Single Measures

Regeneration & Renewal, 5 September 2008

Weighing in at more than 100 pages, July's welfare reform green paper was a hefty piece of work, setting out the Brown Government's plans to achieve an 80 per cent employment rate and eradicate child poverty by 2020. But while it was welcomed in some quarters as the next stage in a necessary overhaul of the welfare system, in others the paper has gone down less well, particularly its proposals for getting lone parents into work.

The document proposed moving 450,000 lone parents with children under seven off income support and onto jobseeker's allowance (JSA), on which recipients are expected to actively look for work. It stressed that parents would not automatically be expected to find a job, but with a target of getting 300,000 extra lone parents into work by 2015, the Government's intention was clear enough. Indeed, the paper confirmed a hardening attitude towards out-of-work lone parents. It stated: "Moving all lone parents onto JSA would underline the message that we see work as the best way for them to improve their family's prosperity."

But although there is a general acceptance that increasing prosperity through work is the right way to tackle disadvantage, but there are also widespread concerns that the proposals, as they stand, won't necessarily do this.

"There is quite a decent jobs start rate among lone parents compared with other groups," says Tim Nichols, parliamentary officer at campaigners the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG). "The difference lies in job retention: lone parents find it very hard to stay in work, largely due to childcare costs and inflexibility on the part of employers."

Research certainly backs up that claim. In a survey undertaken by campaign body One Parent Families (OPF), 71 per cent of unemployed single parents cited childcare as a barrier to work. Yet the grievance is not addressed in the green paper.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which is overseeing the reforms, points out that the number of childcare places in England has doubled over the past ten years, and from next year child benefit will increase to £20 a week per child. However, OPF says Britain still lags behind other countries when it comes to childcare.

"A key factor in countries combining a high lone parent employment rate with low rates of child poverty is the presence of high-quality, publicly-funded childcare," says chief executive Fiona Weir. "Across Europe, parents contribute to around 25-30 per cent of their childcare costs compared with 75 per cent for British parents."

Experts question whether moving into work makes sense for lone parents. CPAG's Tim Nichols points out that, by coming off benefits, parents lose automatic entitlements to free school meals for their children, and incur numerous extra expenses, such as the costs of transport to work.

Having said that, the Government's reform package does include measures aimed at ensuring that lone parents who enter work are not left out of pocket, such as a £40 weekly "in-work credit" to top up wages. However, Weir remains cautious about such inducements. "The £40 in-work credit is paid only for the first year after a single parent starts a job," she says. "The theory is that, after a year, parents will be better placed to move to new jobs or ask for a pay rise. But in practice, this is unlikely to happen for most parents." Weir says the reality for many single parents is that they lack the skills needed to get a job allowing them to stay above the poverty line. OPF research found that only 16 per cent of working lone parents are in managerial or professional jobs, compared with 38 per cent of working mothers in a couple.

The welfare reform proposals do include measures to improve the skills of lone parents. Among these, out-of-work single parents would be required to attend a skills "health check" to identify any gaps in their abilities and undertake training to address them. Parents taking part in training would be eligible for a "skills for work" bonus on top of existing benefits.

For some, however, these measures don't go far enough. "The way to end child poverty is to get lone parents into jobs that pay them more - and people earn more by being skilled," says Drew Thomas, director of Manchester economic development body Work Solutions. "Most of the references to skills in the green paper are about skills before a person gets a job. There's nothing about how much the Government thinks people ought to be earning to get their children out of poverty and how we can get them earning that amount."

Thomas concedes that other parts of the Government are already running successful in-work training programmes to improve workforce skills. But he is concerned that there is no explicit connection between these and the welfare reform agenda. "There are a lot of skills programmes for employed people, but there's hardly any targeting within them to make sure they are tied into new entrants to the labour market," he says.

And Thomas argues that gaining better workplace skills would give lone parents more leverage over factors they cite as barriers to work: childcare and flexible working hours. "Often lone parents haven't got the skills to win the flexibility they need," says Thomas. "An employer will make a good offer, whether it's in terms of wages, flexibility or childcare, when they know they're going to hire someone with the right skills. The key is giving people skills to bargain with, so someone can say: 'Give me what I want'."

Despite the numerous concerns over the green paper, the Government maintains that parents are better off in work than out of it, and getting lone parents into some form of employment should remain the prime objective of welfare policy. A DWP spokeswoman says: "The risk of poverty for children in working households remains considerably lower than the risk for children in workless households. Those who move from welfare to work are making an important step in creating a sustainable future for them and their families."

- Regeneration & Renewal's conference on Tackling Worklessness, which takes place in Sheffield on 17 September, includes a workshop on working with single parents. For more information, visit www.worklessnessconference.com.