A friend knows some people who are re-opening a local pub, and he gave them my name for a job. I went in to speak to them about it the other day, and did a trial shift on Saturday afternoon for a couple of hours.

Of course, I have just put in a claim for Income Support, and really don't want to be in trouble for benefit fraud. So I called up and spoke to them. They were as helpful as any government department when you're trying to get a definitive answer on a specific point. The first five minutes was spent with "well you've not done any work yet so it's not a problem..." and "yes but I want to know where I stand before I do the work and potentially commit benefit fraud!" followed by "but you're not committing fraud because you've not done any work yet" and "*headdesk*"

The situation seems to be that while I am claiming Income Support, I can only earn £20 a week. I will need to submit "a few" payslips to show this. Anything I earn over that £20 mark will be deducted from my benefit so that I've effectively not earned it.

I have no idea what sort of job one could get where £20 would be regular weekly earnings. I'm guessing there aren't many around.

Whilst I understand that it would make a mockery of the system for me to be claiming benefit whilst simultaneously working and earning a small fortune, I don't think £20 is a realistic limit in this day and age. Minimum wage is £6.19 per hour I believe - which means I can only work 3 hours a week. Since I can't claim help with childcare until I'm doing 16 hours a week, this means I need to rope in a friend or family member on a regular basis to baby sit so that I can work... but will be unable to pay them to do this, what with my only earning £20 a week.

This also means that if I decide to stay on benefits, and not go back to work in May when my maternity leave finishes, I will potentially have 5 years with no work experience at all. Nothing to help me "keep my hand in" with the working world, nothing recent to put on my CV, no experience or familiarity with working life when S turns 5 and I am suddenly expected to go out and get a job. This can't be a good thing, surely? After five years of CBeebies and Jeremy Kyle, would anyone have the confidence and skills to go out and find a good job? Surely we should be encouraging people on Income Support to try and maintain a small part time job in order to keep them ticking over?

As it is, the people who offered me the job are fairly accommodating, and only really need someone to cover the odd busy period - so they are fine with me only working 3 hours a week. I sincerely doubt I would find the same situation if I applied for a job in Tesco or Sainsburys though.

The way I see it, there should be some sort of middle ground, where people like me can work maybe one or two shifts a week at a small job, earn a little extra money to pay for bits and bobs, and be more likely to then go on to find a "proper" job when the time comes.

The alternative, as far as I can see it, is for hoardes of parents to just be moved over from Income Support to Job Seekers Allowance when their youngest child turns 5.

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Adventures in Benefits

As of this week, my Statutory Maternity Pay entitlement has finished, and although I am still employed, I'm not receiving income. As such, I am entitled to claim Income Support.

To claim Income Support, you call a free number and answer questions such as

has your child ever been on  the Local Authority register of blind persons?

and

are you needed in court?

...for half an hour. Then they print out your answers  and send them to you, second class with a list of documentation they need for proof of what you've told them. Then you can either post them your passport and payslips and hope they remember to return them, or you wander on down to the Job Centre and have them make a certified copy for you. You sign the forms, fill in a bit about equal opportunities, and post it back. And then you wait for them to process the paperwork and pay you £71 a week.

Meanwhile, you have to tell Tax Credits that you are no longer receiving income. This is different to no longer being employed. If I had quit my job, my Working Tax Credits would run on at the same amount for another four weeks. But I have not quit my job, I'm just not receiving any income. So I do not get the 4 extra weeks of Working Tax Credit. I do not understand the logic behind this.

The next thing you need to sort out is the Housing/Council Tax Benefit. This is organised by the local council, rather than a government agency. So earlier this week I schlepped on down to the local council office to submit my last payslip, and the letter from my work stating the date my pay finished.

