The Trussell Trust

As previous visitors to the blog may know, I had a bit of trouble when claiming Income Support a while back.

During the time I was waiting for my claim to go through, the co-ordinator of my local Home Start, Becky, just happened to call to chat about something else. She asked how we were getting on, and I mentioned the situation I was in regarding money. I commented I thought it was ridiculous that people with a child to feed were expected to wait so long before receiving any money.

Becky asked me if I'd like her to get the Trussell Trust to bring me some food, and I said no, thanks; that's for people who really need it. I had been sent some Healthy Start vouchers, and so could buy some fresh fruit and veggies; I was sure we'd be fine. Becky pointed out though, that you can't really live just on fruit and vegetables, and need basic staples to go with them. So that evening a nice man brought me some food. And not just food; there were nappies, wipes, and even some chocolate! There was also a printed sheet with suggested meal options to help make sure the food in the box was used to its best potential. Trussell Trust food boxes are meant to last 3 days, but mine lasted me about a week.

The Trussell Trust released their annual figures this week; some of you may have noticed I was briefly featured on BBC Breakfast News about it. In the last 12 months, the number of families helped by the Trussell Trust has almost trebled: 346,992 is the final figure for the number of families who received at least 3 day's supply of food from them. This is an increase of 170% on last year.

You know how I love my charts, so here's a nice colourful one to illustrate the point:

Chris Mould is the Executive Chairman of the Trussell Trust:

The sheer volume of people who are turning to foodbanks because they can't afford food is  a wake-up call to the nation that we cannot ignore the hunger on our doorstep. Politicians across the political spectrum urgently need to recognise the real extent of UK food poverty and create fresh policies that better address its underlying causes. This is more important than ever as the impact of the biggest reforms to the welfare state since it began start to take effect. Since April 1st we have already seen increasing numbers of people in crisis being sent to foodbanks with nowhere else to go.

Lasy year the Trussell Trust estimated that our foodbanks would help 250,000 people in 2012-13; we've helped 100,000 more than that. 2012-13 was much tougher for people than many anticipated. Incomes are being squeezed to breaking point. We're seeing people from all kinds of backgrounds turning to foodbanks: working people coming in on their lunch breaks, mums who are going hungry to feed their children, people whose benefits have been delayed and people who are struggling to find enough work. It's shocking that people are going hungry in 21st century Britain. 

He's right; it is shocking. I expect a few people were shocked to see that I'd had to use a foodbank. When the service was first offered to me my initial response was "oh no, that's for people who really need it; I'm not one of those people." but it turned out, actually I was one of those people. In this day and age we all have the potential to be one of those people. And realistically, if we're lucky enough to not be one of those people, perhaps we should be one of the people donating to the foodbanks in order to keep them going. You never know when you might need their help.

Here are some fun facts about the Trussell Trust:

• They are Christian organisation that provides three days' non-perishable food to people in need.
• Over 90% of the food given out is donated by the public.
• The Trussell Trust currently have 345 foodbanks across the UK. They are opening 3 new foodbanks each week, and estimate there would need to be 750-1000 in order to help people in crisis across the UK. Don't you think that's a bit disgusting, in Britain, in this day and age?
• The Trussell Trust does not receive any government funding.

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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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Ten Ways to Save Money

