When Welfare Goes Wrong...

[morethanpretty]

Right I will: It is your business if you want to be financially irresponsible with your charitable donations and investments. I can and will feel good knowing that my charity fed a hungry person instead of buying heroin needles.

[Aliantha]

good for you.

[Yznhymr]

Failure is when law abiding tax payers support intentionally non-working citizens. These are typically minority groups looking for a hand outs instead of completing a simple high school deree and getting a job. Hence, they are liberals and vote for a person as President based on race and not experience. This is the same in my home town. How sad, depressing, and tragic.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Even at 10% I don't find that dollar amount to minor. Maybe the UK's burden as a percentage of the total tax amount is smaller, but I am pretty sure Calif has a budget larger than the UK. So no, it is not an "extremely minor" amount of money.

You misunderstand me Merc: I wasn't suggesting that fraud accounts for a 'minor' amount of money; I was suggesting that of the amount we lose to fraud, a large percentage of that will be made up of a lot of minor acts frauds for minor amounts of money. The vast majority of those who fiddle the system do not do so for great amounts of money. There will be a few hardcore people who take a lot out of the system, but the majority of fraud is the kind I've already mentioned: people claiming unemployment whilst sneakily doing a few hours of cash-in-hand work.

Like I said before: I find it difficult to begrudge that extra £30 a week (or whatever) to some parent who is struggling to get Christmas pressies for their kids, or new school shoes. Unfortunately, these small-scale frauds are the ones that are chased most. Because their combined weight is so heavy, and because casual workers are easy to spot (investigators traul the 'hotspots' like building sites, bars and market stalls, particularly at this time of year) they are caught and punished.

Personally, I'd leave those alone and focus on the ones who are really taking the piss. There are people out there claiming every possible benefit; lying to the authorities about their partner living with them, when their partner earns more than the fraud investigators. Families living quite well thankyou very much and still claiming all the benefits they can. They're much harder to catch, requiring stakeouts and full-on investigations. So we focus most heavily on the small fry.

What I wold like to see is a moritorium on prosecutions for those taking on Christmas work. Those jobs are rarely anything more than a few weeks' work. The money they earn will go back into the economy: the poor don't save, they spend. At present, if someone is claiming benefits they can take on up to 16 hours a week of work without losing those benefits...but their benefit is reduced accordingly: they are allowed to keep £10 of what they earn over and above their benefits each week. We should be letting them keep a higher amount. If people could legitimately claim benefits and also earn, say £30 a week above their benefits, more people would end up in legitimate (and protected) part-time employment, which may well be a stepping stone to more permanent or full-time work.

As it is, in order to survive and give their families a decent life, many are trapped into illegal and unstable part-time work, dictated by how willing thir employer is to conspire in their fraud.

[classicman]

While I agree with some of what you say Dana, I disagree with the last line "many are trapped." I call BS, at least for the most part here in the states. There are a zillion programs for those willing to get off their asses and work at looking/finding work. Currently the situation has changed obviously, but in the general sense, again at least here, there are many opportunities for those that wish to seek them out.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by DanaC

You misunderstand me Merc: I wasn't suggesting that fraud accounts for a 'minor' amount of money; I was suggesting that of the amount we lose to fraud, a large percentage of that will be made up of a lot of minor acts frauds for minor amounts of money. The vast majority of those who fiddle the system do not do so for great amounts of money. There will be a few hardcore people who take a lot out of the system, but the majority of fraud is the kind I've already mentioned: people claiming unemployment whilst sneakily doing a few hours of cash-in-hand work.

Ok, I understand now and generally agree with this assessment. Thanks.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by classicman

While I agree with some of what you say Dana, I disagree with the last line "many are trapped." I call BS, at least for the most part here in the states. There are a zillion programs for those willing to get off their asses and work at looking/finding work. Currently the situation has changed obviously, but in the general sense, again at least here, there are many opportunities for those that wish to seek them out.

Again, American vs UK citizens. It does seem that an awful lot of US citizens are genetically lazy. If they are not governed by a punitive system then they will take every opportunity not to work.

Luckily, there is only a minority of people in this country who live this way. Of course we have our own burden of the generally criminally minded, drug addicts of one sort of another etc. But I appreciate the American fear that if you had better welfare, just about every American would take advantage of it. We do have a welfare state and not every Brit takes advantage of it, lucky old us.

[Aliantha]

We're the same as the UK in a lot of ways. There are great safety nets provided by the government for those in need. Most of the time, most people do the right thing, but there are some scammers which they chase down.

Actually, a few years ago new legislation came in that once your kids were in school, you had to work part time or study in order to recieve any further benefits. I think this is a good idea. Of course, some people still get out of going to work, but most people take advantage of the fact that centrelink (social security) has all sorts of programs set up to help people with this task.

[Shawnee123]

There aren't really a zillion programs, and though it may seem that way to eeyore, I mean classic, everyone in the country isn't sucking off the government's teat, nor would everyone even if it were easier to cheat the system.

[DanaC]

Talking of programs, how many of the programs which are being run in the States, to help people improve their circumstances, are run by private organisations, and how many of them are badly run and/or badly conceived (usually in the wake of some knee-jerk political reaction to bad unemployment figures) ?

In the UK, there are some good programs to help people get back into work and some good routes back into the workforce, with help from trained advisors...

Then there are the rest of the programs, which are appalling. They rake in our tax money in contracts, and deliver badly conceived and badly run courses/sessions, with untrained/undertrained, badly paid and disillusioned staff. The attitude of many people working within the system towards their clients is, frankly, shocking.

