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Big-stick tactics will rebound on children
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18/07/07 One Parent Families|Gingerbread strongly criticises the Government's proposal to require lone parents whose youngest child is 12 to be available for work from 2008 and, from 2010, those whose youngest child is seven.
Commenting on the proposal in today's Welfare Reform Green Paper, Chief Executive of the charity Chris Pond said:
"Most single parents are already working and those who are not either want to, but can't find affordable childcare or a job that fits with school hours, or have very good reasons for deciding that their children need a parent at home to guide them for a time. One quarter are caring for a disabled child. Children of all ages can need a parent at home for a period, especially in the aftermath of divorce or separation. A punitive approach would only impact badly on youngsters in one parent families - many of whom have already lost one parent - while alienating work-ready lone parents from the voluntary New Deal scheme which is doubling parents' chances of finding work. It is extremely worrying that the Government is imposing new requirements on parents without detailing any additional form of support. The Government has repeatedly emphasised that parents know best when it comes to making choices about how to combine work and family life. As the new Minister for Children Schools and Families Ed Balls told the Daycare Trust conference in June: " Staying at home or returning to work must be a choice for parents, and our role is to make that a real choice - to make both staying at home and returning to work practical and realistic, so that parents can do what is best for them and their children." (1)
"It is extremely difficult to see the case for depriving children in one parent families of a guiding parent at home if that is what is needed, especially since there will be no such restriction for those children lucky enough to have both their parents living with them.
"The Goverment says it is putting tackling child poverty at the heart of these proposals but nearly one third of working lone parents are still poor. What today's proposals mean is that more sanctions will be applied to some of the families who are already the poorest and most disadvantaged.
"Ninety per cent of lone parents want to work but they also want to be good parents. Their children will lose out if the Government resorts to big-stick tactics.
"Given the confused signals on work and parenting in the public debate, lone parents could be forgiven for feeling 'damned if they do and damned if they don't': if they work they are accused of neglecting their childrens' needs and if they don't of scrounging from the State. Lone parents want help in getting over the obstacles they face when they are ready to work - including far more affordable childcare - not further impoverishment if they prioritise their children. Investment in childcare, in education and training and job-retention packages should be the focus of policy for lone parents, so that they are equipped to work when it is right for their children that they do so.
"As the Department for Work and Pensions concluded in its five-year strategy, published in 2005: "..an unrestricted requirement to search for work is inappropriate , given the complex and difficult circumstances many lone parents face..... Such an approach would be expensive, unfair and ineffectual."
Notes To Editors:
1) http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches
In a recent One Parent Families|Gingerbread survey of more than 1000 lone parents, 71% of those not in work said lack of flexible work-hours or of flexible childcare were preventing them from taking up a job.
There are 1.9 million lone parents in Britain. Of those, only around 150,000 have a youngest child aged over 11 and are claiming Income Support.
Because 69 per cent of lone parents with secondary school age children are already working, a co-ercive approach would be badly targeted. Even with a 100% employment rate for lone parents whose youngest child is 12, the Government would neither meet its child poverty nor its lone parent employment targets.
The Government's welfare reform Green Paper, published last year, increased the number of times that lone parents are required to attend the Jobcentre to talk to an adviser about work and introduced new measures to encourage lone parents with children aged over 11 to take part in work-related activity.
British parents with children aged over six have no right to request flexible working arrangements from their employer.
Recent research for the DfES suggests that "....support services for parents of teenagers are still very sparse ..."
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