Should really look at only offering benefits up to 2 children , any more and you have to provide
http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1206846.0.its_not_fair.php
It's not fair!
A 26-year-old mother with five children - all under the age of five - has complained that the system through which she receives £501-a-week in state benefits is unfair.
Anna Taylor, from Trehane Road, Camborne, has not worked for five years, after being diagnosed with depression when she gave birth to her first child, Molly. She has also suffered from arthritis since the age of three.
Her 48-year-old husband, Alan - who she began an affair with nine months after getting married to her first husband - is also unemployed, after leaving work three years ago to look after her when she suffered post-natal depression.
Between them they receive £501 in benefits: £179 child tax credit, £64 child benefit, £90 job seeker's allowance, £126 housing benefit, £24 discretionary housing payment and £18 council tax. In addition, they receive free school meals and free milk - of which the family consumes around eight pints every day.
Mrs Taylor has now been told that, as she is receiving job seeker's allowance, she must look for work.
However, she claims that by doing so she would be financially disadvantaged and is adamant that she has "no intention" of ever going back to work while this is the case. Mrs Taylor told the Packet: "It's just crazy - the world's gone mad. What's the point of going to slave your guts out for 40 hours and what do you get for it? Absolutely nothing."
She claims that if she worked 40 hours a week on a minimum wage she would receive £530 in benefits, but would then have to pay out £167 a week on rent, council tax and meals - leaving her £138 worse off than if she was not working. Even if she worked for 16 hours a week, she would receive £501 a week in benefits, but have to pay out £89 of that - leaving her £89 worse off.
"It just feels you're being victimised for wanting to go back to work. They're trying to force you in to work to be worse off than your are now," she added.
Mrs Taylor said that having five children under the age of five created additional problems. The two eldest children, five-year-old Molly and four-year-old Thomas, attend St Meriadoc Primary School in Camborne and three-year-old Harry attends a Camborne nursery, but the two youngest children, Charlie and Amber, are still at home.
If both her and her husband worked, it would mean they would have to pay for childcare - creating further financial strain.
"My kids are the most important thing in my life. Why should I make my children suffer? They're the ones that will suffer, at the end of the day," she said.
Mrs Taylor said that both she and her husband would like to go back to work - "because we have got five children it would nice to get a bit of individuality" - but that the current system was preventing her from doing so.
She has written to Tony Blair with her views and is also due to see Julia Goldsworthy, MP for Falmouth and Camborne, early next month.
Mrs Taylor and her husband met while working at a nursing home in Exmouth - he as a nurse and she as a care assistant. Mr Taylor had been married for 22 years and had three children, while she had married her husband just nine months previously, but they soon began a passionate affair and left their partners to move in together. They have now been together for seven years and married for three of them.
They moved from Exmouth to Burnley in Lancashire, then Okehampton in Devon and finally to Camborne, after being encouraged by friends who live in Truro.
Miss Goldsworthy described the current system, where it was seen to be safer and more economical to stay at home than go out to work, as "completely wrong."
She told the Packet yesterday: "We have to help create a system where we can support the most vulnerable, but where they're in a position where they want to go in to work for all the right reasons - financial and self-worth. It is completely wrong that these kind of perverse incentives are in place at the moment. How can we expect to encourage more people to go in to work when all the incentives mean it's better for them not to."
http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/mostpopular.var.1206846.0.its_not_fair.php
It's not fair!
A 26-year-old mother with five children - all under the age of five - has complained that the system through which she receives £501-a-week in state benefits is unfair.
Anna Taylor, from Trehane Road, Camborne, has not worked for five years, after being diagnosed with depression when she gave birth to her first child, Molly. She has also suffered from arthritis since the age of three.
Her 48-year-old husband, Alan - who she began an affair with nine months after getting married to her first husband - is also unemployed, after leaving work three years ago to look after her when she suffered post-natal depression.
Between them they receive £501 in benefits: £179 child tax credit, £64 child benefit, £90 job seeker's allowance, £126 housing benefit, £24 discretionary housing payment and £18 council tax. In addition, they receive free school meals and free milk - of which the family consumes around eight pints every day.
Mrs Taylor has now been told that, as she is receiving job seeker's allowance, she must look for work.
However, she claims that by doing so she would be financially disadvantaged and is adamant that she has "no intention" of ever going back to work while this is the case. Mrs Taylor told the Packet: "It's just crazy - the world's gone mad. What's the point of going to slave your guts out for 40 hours and what do you get for it? Absolutely nothing."
She claims that if she worked 40 hours a week on a minimum wage she would receive £530 in benefits, but would then have to pay out £167 a week on rent, council tax and meals - leaving her £138 worse off than if she was not working. Even if she worked for 16 hours a week, she would receive £501 a week in benefits, but have to pay out £89 of that - leaving her £89 worse off.
"It just feels you're being victimised for wanting to go back to work. They're trying to force you in to work to be worse off than your are now," she added.
Mrs Taylor said that having five children under the age of five created additional problems. The two eldest children, five-year-old Molly and four-year-old Thomas, attend St Meriadoc Primary School in Camborne and three-year-old Harry attends a Camborne nursery, but the two youngest children, Charlie and Amber, are still at home.
If both her and her husband worked, it would mean they would have to pay for childcare - creating further financial strain.
"My kids are the most important thing in my life. Why should I make my children suffer? They're the ones that will suffer, at the end of the day," she said.
Mrs Taylor said that both she and her husband would like to go back to work - "because we have got five children it would nice to get a bit of individuality" - but that the current system was preventing her from doing so.
She has written to Tony Blair with her views and is also due to see Julia Goldsworthy, MP for Falmouth and Camborne, early next month.
Mrs Taylor and her husband met while working at a nursing home in Exmouth - he as a nurse and she as a care assistant. Mr Taylor had been married for 22 years and had three children, while she had married her husband just nine months previously, but they soon began a passionate affair and left their partners to move in together. They have now been together for seven years and married for three of them.
They moved from Exmouth to Burnley in Lancashire, then Okehampton in Devon and finally to Camborne, after being encouraged by friends who live in Truro.
Miss Goldsworthy described the current system, where it was seen to be safer and more economical to stay at home than go out to work, as "completely wrong."
She told the Packet yesterday: "We have to help create a system where we can support the most vulnerable, but where they're in a position where they want to go in to work for all the right reasons - financial and self-worth. It is completely wrong that these kind of perverse incentives are in place at the moment. How can we expect to encourage more people to go in to work when all the incentives mean it's better for them not to."
