Has anyone noticed any changes if their youngest child reaches 12? the law now stands that the adult portion of Income Support is replaced at that stage with Income Based Job Seekers Allowance. It is the same amount of money but implies a requirement to seek work. I know of one or two parents who have suddenly had calls from the Job Centre asking them about their plans and this has come as a bit of surprise, mainly because the rule change was brought in very quietly, in my humble opinion. :shock: Further, these regulations are due to be extended to lone parents whose youngest child is ten or over this autumn.
I think this opens a whole new can of worms :x What about the scarcity of childcare? What about the scarcity of jobs?
Comments please..........
Yes, I was aware of this.
I disagree with it - even though my youngest was 5 when I became a stay at home mum. I only have to think of my son, at 15 hitting a "crisis", and boy, did he need me. I'm not sure it could have been sorted, or even if I'd have found out about it had I not been home with them. I think children really do need a parent there for them - what ever age...
My third child has special needs, which means that there is less pressure in me. I still have back to work interviews, but believe I remain on income support.
In theory, of course, I'll qualify to be a driving instructor before my youngest is 12 and I'll be a tax payer again... Chucking any sick child or children home on a teacher's training day in the back of the car. :D
Plan B is winning the Euro lottery on Friday. 8-)
Hello all, shortly we will be adding a new element to this site, which will be doing research into these new changes in the law. So please please keep this in mind and help us to let the government know how this will affect us.
We are hoping this will be on the site by the end of next month. I will keep you updated.
Thanks Anna that's really interesting and will be helpful. I think it's really important that we get your feelings heard!
Yes, Bubblegum the eventual aim is seven and that was originally planned from October 2010, but then I read there was an interim age of 10 from this autumn.
Will await the info section with great interest :shock:
Louise
I'm on fortnightly payments now. While I think I'm doing ok, the thought terrifies me. Thursday never seemed too far away, however receiving a payment on 9 of June with the next on the 23 - seems like a lifetime.
Hello harissa
Lots of issues in your post and you would be fab to attend a Select Committee to explain it all to the powers that be! Mind you, you might have to take your sharp, pointy thing and sort out a few politicians.
I agree that kids seem to need us just as much as ever as they get older, and that's what sparkling lime has found too. We just can't win! We are either "on benefits" or we have a "latchkey child"! Do you think your son will feel better come Septmebr when he goes to secondary?
In the longer term you may be able to find work in the voluntary sector and it may be worth having a word with your volunteer co-ordinator. In my district, voluntary sector vacancies are not always advertised in the press or at the job centre, they tend to be circulated amongst the voluntary sector by the local Forum. It might be worth asing if there is any such system in your area.
How utterly frustrating to have had such delayed health advice. This employment adviser you speak of must be to do with the new Employment and Support Allowance. it is designed to sort out those who can work from those who can't, and when it was first discussed it was promoted as giving extra help to people, so I HOPE that's true and I look forward to hearing how you get on.
very best wishes
Louise
I put myself through training and have so many bits of paper declaring that I am computer-proficient and have attended X number of "return to work" courses that it has gone beyond a joke. If I am told to go on yet another self esteem raising course I swear I shall scream and possibly run amok around the job centre weilding a very large sharp pointy thing!
I have lots of those bits of paper too : )
And from all the various courses I've been on over the last few years the best thing to come out of them all was being brainwashed! by this woman who was ruining a self confidence course using N.P.L. She rid me of the urge to eat crisps by making me associate them with brussel sprouts : )
I no longer eat crisps.
Now when I look at crisps I am reminded of brussel sprouts and I feel kinda ill, I can't stand sprouts after once when I was about eight my aunt held me from behind against a chair at the dinner table and my mother pulled my head back forced them down my throat, sort of in the same way that you make a cat eat a pill, they did this till I was sick. Now crisps and brussel sprouts when I think about them give me a strange feeling in my throat like I'm about to start gagging..