1. Do you use liquid soap? I don’t know about you, but every time I wash my hands with liquid soap, half of what I’ve pumped out of the bottle goes down the drain. Next time you buy a new bottle, pour half of it into the old (empty) bottle, and top both up with water. It still works as soap, it still smells nice, it’s exactly the same – but there’s twice as much soap. You can do the same with washing up liquid, and probably shower gel, bubble bath too.
2. Dilute your fabric softener with white (distilled) vinegar. It works just as well, and the vinegar is apparently very good for your machine. Never use fabric softener for washing nappies, towels, or basically anything that needs to be absorbent; just use vinegar on its own. And no, your clothes won’t come out stinking of a fish and chip shop.
3. Don’t throw away flat cola; put it down the loo instead. Left overnight, it can clean your toilet bowl up nicely.
4. This one has a bit of an initial outlay, but I’ve found it pretty handy in the long term. Stock up on non-perishables when they are on 3 for 2 or BOGOF offers in the supermarkets, and only re-stock when they are on offer again. Most of the supermarkets rotate their offers between brands, so you can get 5 cans of Heinz soups for a reduced price one week, 5 of Campbell’s the following week, and so on. If you have the space, you can do this with washing powder, nappies, toilet roll… basically anything. When I find something that I use regularly is on offer, I buy as many as I can afford and stash them in the cupboard. When you first start doing this, you can just add a couple of extra things to your shopping basket each week/month. Longer term, because you don’t need to buy toilet roll or nappies or whatever this week (because they’re stockpiled at home) you can afford to take advantage of another offer!
5. Sign up for every single reward card you can get your hands on! It can be a pain to carry them all around with you and fumble for them at the till, but if you use them religiously every time you shop, and make use of the coupons etc they send you, you can save a lot of money. My favourite ones to use are Boots (best value, and tons of double points events), Tesco (they’ve started doing promotions where you can cash in your vouchers for double the usual amount), Nectar (you can collect them bloody anywhere) and Holland & Barrett (because I use a lot of supplements, and shop in there any way, and once a quarter they send me a code to use at the till for money off my purchases – no need to worry about losing coupons!) Also, sign up for baby clubs, family clubs, wine clubs etc with these shops. Boots give 10 points per pound spent on baby products, and if you join their contact lens scheme you get money off all Boots products. N.B. sign up for reward cards, but not store cards; these are the work of the devil, with horribly high interest rates.
6. If there’s a brand you particularly like, “like” them on Facebook, and visit their website whenever you think of it. In the last couple of months I’ve had coupons for free baby fromage frais, free baby food pouches, money off Tropicana and Soreen, a free tooth brush, free tea bags, free coffee…
7. Whenever you have a product that breaks, doesn’t taste right, leaks or generally doesn’t perform as you expected, email the company and complain! British people are terribly polite and don’t like to cause a fuss, but at the end of the day, you spent your money on that, and it turned out to be a bit pants. The companies want to keep you happy, and will usually send you vouchers or something to compensate for your inconvenience. When I bought a certain brand of nappies for S and they leaked badly I emailed them and they sent me vouchers that could be used across their whole range of brands – so I used them to buy some toilet roll for the stock pile cupboard!
8. Become a great big geek! Anyone who knows me well, will know I love a good spreadsheet. I keep a weekly track of how much gas and electricity I use, and then compete with myself to see if I can get the amount I’ve spent down a little each week. I have a prepay meter for both, so each time I top up I make a note of how much credit is left on the meter from last week. I also keep a “cash flow” spreadsheet to keep a track on my bank account and make sure I don’t go overdrawn. I love it. And I feel like I’ve just admitted something terribly embarrassing!
9. Sign up for everything! Most companies want to send you weekly/monthly/quarterly emails with random gumpf about their brand; they’re mostly rubbish, but sometimes they will also send you vouchers, coupons, discount codes and even chances to test new products (free samples!). Avoid having your email account filled with spam by setting up a new account especially for this sort of thing, and just check it every now and then to see what’s come in.
10. This one is really boring. Open your bills and statements, and read them. Check whether you are going over your minutes or texts on your mobile, or perhaps you’re not even using close to your allowance and could stand to cut your contract. Check there’s not random amounts of money disappearing from your bank or credit card account each month. If you’ve made calls from the landline, would it have been cheaper to call from your mobile, and vice versa? 0845 numbers are expensive to call from your mobile, and usually cheaper from the landline, and some companies have a system where you can pay a small fee for a month and get calls to these sorts of numbers significantly cheaper – worth knowing about if you get that sinking feeling you’re going to be on the phone sorting out something complicated and time-consuming!

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18th May 2012 (5 weeks, 4 days)

This was written in my diary shortly after S's father had left. At the time he was still visiting occasionally. I was fairly miserable and unsure of what I was doing, and S was still very small and looked really quite breakable.

