Essay

Children rights in our welfare system

Welfare is a support-system that provide people who do not have the ability to meet the needs ,such as income, with the financial aid which is required to live a safe and stable life. This is usually provided by the government and is formed by special programs, for example the opportunity to get free health care, free education and the Child allowance. Many people are positive about this system and find security to the process that the welfare system offers. On the other hand, there is also a lot of people that is skeptical to some parts or even the whole welfare system. One problem that are often shown in etc newspaper is people who abuse and takes advantages of the system, and with other words are, fraudsters.

Welfare is a really debated subject and will always be since it is such an important and large part of our society. One thing that our Swedish welfare system offers us is the opportunity to offer all children a safe upbringing regardless of the conditions in which the child are grown up in.

All our children should have the same rights nevertheless they come from a rich or poor family.
If we did not have our good and well-established welfare, they would suffer a lot more and they would run a higher risk to fail in school and maybe even end up in criminal circles. 

For example, in the story The Road to Wigan Pier from Solid Gold George Orwell (1937) was telling us about the risks that existed when you are working under ground as a miner and about how fragile life can be. It is almost more common than usual that accidents happens and sometimes it does even involve death. Further, I have discussed with some classmates about this subject and one of them wrote a very good conclusion, in my opinion. 
He wrote:
- ”If one of the parents who provides the family with the financial, suffer an accident and dies, the benefits with welfare are really helpful since they provide the financial support to rest of the family. ”
With help by that the family will be able to find a new, safe way of living. At the website ec.europa.eu we will find information about the Child allowance and it says that every guardian has the right to get 625 kr once a month. If you are a single guardian to a child you will get 1.250 kr. It is also more difficult to abuse this typ of benefit since the benefits often are time-limited and not lifelong.

Next, one thing we got to know from The People You Never Know story from Solid gold Caitlin Moran is telling us about her opinion about the Welfare state. She finds it really good and she said that is helps everyone, even people with terrible personalities. In addition, she also brings up the question many people have about taxes, and giving us an exempel from her own childhood. Several people asked why their taxes should have been used to pay for her parents decision to have eight children that they couldn’t afford. She said that she could not speak for her parents but she know one thing, and that is that the principle of the welfare system was that she should not suffer from her parents decisions. The benefit gave her the supplements she needed and in return, as the result of her going to university and finding a job after, she will now pay taxes and be able to bail out other children in the same situation that she been in. As a conclusion of this subject, I find it really important to pay taxes and support our welfare system. 

Despite everything good that I have brought up, we also have some disadvantages. One disadvantage that I personally think exists is that even though the system speaks for equity, there is some factors that can seem to be unfair. If you are a child, growing up in a wealthy family with good financial opportunities, you will be able to keep all your child benefit and save all that money for later in your life, instead of the child which conditions growing up is not financially good, they will need to use all money for vital things and not be able to save the money for later. 

To summarize this text, I think that the advantages of the Welfare state is so much more positive and helpful rather than the disadvantages. Further, you will always have pros and cons with different welfare systems. All children should be allowed to be children and learn thing they need in the future.

Sources:
Orwell, G. The Road to Wigan Pier. In Hedencrona, E., Smed-Gerdin, K., & Watcyn-Jones, P.(Eds), Solid Gold 2 (pp. 108 -110). Studentlitteratur (2015).

Moran, C. The People You Never Hear From. In Hedencrona, E., Smed-Gerdin, K., & Watcyn-Jones, P.(Eds), Solid Gold 2 (pp. 114 -117). Studentlitteratur (2015).



European Commission. ec.europa.eu