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.

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.

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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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.