S sleeps in my bed now. At first, she would go to bed in her Moses basket, and each time I fed her I would put her back in the basket. And then, I just gave up on trying to get her to go back into the basket, and after the first feed she sleeps next to me in my bed. She seems to go back to sleep a lot more easily, and wake less, if she is beside me. Sometimes she reaches out and pokes at me in the night with her tiny little fists.

We wake around 7 most mornings, and S sits in her bouncy chair in the bathroom door way while I have a bath. If I am lucky, I have time to dry myself, apply moisturiser and get dressed before she gets fed up and starts crying. Occasionally I even have time to dry my hair. Once I am dressed I bring S downstairs in the bouncy chair with her clean clothes. I tend to remove her clothes before feeding her the daily dose of vitamins they recommend for all premature babies, as the iron can stain. Then we get her dressed, and I will usually feed her before we venture out of the house.

Today once we were both dressed and ready, we went to a friend’s house. She has three children of her own and is much more confident with babies than I am. She is also one of the best friends I have ever had, giving me her daughter’s old baby clothes and toys, tidying the house when she visits, offering advice, and most importantly telling me I’m not mad and I’m doing the right thing, whatever it is (unless I’m doing the wrong thing; then she’ll tell me that instead – the mark of a true friend).

S’s father visited briefly today too. I didn’t want him here; it makes me nervous and uncomfortable to be around him. I feel like he is running an appraising eye over my entire life, judging me and looking for the slightest sign that I may have done something wrong, something that may disadvantage his offspring in some way. He treats her like a possession. He brought us food and nappies, which I didn’t ask for or need, but one should never look a gift horse in the mouth, so I said thank you and crammed my freezer with meat I don’t have time to cook, and microwave meals full of salt and flavourings. He left £15 on the side when he went.

After he had left, C came round with her daughter. I went to school with C, but hadn’t seen her since we were about 12. Now she has a 7 year old daughter and runs her own business, she seems so much more grown up than I. She and the friend I saw earlier both make me feel like this motherhood lark is a doddle, and I’m perfectly capable of doing it on my own, with or without £15 left on the side by the ex.

Apparently, I Live on a Rough Estate.

Panorama on Tuesday evening was entitled “Trouble on the Estate,” about life on one of the UK’s poorest estates. It got me thinking about housing estates and the reputations they end up with.

I am lucky enough to live in an area where there aren’t really many truly rough parts. The estate I live on has a bad reputation locally, and a friend who moved here from London in the 1980s told me it was the roughest place he’d ever been. Before I moved here the only time I’d set foot on the estate was 15 years ago, on my way somewhere with a friend who knew where they were going. It was raining, and kids were setting off fireworks in the street. Another friend has told me of the time she took her Cycling Proficiency on the roads around here, and someone chased her with bolt cutters, trying to cut the wheels off her bike.

Since then, there have been changes: the large blocks of flats were demolished and replaced with houses and lower blocks (maximum 4 stories as far as I know). There have been various community projects run by local churches. There is an estate office and the bloke in charge assures me that he wants to know if I ever have cause to call the police, or if there is an issue with noise or kids congregating in the car park below my flat. Also a lot of people who move away from this estate end up wanting to move back. People who don’t live here seem a bit shocked by that but I can see why.

When I was told there was a maisonette for me here, I was a little apprehensive; the place has a reputation, and I was to be a young woman living alone with a child. When I moved in, S’s father stuck a curtain over my kitchen window and told me not to take it down until I’d bought nets; if anyone saw the contents of my kitchen they were sure to break in and steal it. Apparently he thought cans of food were at a high premium. To be honest, I was happy to be living here; it’s close to the city centre and didn’t seem so bad from what I’d seen since picking up the keys. The first night I slept here though, I was walking home in the dark that evening and was followed up the road by a young man. I was petrified… until I realised the road I take to my flat is the same road every inhabitant of this estate uses to get to and from town. The young man was just going home. Or to his dealer’s house. Who knows?