Out of the dozen or so Basic Employability Training courses (literacy, numeracy, life-skills and job search skills) operating in this area, before the goal posts changed and drove everyone ot of business, the one I worked at was pretty chaotic. We operated on a shoe string, in classrooms held together with sticking plaster and good will. With bookcases we'd filled with books we'd all bought or borrowed and learning materials we'd designed and made (along with the standard curriculum stuff, which just repeats the kind of learning that put these people off school in the first place).

In order to buy ourselves time to tackle the mountain of paperwork, we'd end up letting them sit there working through their glossy DfES workbooks, ticking off the sections they'd *coughs* 'mastered'. We did this for maybe two afternoons a week. I always felt really shit about it. particularly for those who were at the lowest ability levels, because they couldn't even do the workbooks. Wordsearches and picture books.

We were known to be the best in the area. There was almost universal shock in the field locally, when our company wasn't successful in its bid under the new system. Other companies just left them doing word searches for weeks at a time. They taught them nothing, and treated them like children: authoritarian and humiliating.

In job search, we coached them in interviewing, letter writing, helped them with CVs, coached them in phone techniques, and sat with them (sometimes) when they made phone calls. We telecanvassed local employers to try and get them to take on our clients on a 'Job Trial' thereby protecting their benefits if the job went drastically wrong, I went to an interview with someone, to a local superstore that used to take on learning disabled workers on Job Trials and often employed them at the end. Those jobs did not go on our figures until they'd been employed there for at least 2 months.

Other companies, I know, were putting jobs on their books, when they'd got someone a day's work, or a week in one of the local packing plants. How does that help someone who has been unable to form regular patterns of work?

Just because a program claims to be helping doesn't mean it actually is.

[Clodfobble]

The only program here that I know of is the Texas Workforce Commission, and it's state-run. I was quite impressed with how well it was run the one time I was in there (you are required to show up for at least one orientation class in order to collect unemployment, which I did for a few weeks when Acclaim went belly-up.) Between their classes, free computer use, excellent job search website, and abundance of state positions that are exclusively filled by people in the unemployment system, I was only further convinced that the only people who can't get a job using their system are the ones who don't want one.

[DanaC]

A well-run course can usually help a lot of people. Despite ours being a bit shambolic, we tried hard, and a good percentage of our clients found stable employment (there for a year or more) and a fairly high percentage got their literacy and numeracy certificates, which are a requirement for a lot of jobs.

Of the ones who didn't get work, some were players, most were just fundamentally ill-equipped for life, or had huge gaps in their CV from years of not having help and were therefore not the most desirable prospect for employers, or had criminal records, or drug and alcohol problems. I ended up as a de facto social worker and shoulder to cry on for some of them. I'd listen to their stories, which for them seemed very matter of fact, but left me thinking if I was them I'd have thrown myself off a roof by now.

See, most people on in the system get picked up and funnelled through various channes into work or training. Over a period of about five years the unemployment figures fell sharply. The ones who came to us, were the ones who had proved unreachable.

[ZenGum]

There was a case in Australia where a private company won a contract to help long term unemployed.
I cannot remember the numbers exactly but the rest of this is correct:
They were paid $5,000 for each long-term (more than two years)unemployed person they helped. "Helped" was defined as being in paid work for at least 30 hours a week for four weeks.
So the company had them sit at a desk and phone businesses in the yellow pages asking if they had any vacancies, which if there were, were listed on the company's placement service.
They paid the person $15/hour, kept this up for four weeks, and then finished the contract, i.e. dump the person and get a new one. Repeat cycle.
Expenses = $1,800 in wages, plus phone calls. Income = $5000 plus any job leads. Actual help delivered to unemployed person = minimal.

Some people rip off the system. Sometimes, they are wearing suits and ties. Sometime, trakkies, hoodies and ugg boots.

[monster]

So, just to take a slightly different tack (but not much), there is a program run by a local newspaper here called "Warm The Children". Families in need are referred by social workers, teachers etc, and they are given up to $90 per child to spend on new winter clothing at a local store. To ensure this happens, each family is assigned a volunteer shopper who has to sign off on the purchase order that the money was spent on appropriate clothing. They find it hard to find volunteers because it's a "police" job. But they have a lot of money to spend because people like to buy new winter coats for poor kids. It seems to me that they could "do so much more good" If they gave twice as many families $50/child gift certificates (non-transferable) for alocal nice second hand store. Possibly the Salvation Army. And then the families wouldn't need volunteer shoppers -the nicest things those places sell are the clothes.

But no, apparently people want to buy new winter coats for poor children, so more money if raised if this is the plan. and more families get helped, despite the product being five times more expensive. So the nice used clothes stay in the thrift stores to be bought by skinflints like me.

I am a volunteer shopper for the first time this year (they're desperate, nobody wants to play shopping police) and I'm thinking it might feel weird spending more on one child than I do on all of mine together, when they're the ones who can't afford the clothes and I could if I chose to? But perhaps because thriftiness is not my primary reason for buying second-hand, I can take pride in finding a bargain and being environmentally friendly and supporting a good cause. Maybe if second-hand shopping was a necessity for me, and I needed charity to clothe my kids for winter, getting nice new clothes would sweeten the pill?

OK having typed it out and though about it some more, it probably won't feel weird. Just sad that it's the way it has to be to get those kids into warm clothing. but at least when they outgrow them, maybe they'll get recycled through a second-hand store and bought by people like me.

[smoothmoniker]

Originally Posted by Sundae Girl

If they are not governed by a punitive system then they will take every opportunity not to work.

you mean a punitive system like the free market?