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- The Observer, Sunday December 7 2008
Her husband was suffering from long-term depression and alcoholism. He'd lost his job four years ago and hadn't worked since. Her daughter, who was 19, had never worked. The mother had done occasional cleaning work, but hadn't had a proper job for 20 years.
Another benefit-dependent household in an old industrial area where too many families need state support. Not Britain, though; in Gelsenkirchen in Germany.
But things are changing for that family - the mother and her daughter work and her husband receives specialist help and is ready to start seeking work. It's part of a radical approach, run by a British company, A4E, paying dividends in Germany, which we want to bring to Britain.
Britain is a country of glass ceilings. Once there was a well-trodden path from our most deprived areas to a better life: from the shipyards of the Clyde to the boardroom, from the council estates of Yorkshire to the corridors of power. Not today.
Few escape our most deprived estates. Few young people with potential escape difficult upbringings. Fewer cross the social divides.
It was never easy. But it should be much easier after a decade that we were promised would make the difference. Billions more spent on education and training: billions on helping poorer families with tax credits. Millions of jobs created.
Yet Britain remains one of the least socially mobile countries in the developed world. On our toughest estates, generations pass with the same experience of worklessness and educational failure.
We had a snapshot of that world this week with the stories that emerged around the life of Shannon Matthews. We've wasted the past decade. We must not waste the next.
Social immobility is driven by family background, instability in childhood and often by parents who don't know how to give children the right start in life.
That's why it's time for a fresh approach. It means health visitors offering guidance to every young family; a tax and benefits system that discourages couples living apart; and an education system targeting the poorest areas. This week, the government said we should ask the lone parents of one-year-old children to prepare for work. I'd rather deliver changes to family policy and education, because a Britain where you don't do better than your parents, where you are trapped in the same spiral of deprivation, is not a Britain we should accept.
• Chris Grayling is the Conservative MP for Epsom and Ewell and shadow work and pensions secretary.