Before living here I lived in a street that’s apparently notorious for drugs. I had no idea when I moved in, and I have to say it didn’t particularly bother me. There were a lot of ambulances about on the weekend, and sometimes the police were around, but whatever people were doing, they were doing it quietly – there were no needles lying around or anything. Quite often in the mornings you’d see the addicts heading off to Boots to get their methadone. One of the local residents took offence to the fact the local council seemed to be housing drunks and addicts in his line of sight and wrote copious letters to the local paper, the council and our MP about it. It did seem there was a high concentration of people with problems, but people have to be housed somewhere, don’t they – and I didn’t have any trouble, the entire 3 years I lived there.

There are a lot of drugs around here. One of my neighbours pointed out to me 3 or 4 doors visible from my flat whose inhabitants apparently deal. I’ve no idea what they deal; I’ve never enquired because I don’t particularly care. I’m guessing it’s probably just cannabis. One young school lad heard I was living here and mentioned the cannabis; I said I’d no idea, and he asked, “can’t you smell it as soon as you get onto the estate?!” Actually, yes, sometimes you can. But it’s not like there’s a shop front selling heroin and dirty needles to the disaffected youth; whatever is done, I’ve not seen it or evidence of it.

The majority of households around here, certainly around where I live, are families with children. Rather irritatingly, one young mum pointed out to me the other day that every single flat on my (first floor) balcony has a mother with a young child and a push chair to bump up and down the stairs if she wants to go out. Quite why they housed us all on the first floor is beyond me, but I suppose they have to put people wherever there is a space. When I moved in I (naively) asked the estate officer if I could have one of the sheds in the car park. He told me that most of them are affected by a leaky roof the council can’t afford to fix, and any way they’re meant for the block that runs adjacent to my block. The block I live in used to have drying rooms and storage space in large areas off the stair wells – but some kids got in and set fire to them, so now they’re boarded up and people lug their prams and bicycles up and down the stairs, and dry their clothes on flimsy lines attached to the balconies.

The family next door to me have four children in a three-bedroom maisonette. They’re waiting to be housed, but they’re fairly low on the council’s list of priorities, so the parents have their two-year-old in their bedroom with them. This summer was a nightmare for them; having no garden and not wanting to let their kids run around alone, they either had to drag all four children out in the rain together to the park or wherever, or stay in and get cabin fever. There are a lot of kids round here; none of them seem to be hooligan asbo teens though; any mischief they do get up to seems to be from boredom. A lot of the younger blokes tend to drink through the day because they don’t seem to have anything else to do.

One thing that does get to me around here is the noise. Because of the way the buildings run at right-angles to each other, and my position close to the stair well for both buildings, the noise tends to carry somewhat. Most of the time it’s just noise from people coming and going; they’re not deliberately being inconsiderate of those of us who go to bed early. Every now and then though, there seems to be a party on the stair well or the balcony that’s the same level as my bedroom, and the noise is as if they’re standing in the corner of my bedroom. That being said, I did discover this morning that when I close my bedroom window you can still see daylight through the top of it, so perhaps that would account for some of the noise level.

For all the complaining about noise and drugs and whatever else one wants to throw at an estate that’s been labelled rough though, there is a real sense of community. People know each other and help each other out. My neighbours have offered to babysit a million times and have said several times if I ever need anything I’ve only to ask. I’ve a friend living in the adjacent block that sends me a full roast dinner every Sunday, and often sends her kids up with other things such as pot plants and books. My neighbours all know each other by name and look out for each other. And at least once a week, someone will stop and carry my push chair up or down the stairs for me. They have also stopped and helped visiting friends with push chairs. Most touching of all, when I was having unpleasant issues with S’s father, my friend downstairs told me, “if he comes to your door just shout my name and someone from my house will come up and help.” It’s doubtful things would ever escalate to a doorstep altercation, but it’s good to know that if they did, there would be help. That friend’s sons also seem to keep an eye on my front door, and if they see a man they don’t know heading for it, they tell him I’m not in!

Nobody around here is well-off; I would imagine a lot of my neighbours are in a similar position to me financially. But they look after each other in a way you don’t find in more affluent areas. And knowing that people will look out for you if you need them to is worth a lot more than being able to afford a nice new telly.

The Benefits of Being on Benefits...

