I assume the 90 pounds a week per child (which strikes me as generous) continues once the child is school age? Before that point, unless there is free daycare, a stay-at-home Mom pretty much can't afford to work. (And raising kids is definitely "work", just not out-of-the-home.) However, once the kiddies are in school or daycare, I would hope that if someone was physically able to work, but unable to find a placement, there would be some sort of mandatory public service required for the 90 pounds per week? With the councils being so stretched for funds, it seems like there's a labor pool available that's not being tapped. If nothing else, they could provide daycare so some other person would be free to seek employment?
There was a time, when the Daughter was young, that we had to go on welfare. I had lost my job in a recession while pregnant, had the baby, & was ill. The money I had saved for years ran out. The ex didn't like having constraints on his lifestyle. Buh bye. I was able to find several medium-paying jobs, but couldn't take any of them - they didn't have medical insurance for the baby while not paying enough to purchase private insurance. (She was sick a lot, so going without Medicaid wasn't feasible.) And, really, even if they'd had insurance, daycare was non-existent for babies under the age of 18 months. We got $509 a month in cash and $75 in foodstamps. I stood in line at the WIC office every month for handouts of beans, government cheese, milk, and a can of peanut butter. (I kept the last can of peanut butter I received on my shelf until we packed to move here as a reminder to not take good times for granted.) The wait for subsidized housing was well over 3 years. I paid for everything out of that $509, including $9 to cash the check. Rent on the private market (with a series of skeevy landlords), diapers, formula, laundromat, loo roll, food, medicine for the baby that Medicaid didn't cover, anything we needed. I used to turn the pilot light off on the wall furnace during the daytime, thinking it would save a few pennies. I spent a ~lot~ of sleepless nights worrying about being tossed out into the street with the baby. Thankfully, all that is light years behind us and I am still so grateful to have had that $509 a month when we needed it.
I've only said all this, at the risk of coming across as a drama queen, so you will know that I am not unsympathetic to people who have to rely on government support.Been there, done that. Not everyone has family they can fall back on during hard times. To have secure housing, and then living expenses that actually were enough to provide all of the basics, wow - that would have been amazing. I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the social services here. People seem to expect a lot more than I ever did, as a matter of course. On the one hand, the benefits do seem extremely generous, but on the other hand it seems like once you get into all that you can never get back out and on your own? (More-so than in the US?)