A little background on the Housing Benefit saga is required here: Statutory Maternity Pay is paid weekly on a Saturday, and because some months have more Saturdays than others, for the last few months my payslips have been different each time. So each month I take my payslip to the council and they decide how much Housing Benefit I should have received for the last month. If I should have had more than I did, they put a lump sum into my rent account, and the money I paid last month could have been spent on nappies or shopping. If I should have had less than I did, they send me a coded message disguised as a statement of account, saying they've overpaid X amount, and will recoup this by deducting X amount from my new weekly entitlement. This usually comes through mid-month, by which point the payments they are making are most probably already incorrect. The consequence of this is that I never know how much rent I need to pay from my wages each month. If I gamble, and my Housing Benefit is cut and doesn't make up the shortfall in what I've paid, I get snotty letters threatening eviction. If I pay too much, when the letter comes stating my new entitlement I kick myself.

So here I am now, having submitted my last payslip. Technically, from this week onwards I am entitled to full Housing Benefit and am not liable to pay any more rent. So I need to know what my Housing Benefit entitlement was for last month, to make sure I pay the exact right amount to cover the difference between the rent and the benefit. I sincerely doubt the local council do refunds, if I pay too much. But I've only just submitted my payslip so it will be a couple of weeks before they sort out the figures, and then I need to get hold of the housing officer, who is never available anywhere, and get her to email me a screen print of my account, and figure it all out.

Meanwhile, I can't get full Housing Benefit, even though they have a piece of paper in front of them from my employer telling them when my pay finished. Oh, no. They need a letter from Income Support confirming I am indeed receiving the benefit. And I won't get that until I've sent back the forms and waited for them to process all of that. Cue snotty letters threatening me and my daughter with eviction.

Incidentally, I'd just like to point out here that while Income Support is £71 a week, Jobseekers is £91 and I believe Incapacity Benefit is about the same. If anyone is able to explain to me why JSA should be more than Income Support, when people on JSA are supposed to be looking for a job and getting off benefit, and people on Income Support are entitled to be at home, not looking for a job, raising their child until it is 5 - please do!

Read this post to see how long it took for my Income Support to actually be paid.

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The Work Debate

I'm still trying to decide whether to go back to work, and to make all the mini decisions that go with the larger one.

Last week I finally bit the bullet and made some calls to some government departments. After a morning listening to Vivaldi, I'm fairly sure that all benefits are paid from the phone charges. If they're not, they should be. We'd all be rich.

If I go back to work:

Artist's impression of me at work

• My pay will stop in January, but they will hold my job open until May.
• I will need to find childcare for S. If I use a childminder, this is around £100 a week. Despite several phone calls and messages, I've not been able to get a response from the nursery closest to me as to what their costs would be
• Regarding payment for childcare, there are two options. My employers are part of the childcare vouchers scheme, which is a salary sacrifice set-up. I can opt to have a maximum of £243 per month taken from my pay (before tax and NI) to be paid to my childcare provider. Or I can have my Working Tax Credits help with childcare costs. They will pay "up to" 70% of the cost of my childcare. But if I do the childcare vouchers thing, I can't get Tax Credits for my childcare. Unless my childcare is more than £243 per month, in which case I can apply for Tax Credits to pay "up to" 70% of the difference. It's almost as if they're trying to trick you into being out of pocket.
• My employers are obliged to provide me with a place I can express breast milk for S while at work, but only until she is a year old - so April. After that I suppose everyone thinks she should be fully weaned, and to hell with whether she actually is or not.
• As far as I can tell, I will be earning just enough that I won't qualify for Housing Benefit, or Council Tax Benefit. 
• I would qualify for free prescriptions, eye tests, dentist, etc.
• From a pre-tax pay of around £200 a week I will have to pay £85 rent, £25 council tax, childcare, gas, electricity, food, water... I'm no mathlete, but I can't see how that adds up. Little bit worried. It's difficult to get any sort of prediction as to what my Tax Credits would be.

This is what staying home entails

If I don't go back to work:

• Income Support is £71 a week.
• I would get Child Tax Credits, but (obviously) not Working Tax Credits.
• I would qualify for Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit
• I think I would get some sort of vouchers for fruit and milk.
• I can stay on Income Support until S is 5, if I so wish. The thought of five years of daytime telly is a bit horrid though.