One thing I’ve had to learn about fairly quickly over the last few months is benefits. I’ve never had to know about them before, as I was never entitled to any when I was lucky enough to work full time at a reasonably well-paid job. I am bad with money at the best of times, and now that I have S I keep a close eye on my finances, keeping a spreadsheet to show when my regular outgoings are due, what money is expected in, and what my current bank balance is. I am petrified that one of these days I will run out of money and not be able to feed my child.

When I got pregnant, I was suddenly beset with panic about how I would afford things, where I would live, how I would manage to move there. I was living in a shared house, and although I had always assumed I would move in with S’s father, that turned out not to be a practical idea fairly early on, and so I filled in forms to be on the local council’s housing list.

I will spare you the details of the process, but I received a phone call when I was 32 weeks pregnant: I had been “matched” to a maisonette locally. If I wanted to take it, I had to pay my first week’s rent and collect the keys the following week. When I explained to them that I had to give a month’s notice where I was, and had little spare cash floating around, I was told I had to sign the contract next week, or because of the council’s empty homes policy, the maisonette would be given to somebody else. They suggested I apply for housing benefit to pay my rent in the new place. When I called the housing benefit people, they looked into it briefly before informing me that because I was a single person earning above X amount, I was not entitled to housing benefit until the baby was born. I asked if there was any sort of help available for moving, or acquiring furniture or white goods once I’d moved; they asked if I was on any benefits already. When I said no, they said that there was probably no help available in that case.

Much as I dislike him these days, I could not have moved house without S’s father. He paid for removals, and got me several items of furniture for the flat, including a cooker and a microwave. My brother managed to get me a fridge and a washing machine and several friends and family members donated various items. I moved into the flat when I was 33 weeks pregnant, with dodgy hips and no energy. Once the removal men had left, though, it was up to me to put my bed together, move the furniture from where it had been dumped in the centre of various rooms (wardrobe in the living room), and generally attempt to make it look like home. When I first moved everything in here, paying that first lot of rent had cleared me out financially, and I had no money for gas or electricity, much less cleaning supplies. I spent my first week and a half as a council tenant living at S’s father’s house, catching the bus to the flat every day to try and do some unpacking. Because I was technically still employed (and on maternity leave), there was no financial help to be had. I had not been in any position to save up for this before it happened, as I’m sure a lot of single pregnant women are not. If S’s father had not paid for the removal men, I could not have moved. There was nowhere else I could have got that money from, in order to pay them. And how else would a 33-week-pregnant woman move all her belongings across town?

I gave birth prematurely, at 35 weeks, and then spent 2 weeks in hospital. When I came out, I began the hilarity that is applying for benefits. Various people had told me, “Oh, once you’re eligible for one all the others kick in as well…” What they didn’t tell me was the fun and games that would ensue. I had made applications for Housing Benefit and Tax Credits before S was born, knowing that I wouldn’t be entitled to anything, but that also if I had an open claim it would be more straight-forward to just update my circumstances once the baby was born. Tax Credits was simple; I called them and told them I’d had a baby and they sent me a backdated payment of Child Tax Credit within a couple of weeks. 

For Working Tax Credits it’s a little more complicated: normally they go by how much money you earned last tax year. Last tax year I was in a different, better-paying job, and earned a lot more money, so that precluded me from any entitlement. This year, I had only had full pay for one month before maternity pay kicked in, and I expected to earn a great deal less. They wanted to know how much less. Exactly how much I expected to earn during this tax year. I had to produce a calculation for them. And then there was a lengthy discussion about the “first hundred quid each week” which confused matters further. They started my payments, but they decreased in the middle of July, and then at the end of July, because of some weird confusion over my earnings, they stopped and I had to make a panicked phone call to get them reinstated.

The Housing and Council Tax Benefit is an ongoing farce. I took them a wad of documents, including payslips, S’s birth certificate, bank statements and a letter from my work confirming my maternity pay. They updated their records and started paying me a laughably small amount each week. Each month, as my pay decreased, I was to submit my payslip and wait for them to back-date my recalculated entitlement. Meanwhile, the people in charge of rent payments needed my account to always be up to date. I ended up paying my full rent each week, and then calling to request an updated statement at the end of the month to see how much benefit had been paid. The letters the benefit people send to confirm such things are written in some sort of code. I am convinced they make them deliberately hard to understand, so that if they make a mistake you will probably never notice. They also somehow take two to three weeks to arrive, so it was quicker and easier to just ask for a statement of my rent account. 

