By SADIE NICHOLAS and DIANA APPLEYARD

Last updated at 23:09 21 March 2008

Known as the "Shameless" family among horrified neighbours, the McFaddens "boast" three generations of adults who are not working.

All ten members of the clan share a council house and live off benefits amounting to around £32,000 a year. And very happy they are, too.

Matriarch is grandmother Sue McFadden, 54. "Our neighbours are so snobby - they call us the "Shameless" family and say that we ought to go out to work. But how can we work when we have all these children to look after?

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Jean Thompson, right, with son Steven and granddaughter Jessica, who says: 'It is my right to claim benefits'. All ten members of her family share a three-bedroom council house

"The only problem is," she says without a hint of irony, "that we're living in a three-bedroom council house, which is ridiculous.

"I'm asking the council for a ten-bedroom home for all of us. We need more space. It's awful sometimes when all the children are squabbling. Still, we do have a big TV with Sky, but we need some relaxation."

Of course they do, poor lambs. What a damning verdict on our claim-it-all society, a grotesque mirror of the dark television drama Shameless. That show features fictional father-of-eight Frank, who is work-shy and self-pitying. Living on the Chatsworth Estate, he heads a family of dysfunctional teenagers living on an estate of benefit claimants and cheats.

The McFaddens bear an uncanny resemblance. Grandmother Sue is divorced and has three daughters, Theresa, 34, Debbie, 32, and Tammy, 24. None of the adults living in the house in Ellesmere Port, near Chester, has a job, and there are also six grandchildren living at home - Kyle, 18, Clayton , 12, Tyler, nine, Courtney, eight, Jodie, seven, and Lucas, six.

But the really disturbing aspect of the McFaddens' lifestyle is that they are far from alone. Six million Britons are living in homes where no one has a job and "benefits are a way of life", according to a report by MPs. Shock figures also revealed that 20,000 households in Britain are pocketing more than £30,000 a year in state benefits.

With thousands of children growing up in families where their parents and grandparents have never worked, a senior government adviser warned this week of a "terrible legacy" of youngsters who had no expectation of ever getting a job.

Sue herself is defiant. "People don't understand how hard it is to keep a family like this going - no wonder we can't work. How could I go out to work with all these children at home? Local people call us scroungers and that is so unfair. We need the money to keep the family going.

"We get about £2,700 a month in benefits, from income support to disability allowance, and child benefit for the kids. Kyle is at college and he gets the Education Maintenance Allowance of £30 a week, and we get Housing Benefit, too. Our rent is £40 a week, so our benefits don't go far."

Jean Thompson, 66, hasn't worked for over 40 years. She lives in Neath, Swansea, with husband Glyn, 61, a retired plumber. They have three grown-up children, two of whom live on benefits, including son Steven Martin, 39.

Jean says: "My own dad worked down the pit, but my mum didn't work, so I suppose I wanted the same life that she had when I grew up. I just wanted to be at home and live off other people.

"I left school at 15 with no qualifications and worked in a sewing factory for a short while then gave it up and went on the dole instead. Even when my kids were older, I didn't go back to work because I didn't want to. I never get bored. I just sew, knit and clean.

"I don't worry about the example I set to my kids or the fact that two of them don't work. It's up to them

what they do, it's their life, not mine, so it's not my problem. I don't think my desire never to work and to live off the state and my husband rubbed off on Steven. He makes his own decisions.

"I'm certainly not angry that Steven doesn't have a job. He's got children, that's his job. And I don't worry that he's setting a bad example to his children - that's up to him."

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Steven left school 23 years ago and has worked for only five years in that time. It's 12 years since he last had a job. Steven lives in Swansea with partner Donna, 24, who's never worked, and their daughter Celsea, three. His eldest daughter from a previous partner, 17-year-old Jessica, is also on benefits.

Steven says: "Mum never really made us think about work. I did do a plumbing YTS scheme after school. They paid £27 a week, but it was so boring looking at pipes and sinks all day. When I told my dad I was bored, he said I should never stick with a job I didn't like.

"So, eventually, in my 20s, I thought: "I've tried security work and plumbing and I've even been a taxi driver for six months, but I just don't like working". My mates all left school and became mechanics, sweating it out in stinking, dirty garages for a couple of hundred quid a week.

"I'm much better off than any of them. The highlight of their day is going to the bakery to get a pasty for lunch and they've aged 20 years from the stress of working for a pittance and being stuck indoors all day. It's my right to claim benefits. We're all entitled to do what we want in life.

"I could have trained as a fireman or something, but I didn't want the responsibility. All I've ever wanted is to chill out and have easy money. All my family and friends live in council houses - my parents included."

Steven's daughter Jessica left school last year without any qualifications and has been claiming benefits since. She says: "It's fine that my mum and dad don't work. I'm not ashamed or anything.

"But I suppose if they did both have jobs then I'd have grown up seeing them going to work and earning money and realised how you go about getting work and holding down a job. That would have made me more likely to leave school and want to get a job straight away. But they've both managed OK on benefits.

"Because my gran, Jean, didn't work either then I suppose it's just normal in our family not to have jobs.

"I don't like the idea of having to be bossed around at work and I don't want to go to college or anything because I like to stay in bed in the morning. In the meantime, it's my right to claim benefits. One day I'd like a council flat."