One thing I need to take into consideration is that I have signed up to do this OU course, and want to do a good job with it. I also want to finish as soon as possible, which means taking as many credits at a time as I can - which means having the time to study them!

I spoke to the Income Support people a few times last week, and discovered that between February and May, while I am technically employed but receiving no pay, I can claim benefits as if I were not employed. 

For the moment my plan is to do just that. From February to May I will claim Income Support, and see if I can live reasonably on benefits and not go mental. By that point I will have been off work more than a year so I may well find I really need to go back to work. My bank balance may agree with me.

So what I've basically decided to do is to postpone making a decision for a few more months. Good work, Vicky.

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Single Mothers: The Scourge of Society?

On The Wright Stuff the other morning they were discussing Ian Duncan-Smith’s latest plan, to cap Child Benefit for people who have more than two children. A lady called in saying that “single mothers are the biggest problem, they have as many children as they like, nobody caps their benefit.” The presenter asked her, why pick on single mums when their Child Benefit is not going to be making a big difference to them, and she responded “that’s not the only benefit they get, is it… they get plenty of other benefits, and they can get anything they need as single parents.”

One of the panellists, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, replied, “I hope you’re never reduced to the point where you are a single parent, because then you’ll know… I was one, once, and I find it quite offensive that you’re talking in this voice about people who never asked for it, most of them.”

The woman responded that yes, most of them are asking for it, they go out and deliberately have children and live off the state. Obviously this woman is bonkers and talking from her behind, but she represents what a lot of people think when they see “single mother.”

I was talking to a friend earlier this week, who was telling me about a couple she knew. The boyfriend had a son with an ex partner, who he used to have on weekends, but would usually just drop off at his parents’ house until it was time to take him back to his mother. He no longer sees this child, and doesn’t seem bothered by it. He has a new partner now and they have a daughter together who seems to get about the same amount of attention from her father as her half brother. Both parents seem more interested in going out getting drunk or stoned, and the daughter is palmed off on whichever friends or relatives will have her. And yet, to a large portion of society, a couple with a young child looks better on paper than me, a single mother with a baby.

I am lucky enough to still look fairly young, and when I walk around with S in the pushchair I am sometimes aware that people are giving me that look, that I’m one of those mothers, a pramfaced teenager who’s had a child to avoid work and live off their taxes for the rest of my days. Especially when they see me walking back towards this particular estate, which has always had a bad reputation. They don’t see that my child is clean, well dressed, happy, developing well despite having been born early, and most importantly, safe whilst being cared for by a single mother, in a council flat, receiving benefits. They don’t see that I spend 24 hours a day with her, that she is never left to cry, my money goes on buying things for her or making the house nice so that she has somewhere homely to grow up. They don’t see me spending whole afternoons sitting on my living room floor playing daft games and pulling faces, giving myself a headache from shaking my head so much because I know it makes her laugh. They see the label, they judge, and they carry on with their days.

Why do people have this opinion of single mothers? Is it really the case that single mothers are any less capable, any more feckless, than a couple who are having children and not bothering to raise them properly? Surely the problem lies with the parent, not the situation, or how many parents are there (or not there) doing a good or bad job? Surely if a woman is a single mother, for whatever reason, we should want our taxes to go toward ensuring she is able to afford to bring her child up well, with clothes on its back and food in its belly?

I am a firm believer that all mothers should have the choice as to whether they go back to work. In my lifetime we seem to have gone from women having to leave their job and never go back if they had a child, to women getting 6 months off and then having to go back to their job, whether they want to or not. Can we not have anything between these two states? If, as a single mother, I choose not to go back to work, am I a scourge on society and a sad indictment of the way the world is going, where my married friends who have not gone back to work are wholesome stay-at-home mums raising well-rounded, happy children behind their white picket fence?

Incidentally, the panellist from the show, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, is my new role model and hero. She responded to that caller with “I am a tax payer, and I don’t mind my taxes going to the poor. I mind them going to the rich.”

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