A month or so ago, I received a letter informing me that they had miscalculated my entitlement to Housing Benefit, that actually I had no entitlement, and they would be invoicing me for the amount they’d already paid. I called to ask what had changed, and to remind them that although I may not be entitled to benefit at the moment, I probably would be when my next payslip arrived. I was told they had closed my case because I was not entitled, and I would have to make a new claim, which could not be backdated – so I would lose out on any benefit for that month. I had to write a letter begging them to please reopen the original case, so that my most recent payslip could be taken into account. Eventually I received a letter stating I was entitled to about a third of my rent each week. And then another letter, stating that they had adjusted the amount I owed them from their previous miscalculation, by the grand total of 60p. When I called and spoke to them, they told me not to worry about the invoice they had sent for the previous overpayment; they were taking it gradually out of my new entitlement. This meant I had (yet again) no clue as to how much rent or council tax I should be paying each week. I now call up to get a statement of my rent account every other week, to ensure I am not in arrears. This has made it impossible to budget, since I never have any idea how much rent I will need to pay each week. The situation is ongoing; when I get my payslip at the end of this month, and every month until January, I have to take it in for them to send off. 

The act of submitting my payslip is, in itself, something of a nightmare. If you can get to the office when it opens at 8:30am, you may well be in and out within the hour. Quite often though, they take your name and have you wait in a waiting area with several other disgruntled people, all waiting to speak to people in different sections of the office, so you’ve no idea how many people are ahead of you. The last time I went in there, I lost an hour and a half, and my daughter’s remaining goodwill for the day.

Child Benefit is supposed to be fairly straight-forward: they give you the form in the hospital, you fill it in and send it off with your child’s birth certificate, and they plonk the grand total of £20 in your bank account each week. I am lucky, in that it really was this straightforward for me, and I know that however skint I end up over the weekend, I will have £20 on Monday morning if I'm desperate for food or nappies. I have a friend, though, whose baby is now 18 weeks, and she has still had no Child Benefit. Apparently there has been a mix-up somewhere because, although being British, and born in a British hospital, she was not actually born in the UK. And it’s taken them 18 weeks to understand that, and sort it out. Meanwhile, she just has to make do without her Child Benefit. They will backdate it, and when it is eventually paid she will have a nice little lump sum paid – but that doesn’t stop it being hugely inconvenient when she needs to buy nappies or formula at the moment.

The other financial gripe in my life is maintenance from S’s father. When he had been gone a month and a half, he texted me to say that the most the CSA could make him pay me was £135 a month, so he would pay me that directly in return for regular contact with S. I told him that paying maintenance was nothing to do with contact; you are responsible for a child and therefore obliged to pay maintenance. That first month, he paid the money straight into my bank account. By this time, though, things between us were less than pleasant, and my health visitor urged me to go through the CSA so that I did not have to have any further contact with him. I had already warned him a month previously that if he did not contact me with a concrete plan for maintenance I would contact the CSA as he had already left it long enough. When he didn’t come back with much other than the usual tirade, I filled out the form and sent it off. The following month, when he did not pay any money into my account, I contacted him to ask if he intended to pay it. His response went along the lines of, the CSA called me last week, they are sorting it out and I won’t have to pay them anything until next month so you will just have to wait, it’s your own fault for contacting them. I responded, if you’re happy to see us struggle for money until then, that’s fine. The following day he put some money into my account. It was less than he had agreed to pay before, but I wasn’t complaining. Since then, the CSA have been less than helpful, and I’m fairly sure his employers (being his friends, and sympathetic to his cause) have dragged their heels with sending money. The payment that covered July did not arrive with me until last week, and the August payment has yet to surface. It’s hard to budget when you know you’re due a payment on a monthly basis, but have no idea when in that month it’s likely to turn up. It’s easier to just not include it in the budget – but then it becomes difficult to fit all my outgoings onto the list without my account going into the red, something I cannot afford, what with the bank charges that go with such an occurrence.