Heady ambition indeed. But is it inevitable that generation upon generation of unemployed families just follow their parents into lives of idle nihilism? Is it the fault of a system which offers benefits too easily - or the fault of parents who fail to encourage their children to aspire or succeed?

Claire Halsey, a consultant clinical psychologist, says: "We are creatures of habit. We take most of our cues from our parents. Most of us repeat the patterns of our families, and also take on values of families. If parents value working, children are more likely to value it and strive for it themselves.

"If it becomes entirely normal for parents to get up late and not expect to work, this becomes entirely normal for their children too.

"If you don't see your parents get up, get dressed for work and go out, you don't have a set routine in the day. It becomes very difficult to shift from being unstructured into the discipline of work.

"There are also issues with motivation. When you are unqualified and have very few skills, you tend to be in jobs that are more dull and mechanical, and have to accept a high degree of direction and authority from the employer. If that isn't your ethos, if you haven't accepted authority at home or in school, you tend to rebel and fail in the workplace."

Certainly, Emma Sussock's life is a grim blueprint set out by the generations before her. Her mother Ann, a divorcee, hasn't worked for 30 years, and exists on benefits and daytime television. Meanwhile, her beloved step-grandfather Carl Davies, a former gas fitter, has survived on benefits since a heart attack 20 years ago.

Emma, 19, lives in a one-room council refuge, existing on benefit handouts as she raises her two-year-old daughter. It is the same as her mother Ann's life before her.

Ann, a divorcee, lives in a one-bedroom council flat in West Derby, Liverpool. She says: "When I left school at 16 with no qualifications I did a youth training type scheme for a year, serving up meals at the local YMCA for about £25 a week. Then I went on benefits and haven't come off them since. I didn't enjoy the work.

"I wasn't encouraged to work hard by my parents and lots of my friends went straight onto benefits, so I did the same. I live in a one-bed council flat, but the £54-a-week rent is paid for by the authorities. I also get £118 a fortnight jobseeker's allowance and I have to pay for my food and bills.

"It's a real struggle. I spend £10 a week on cigarettes, but I can't afford to go out and I haven't got lots of expensive gadgets, just a portable TV in my lounge. Watching TV is all I do most days. I watch the soaps and The Jeremy Kyle Show. I'm used to this way of life now."

But what aspirations does this mother have for her own daughter to break free of the poverty trap? Ann shrugs: "When Emma was at school, I'd try to encourage her to work harder than I did, but I don't suppose I was a very good role model.

"All my friends, and her friends' parents, were on benefits, too, so she didn't know any different. She used to play truant and I wasn't very happy about that, but it's what everyone her age did.

"She's busy being a mum to Codie now, so she can't be expected to work, but I hope that one day she'll get herself a council house." Emma Sussock's grandfather Carl also lives on benefits, but he at least has a dream: that his grand-daughter doesn't waste her life in a haze of unemployment and handouts. Carl, 69, says with a sigh: "I just hope she doesn't follow her mates into a life on benefits.

"We seem to be left with a whole generation of young people today who think it's OK to live off the state. The worth ethic that my generation grew up with has died. My dad was a bricklayer, my mum stayed at home and I was brought up to work hard. I left school at 16 to take on an apprenticeship as a gas fitter.

"I enjoyed the structure of going to work and earning my own money. In those days people would do anything to earn a living and put food on the able for their families.

"One winter in the early Sixties we weren't able to work as gas fitters for eight weeks because the snow was so bad. We queued for hours at the National Assistance Board, the equivalent of the JobCentre now, but came away with just 50p in benefits. That was incentive for the other men and me to work shifting snow for the council to earn more money.

"When I had to give up work due to ill health, after a heart attack 20 years ago, life changed drastically. Suddenly I was claiming sickness benefits that were worth about £52 a week compared to the £200 to £400 a week I'd been earning as a gas fitter. I had to stop smoking, going to the pub or playing golf.

"My wife Lily and I had to sell our house and move into the council house where I still live. I'd have given anything to go back to work."

Carl thinks the Government have simply made it too easy for people not to work. He says: "I don't blame myself for Ann not working. Even if she tried to get a job, she'd be looking at jobs paying the minimum wage, which is not as much as she claims in benefits. It's the Government's fault: benefits are too generous."

But is the Government to blame for Ann Sussock's reluctance to tear herself away from daytime television? She says with a shrug: "I've not worked for 30 years, so it's not really a big deal."

And what of Emma, tragically bright and animated? She says: "My mates and I were too busy having a laugh at school to care about working and when I left I didn't have any GCSEs. We'd bunk off school, hang around in the town or the local park. Mum was cross, but that didn't bother me.

"Do I think my mum is a bad example because she's always lived on benefits? Maybe if she had worked then I'd have been more likely to get a job straight from school because it would have seemed normal.

"But the truth is when I left school I couldn't be bothered to work. There wasn't anything I wanted to do other than be a singer. I got pregnant not long after, but the father's never been around. Now I get £100 a week in benefits, income support, child benefit and tax credits.

"In some ways, I wish I could go out and get a job because I'd love to be able to afford to go out with my mates, buy clothes and take Codie on holiday or to the zoo. But I think it would be harder if I was working because I'd only get a job paying the minimum wage, yet I'd have to pay my own rent then, so I'd have nothing left. But I do want a better life for Codie and me."

It's too early to tell what the future holds for Codie, as his family shambles around him, claiming benefits and living off the State. One can only hope that when he grows up, he'll consider it shameful rather than Shameless.