From the coalface

The following is a comment on the Welfare State We're In blog. James Bartholomew admits he cannot vouch for the authenticity of the commentor. But because I've had support from people at WINZ, I'd say it's genuine. My petition received around a dozen signatures from one office. Another girl told me a PSA rep was circulating my press releases around her WINZ workplace so caseworkers could see what was going on statistically.

(The DWP is the Department of Work and Pensions).

I work for the DWP on the Lone Parent section and am confronted with lone parents quite blatently fiddling the system all the time, unfortunately because the government has cut so many jobs within the sector our fraud section only deals with a minute selection of cases. I have come across people who have had sanctions imposed on their benefits for not attending appts and then a further sanction imposed for not responding to the sanction. This in my eyes would say to me that they are either working or got someone helping them out with money as surely they would've noticed 40% of money gone if on such a tight budget? Another common thing we see quite often is that as soon as the child of a lone parent is about to turn 16 the parent gets pregnant again just so as to stay on benefit. I believe that the government should bring in something so that if a lone parent has another child while on benefit they get little or no benefits with it. I'm not trying to to sound harsh but this would save the government millions and also force parents back into work when their child reaches 16 rather than just sitting back and doing nothing while us tax payers pay them for it!