This post is one of those rare youth work posts…but also mixing into a rant and some thoughts on Student Finance, Benefits and other things that the government get wrong…in fact it’s almost the Robin Hood scenario gone wrong….

The Robin Hood scenario is of course ‘Steal from the rich and give to the poor’ and I guess that’s perhaps where benefits are meant to happy…you take people who are richers…who pay tax etc…then you take a poor person who for whatever reason can’t get a job, needs support through university etc…and you give them some of the money the rich tax payer has payed. However for this to work someone has to define rich and poor, and this ultimately creates a ridiculous divide and here’s 2 places where ridiculous benefit rules does my head in…

1 – The Uni Student

If you don’t know how uni fees work then here’s a low-down…all students can apply for a student loan however if you’re parents earn under a certain amount then you are entitled to things like maintenance grants which means you can have some free money which you don’t have to pay back. Now this is all very well, however if your parents happen to earn that little bit more (ie the divide I mentioned above) then you can’t get the extra.

Of course this system of ‘Free money if you’re parents earn rubbish money’ has shortfalls. Of course the bonus is that poor young people can go to uni and have better chances, the shortfalls however mean that students who’s parents earn just over that divide cannot get extra money when in reality their parents aren’t really better off than slightly poorer ones, thus putting them even more out of pocket.

The second flaw is that this is a system purely based on parents income, so you could have a rich parent who gives sod-all to their kids meaning that uni survival is a near impossible.

This all leads onto my second grr to the benefits/money system

2 – Lack Of Incentive

In my work I’ve come accross young people who often through no fault of their own end up in hostels, in these they pay say 15 pounds a week out of their benefits to live, however when this young person gets a job they then have to pay over ten times that, meaning that it’s more cost-effective not to work!

Overall I think although the government are trying to perform a Robin Hood act they are infact to an extent pointing out that it’s far better to not do anything…the incentive to earn high…the incentive for teenagers to get a job just isn’t there because they’ve created a catch 22 whereby the poor will stay poor and the rich stay rich…grr!

Rant over!