Just thought I'd share that : )
Oh! and I can also write a C.V.
Blimey Bubblegum sounds like I could do with a session with that trainer :oops:
I have a friend in Madrid who makes a living using the same techniques, N.P.L. it stands for Neural Linguistic Programming only he uses it in his job as a seduction coach to train men in the art of seducing the women of their dreams, sadly he doesn't seem to be out of work.
harissa wrote:
I put myself through training and have so many bits of paper declaring that I am computer-proficient and have attended X number of "return to work" courses that it has gone beyond a joke. If I am told to go on yet another self esteem raising course I swear I shall scream and possibly run amok around the job centre weilding a very large sharp pointy thing!
I have lots of those bits of paper too : )
And from all the various courses I've been on over the last few years the best thing to come out of them all was being brainwashed! by this woman who was ruining a self confidence course using N.P.L. She rid me of the urge to eat crisps by making me associate them with brussel sprouts : )
I no longer eat crisps.
Now when I look at crisps I am reminded of brussel sprouts and I feel kinda ill, I can't stand sprouts after once when I was about eight my aunt held me from behind against a chair at the dinner table and my mother pulled my head back forced them down my throat, sort of in the same way that you make a cat eat a pill, they did this till I was sick. Now crisps and brussel sprouts when I think about them give me a strange feeling in my throat like I'm about to start gagging..
Just thought I'd share that : )
Oh! and I can also write a C.V.
:lol: :lol:
I'm not a crisp lover anyway, but I'm sure I'll think of brussel sprouts from now on!
Harrisa, are you able to do the course part time? That way it should be acceptable.
Bubblegum, I was wondering if your friend in Madrid has managed to seduce the woman of his dreams...
Absolutely. :!:
re jobs it's not just single parents who can't find work. I have a very dear friend of 54. He was made redundant two months ago and signed on etc. He has applied for many jobs, all of which he was qualified for and for most of which he had the relevant experience. He had two rejections, one interview (that they didn't let him know the outcome of) and the rest DID NOT EVEN REPLY. :x yet every fortnight he has to go to the job centre and sit in front of some official and justify himself to them. He asked about re-training (he is willing to do anything) and was told that there was nothing.
Getting back to Income Support changes and single parents, what's the betting the whole thing will disintegrate into a farce, with no jobs to go for?
I think it will at the moment.
My son hasn't been able to get a summer job. He does have a Saturday job, but even they can't always afford to pay him. It's in a car body shop though and the two chaps are hard workers, so a good example for him.
Those on income support though are "easy targets" and I guess its understandable that many won't see why some people do need support - what ever their circumstances.
So long as "they're allright", nothing else matters.
I like to think I was more compassionate than that.
Bubblegum, I was wondering if your friend in Madrid has managed to seduce the woman of his dreams...
He did yes, and then she left him, they were married for a few years.
His last girlfriend seduced him on facebook under a false name to see how faithful he was, can you imagine how paranoid you might become if your boyfriend was a professional seduction coach? anyway, he agreed to meet this woman who he didn't know was in actual fact his girlfriend, and then she dumped him and called him a lot of nasty things in Spanish.
He has in fact got back together with her and now changed his courses that he runs, no more seduction, just all about bettering yourself, being a better person, getting on in life through positive mental processes and wot not.
He is actually a very nice person, just that when ever he would mention that he was a seduction coach it usually meant that any women in the room would instantly dislike him and turn in to raging feminists : )
What would be useful would be a course in getting a job, when none suitable are available - using force if necessary
:)
I know it's probably not the correct thing to say and I'd never in a million years say it at the 'Job Center Plus' but I do in actual fact enjoy not working and right now I don't want a job thank you very much, but still I go through the farce of trudging along to my local 'Job Center Plus' every six months, sitting in a room answering inane questions while putting on an air of enthusiasm and then returning home with my bus fair and a collection of leaflets and A4 printouts.
harissa wrote:
What would be useful would be a course in getting a job, when none suitable are available - using force if necessary
:)
I know it's probably not the correct thing to say and I'd never in a million years say it at the 'Job Center Plus' but I do in actual fact enjoy not working and right now I don't want a job thank you very much, but still I go through the farce of trudging along to my local 'Job Center Plus' every six months, sitting in a room answering inane questions while putting on an air of enthusiasm and then returning home with my bus fair and a collection of leaflets and A4 printouts.
