Stopping benefits not the way to get lone parents into work, say CAB

21-11-2008

Support not coercion is what’s needed if the government is to succeed in its target of getting 300,000 more lone parents off benefits into jobs, national charity Citizens Advice said today.

The warning comes as new measures are due to come into force on Monday (24 November) requiring lone parents whose youngest child is aged 12 to look for work or face their benefits being stopped. From 2010 the same rules will apply to parents of children as young as seven. Currently lone parents are not required to look for work until their youngest child is 16.

As part of its commitment to halve child poverty by 2010 and end it altogether by 2020, the government is aiming for 70% of lone parents to be in jobs, in line with its belief that work is the best form of welfare.

But current estimates suggest that 66% of lone parents with children over 11 are already working, and that many of those who don’t have good reasons not to – often because they have to look after a disabled child or are themselves too ill to work.

And the government’s own research shows that sanctions of the sort now being threatened only lead to greater hardship and debt for families, and are not effective in getting people into jobs.

CAB research reveals evidence of sanctions involving benefit cuts being imposed inappropriately for long periods on vulnerable claimants with learning disabilities and literacy problems.

The charity has serious concerns about whether there are enough Jobcentre Plus personal advisers in place to provide the intensive, personally tailored support needed by lone parents under the new regime. It also questions whether Jobcentre Plus staff will have the necessary skills, training, time and support they need to do the job, including making critical decisions to cut benefits. It warns of a serious risk of sanctions being wrongly or inconsistently applied, causing greater poverty and hardship for vulnerable families.

Citizens Advice Chief Executive David Harker said:

“In going down this route the government seems bent on ignoring the lessons of its own research. CAB evidence and the government’s own research both show very clearly that sanctions are neither necessary nor effective in moving people off benefits into work, and that they tend to hurt the most vulnerable. What is really needed now is more carrot and less stick. All the evidence shows that most lone parents want to work and will do so if they can, especially as their children get older. What they really need to help them do this, especially in the current economic climate where unemployment is rising and competition for jobs may be fierce, is support in overcoming the barriers facing them. That means reorganising the tax and welfare systems to ensure work always pays, increasing the availability of good quality, affordable childcare, and working with employers to ensure they can provide the flexible jobs lone parents need.”

Last year (2007/8) Citizens Advice Bureaux in England and Wales advised over 100,000 lone parents on 300,000 benefit and tax credit issues, over 370,000 debt issues and 43,000 employment issues.

In Barriers to work, a report published earlier this month, Citizens Advice research found that lone parents face significant challenges in trying to enter or re-enter the world of work and hold down jobs.

• Employers are often reluctant to take on lone parents and offer little flexibility, while expecting unreasonable flexibility from employees, including working varying shift patterns and unsocial hours at short notice.  Many of those jobs available to lone parents who haven’t worked for a long time are low skilled and low paid, in sectors where workers may be denied their basic rights at work.
• Good quality, affordable childcare that meets the real needs of working parents – especially those whose job may require them to work unsocial or changeable hours - is in short supply
• Many lone parents who very much want to work find themselves and their family little better off as a result of the complex interaction of the tax credit and benefits system with earnings. A lone parent with two children, who earns £6 an hour and pays rent of £85 a week and council tax of £20 a week, will be better off by only £2.13 working 20 rather than 16 hours a week – and this is without taking into account all the additional costs of working like travel.
• These problems are compounded by the complexity and inflexibility of the benefits and tax credit system which can mean a move into work carries the risk of hardship, debt and fluctuating income that can even put families’ homes at risk.
• The intensive, sustained, expert, and personally tailored support lone parents need to make the transition into sustainable work is too often simply not available to them. CAB evidence shows some personal advisers assigned to lone parents on government work programmes like New Deal are not adequately skilled or flexible, and as a result people are sometimes pushed into jobs with low wages and poor prospects to increase their earnings when they might be better off training for skills which in the longer term would bring higher incomes.

Citizens Advice is calling for a review of the benefits and tax credit systems through setting up a welfare and poverty commission – something already recommended by Parliament’s own Social Security Advisory Committee – along with urgent action to help lone parents manage the transition into work and support to help them stay in jobs.

Notes to editors on Citizens Advice

1. The Citizens Advice service is a network of independent charities that helps people resolve their money, legal and other problems by providing information and advice and by influencing policymakers. For more information in England and Wales www.citizensadvice.org.uk
2. The advice provided by the Citizens Advice service is free, independent, confidential, and impartial, and available to everyone regardless of race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, religion, age or nationality.
3. Most Citizens Advice service staff are trained volunteers, working at over 3,300 locations across England and Wales.
4. Advice and information www.adviceguide.org.uk
5. Volunteer hotline 08451 264264 (local rate)
6. Citizens Advice Guide to your rights, second edition: January 2008 - over 600 pages of practical, independent CAB advice. An invaluable resource for any bookshelf - available from all good bookshops; price £11.99; ISBN: 9780141034089
7. Follow Citizens Advice on Twitter: twitter.com/CitizensAdvice
8. Subscribe to Citizens Advice press releases via RSS news feed: www.citizensadvice.org.uk/pressoffice