Does every single mother have this problem? From the times I have complained about the CSA on Facebook, I’m inclined to believe that in most cases, they do. From the number of people I’ve met grumbling their story at the receptionist in the council offices, most people claiming Housing Benefit do as well. On the news this morning I heard that the way Council Tax Benefit is paid is changing from a national scheme to a local one, meaning the local authority will have “up to three and a half million pounds” less to spend on it, from next April, and will have to make “some tough decisions” as to who will receive Benefit. My Council Tax is currently around £30 a week; if I turn out to be one of their tough decisions, it will make a big difference to my life.

Next year, the government intends to introduce Universal Credit, a single monthly payment which will replace most benefits, including Housing Benefit, Tax Credits, and Income Support (which I will be on if I decide not to go back to work). This fills me with dread purely because a month is a long time to budget for when the goalposts change as often as they have thus far. At least with weekly budgeting, if something is missed or an unexpected outlay of cash occurs, I know I will get my Tax Credits next week, so will not starve. Also, with the number of mistakes, miscalculations and non-payments I’ve already experienced in my brief encounter with benefits, I don’t hold out much hope of Universal Credit being rolled out without a lot of low income families being made a lot worse off, at least in the short term while they iron out the teething problems that don’t affect the pockets of the people doing the ironing out. Martin Lewis (he of Money Saving Expert fame) was on the Daily Politics today arguing the toss with Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi and made the valid point that many families relying on these benefits budget on a weekly basis, and don’t have the ability to budget on a monthly basis. That might sound as if he’s patronising people on benefits, but personally I am terrified of having to budget monthly, and I think Universal Credit is a bad idea for that very reason.

I know the idea of me complaining about the handouts I get from your taxes might make you want to punch me, but really they are my taxes as well. I have paid tax since I was 18, and am still paying it now – being, as I am, still employed and on maternity leave. I get angry about people playing the system, being dishonest and spending my taxes on flat screen TVs and foreign holidays, but as I have previously mentioned on this blog, I believe the taxes I have paid thus far (and intend to in future, whether I go back to my current employer or get another job further down the line), coupled with the fact I am a single mother of a small baby, entitle me to those "handouts". I never intended to be a single mother; when I got pregnant I believed I would move in with S’s father and live in Brady Bunch bliss with him and his children. The fact that didn’t happen was probably foreseeable, and I was probably stupid to ever believe it would; but I didn’t set out to get pregnant, get a council flat and sponge off society for the rest of my days, and do not feel I should be treated as such.

On The Absence of a Man

One of the main issues I have with being on my own with S is that she only has me to look after her.

For the most part, that is a definite plus in our lives: we have half the bed each (well, to be fair I think she takes up more than half a lot of the time), we don’t have to share each other’s time with anyone else, and we’ve developed a very strong bond.

My friend says I have First Baby Syndrome: I use the sling more often than the push chair; I carry S everywhere with me; I rarely leave her with anyone. In fact, I’ve probably left her less than a dozen times, each for no more than an hour. Depending on who you speak to, this is either a really good thing and means we’ll have a firm bond that will last S long into adulthood, or it’s really quite bad and S will be some weird mummy’s girl forever tied to my apron strings. 

When faced with the choice between Gina Ford and Dr Sears’ Attachment Parenting, I’ll opt for Sears every time. Being on my own means I’m probably making life very hard for myself by going down this route. S is never left to cry if I can help it, and I get quite irate if someone I leave her with lets her sit and cry. She is breastfed on demand, and I have no interest in trying to find ways of tricking her into sleeping through the night before she is ready. As a health visitor pointed out to me not so long ago, if you decide you’re going to exclusively breastfeed, on demand, for the first six months, you kind of just have to accept that your life is not your own for that time. There are several people with whom I would happily leave S for extended periods of time, but at the moment there is no point exploring that avenue, because I need to be nearby to feed her every few hours; more when it is hot out, or she is teething or feeling otherwise unwell. I am perfectly happy with this. If S turns out a weirdo because of it, well then all the Gina Ford subscribers can have their perfectly-trained toddlers pelt me with copies of her books.