I think it is the correct thing to say. I wish I could be like that. It's the first time I've been at home! Well, home and not working. I worked full time from home for years.
I have to say, since getting into this Scout malarky, I do feel a bit stronger in myself. I'm sort of determined to get the house sorted out next week with the eldest helping me. I think that will help a bit 8-) (yeah right)
I have paint to decorate - but have been kinder on myself with that. When they moved in opposite they had two weeks of painting before they moved in to live. Being homeless, we didn't have that luxury. It's still magnolia! And pretty mucky after four children rushing in and out.
Come the end of September Anthea Turner would be proud of me,and just possibly I will feel more relaxed here. It's been three and a half years and I still don't feel settled - that's not good, is it?!! :lol:
That's awful!! :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: Words fail me!
In all honesty, whether we want to work or not, we are NEEDED at home! I am so busy, even with doing minimal housework.
Also living in a council house can turn into a house-arrest situation at times when they insist that you have to wait home for one of their repair men - from 8am to 5pm, no actual appointment time ever given. Invariably said workmen never turn up, so you end up losing even more days. In the last month I had the novelty of waiting in for the plumber, the gas board (street works), the roofer and the boilerman. All of these eventually turned up but none got their jobs done correctly the 1st time so I ended up having the same jobs redone - 3 times on the gasboard job and even then they caused 2 gas leaks!
Add sick and/or excluded child into the equation - not allowed out in public with them nor is it acceptable to just abandon them home alone! On those occasions even leaving the house is impossible and what employer in their right mind would want such a risky employee?
Job centre adviser suggested hiring a nanny or applying for one of those online ads which promise mega-dollars (yes DOLLARS!!) working from your home computer. I politely told the chap that such ads were scams and, being American, were probably exempt from UK fair practice. What planet are these people on??!
Oh my gosh!!! Unbelievable! Your office is so unhelpful!
Flipin heck, if the mega-dollars site was that good, wouldn't they be doing it themselves?
Harissa, I think half our problem is that we're used to working, want to work and find it hard to accept we're in a situation that means we can't.
I have to say that the staff at the Job Centre are brilliant with me. I worked with them for three years though after I was transferred there, so I'm sure that helps a lot! I wanted to apply for a job in the local DVLA office, and they looked at every avenue to see if they could help with childcare issues. They couldn't. I was in tears (this goes back about 18 months when I was still crying easily 8-) ) and I felt they really did see how frustrating it was for me.
I think the self-employed route is the only way I can get around this - the driving school thing, once my leg starts to behave and I can actually get in and out of a car on either side and stand up... Book-keeping no longer pays as there are so many computer packages that does it all nowadays. That is something I had looked into.
I wanted to add that thanks for saying your managing with the fortnightly payments. I've been panicing, but your post has reassured me.
Loads of hugs. I do hope that you're managing to enjoy the good weather. Nice for a picnic here today.
I'd be lost without internet banking.
Its how I realised they'd stopped my IS before Christmas without informing me, or without clarifying details.
I probably check it three times a day!!
I like Internet Banking too and am as sceptical as you, harissa, so I like to see it in black and white!
Credit Unions are a fab idea and I hope their increased popularity will put paid to the doorstep loan sharks :x
I was under the impression that this age (12) was being lowered to 7 in two or three years, at least that's what I was told in my last 'why haven't you got a job yet' interview with my 'lone parent advisor' at the 'Job Centre Plus'
:)