In the late'70's / early '80's where I lived it was a matter of shame to be unemployed. If you lost your job it was the sits vac section in the local paper or a trip to the job centre to see what they had on the boards.
If you had to go to the job centre you put your hood up on your coat and hoped no one who knew you saw you going in.
In the next village which had a post-war council estate there was really only one family who were habitual dole claimants. Umpteen kids, all but one girls who would all be pregnant themselves by 15; a fat father on invalidity who slumped on the sofa all day chain smoking, and a great chavvy gobshite of a mother. Their garden was a mess, they were noisy and unruly and were not popular. Even the neighbouring kids, most from pretty down at heal families themselves, looked down on them for being scroungers.
There were couple of families who were virtually illiterate and would nowadays have been classed as having "learning difficulties". But they all worked at something, managed to keep some sort of house, the dads grew veg in the garden (nearly all the council house back gardens were given over to bean sticks and vegetable beds) and they managed to conserve enough of what money they had to get out once a week for a night out at the British legion clubhouse which was a tin shack up a lane. Most were local born and bred and had lived in those houses for generations.
It was really only in the late '80's/90's that the single mothers and petty criminal dole families turned up from outside the area and the gardens became untended and filled up with old mattresses and discarded plastic toys from Argos.