The only problem comes at times when it would be useful to have a second pair of hands. For example, if I’ve not had my dinner before S goes to bed (most nights), and she’s having trouble settling to sleep (every night at the moment), it can get fairly frustrating to spend an hour or more trying to get her to sleep when my stomach is growling and I’m tired and fed up. She is teething at the moment, and has had some fairly miserable, grizzly days when I’ve had no choice but to feed her Calpol and Nurofen every couple of hours and spend large portions of time with her sitting on my lap, chewing my hand through a muslin and crying whenever I try to put her down and sneak off to the toilet. I actually ended up putting a Bumbo chair in the bathroom in the end, so that I could just take her to the toilet with me. (incidentally, I hear that’s a good thing for helping them to toilet train early, but still, I’d rather pee in peace sometimes, ya know?) 

Also there are times when I could do with just popping to the shop to get some milk, or to post a letter, but I don’t bother going because it is too much bother to get S into the sling, and she usually falls asleep in it any way, which makes for trouble at bed time, which is something I have to then deal with on my own. 

Taking S out in the pushchair is also an ordeal, being as we are, on the first floor. It would be handy to have someone to help carry the pushchair up and down the stairs. Someone to carry the shopping, someone to help with the housework, someone to play with S when I want to spend more than 5 minutes in the bath in the morning, someone to answer the door when I am breastfeeding (that’s a sure-fire way to get rid of unwanted callers, let me tell you), someone to whom I can say, “wow, did you see what she just did, that was awesome!” 

I have been sitting here racking my brains to think of other examples of when it would be useful to have a partner, and can come up with none. Obviously it would be nice for me to have some adult company and hugs and kisses and suchlike. But realistically, when S is awake my attention is on her. History attests to the fact that I have, at best, shoddy taste in men. I would not consider having any potential new beau around while S is awake. My evenings are fairly full, what with housework, decorating, two Open University modules, a blog, and an unhealthy addiction to several TV series via Netflix. If I were to acquire myself a young man, realistically they could only spend one or two evenings a week (from 8 til 10pm at most) here. And since S shares my bed, there is no space for a man in it.

Obviously, S doesn’t know any different, so it’s not like she feels that she’s missing out. When her father first cleared off, I had major concerns about her missing out on having a daddy and feeling like she only had half a family. But actually, when you look around you these days, it’s not like when I was a kid and everyone lived at home with mummy, daddy, a dog, one or two siblings and a white picket fence. In fact, by the time I was a teenager probably a lot of my peers’ parents had divorced. The modern family is no longer a heterosexual, married couple with 2.4 children; in fact, one of those is quite rare these days. Many families are made up of children from past relationships, step-siblings, half-siblings, extended family either living together or spending a lot of time together, and neighbours or friends who are no relation at all spending more time with the child than one or both parents. The options I was faced with when S and I came home from hospital meant that either I maintained a strong bond and a good routine with her, or she spent time with her father. There was no middle ground to be had. Since then other details have come to light which mean that, even if he were to attempt to locate that middle ground, I would be having none of it.

From a financial point of view, I am probably better off being on my own with S. I know a lot of women who have had to go back to work after having a baby a lot sooner than they would have liked; many perhaps would have liked to stop work altogether and focus on their child, but they cannot afford to do so. For me, being a single mother, I will be skint whether I go to work and pay for childcare, or stay home and live off benefits for a couple of years until S is in pre-school. In that way, I probably have more of a choice than most women. 

I have no qualms about living off the state for a few years, until S is in school. I have paid my taxes all my life specifically for this reason, and while I am actively raising my child I feel I am still contributing to society by not producing a delinquent for the system to deal with. I am also studying for a degree, and looking at the possibility of taking on freelance work if I decide not to go back to my job. I may still opt to go back to my job, and if that happens I will be spending a lot of time making sure wherever she goes while I am at work is offering her a better environment than staying at home with me. It has to be worth her while for me to consider leaving her.

It looks like it’s taken me less than 1500 words to convince myself that S and I are fine on our own, and do not need a man about the house, her father or otherwise.