Well-meaning but condescending welfare programs don't work. Current welfare programs assume that people who are on welfare need to be managed with kid gloves because they're incapable of being responsible, punish people who can't follow arbitrary guidelines, and generally don't provide enough money anyway.
In Vancouver, as an example, people on welfare don't get enough money to rent a bedroom from someone, let alone pay for food, clothes, transportation, taking care of children if they have any, etc. Even if someone on welfare does get a job, there's a decent chance it won't pay them enough to afford child care so it'll be a net loss in the end. You also have to prove that you're out there looking for a job every day, but there's such a stigma against people on welfare that it can be difficult to be hired, so the government is requiring people to go out every day and be told no over and over again.
These people are often unskilled and have no money to learn new skills, so they're stuck getting low-paying jobs which also don't provide enough money to learn new skills, and so on and so on.
A basic income system would save a significant amount of money on bureaucracy, making sure people are looking for work or jumping through hoops to pay someone not enough to live on and then take it away as soon as possible. It would also give people a lot more opportunities for entrepreneurialism, education, child care, and so on.
The current programs are focussed around spending the minimum amount of money possible on as few people as possible, which is an expensive and inefficient proposal. The parent's suggestion is to give people the power in their own lives, which studies have shown can result in huge turnarounds for people in unpleasant situations.
So OP is suggesting that overly complicated, byzantine, and underfunded welfare programs aren't working, so maybe we should give up and do what experts have been suggesting, and studies have shown results from, instead.