Buy essay on Difficulties African Carribean Lone Parent Face in Employement in the U.K.

Chapter headings and brief outline of each chapter.
Research hypothesis
Rationale for the research
Research methodology
Review of Literature
This chapter will review the existing literature on the subject in a comprehensive way
Employment issues of Afro-Caribbean lone parents in UK-An Overview
This chapter will present the issues one by one and suggest the path of enquiry
To work or not to work: The Afro-Caribbean lone parent experience.
This chapter will present the survey results
New Deal or no deal?
This chapter will present the content analysis of government policies.
Towards inclusion and a better childhood
This chapter will summarise the findings and derive inferences.
Findings and conclusions
This chapter focuses on findings obtained in the result of questionaiers conducted in the course of the study
Schedule of task to be undertaken and expected timetable

Abstract:
The research focuses on difficulities African and African Carribean lone parents face in hte UK. The research pays a particular attention to the problem of employment of African and African Carribean lone parents in the UK. The research reveals the fact that the position of African Carribean and African lone parents is very difficult because it suffers from considerable problems, such as the lack of good job opportunities, poor language competence, lack of educational opportunities for children of African and African Carribean lone parents.

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African and Afro-Carribbean lone parents, especially women, are facing great difficulties in continuing as an employed group in UK. The hypothesis for this study is that African and Afro-Caribbean lone parents are facing a worse employment situation after the New Deal for Lone Parents was introduced in 1997. The decade that followed the New Deal will be analysed by this research in terms of the employment rate of black lone parents and rate of child poverty in black lone parent families. Questions that will be formulated to achieve inferences in this study will include, how many employed African and Afro-Caribbean lone parents in a selected sample have an economically sound job and what is the average distance they have to travel to reach their employment station, how many hours does an Afro-Caribbean lone parent work on an average and how many hours does he/she spend with his/her child/children, what kind of public transport facilities are available for a working African and Afro-Caribbean lone parent and what kind of support an African and Afro-Caribbean lone parent receives from his/her family members.

Chapter 2. Rationale for the research.
Though many research works have been conducted on employment issues of lone parents in UK, only peripheral enquiries have been made yet when it comes to lone Afro-Caribbean parents. It is in this context that this study proposes to focus on the issues of Afro-Caribbean lone parents in employment in UK. The researcher feels that there is strong reason to believe that government policies aimed at increasing employment rate among lone parent families have adversely affected them, especially the Afro-Caribbean lone parents, owing to their particular socio-cultural background. A top down model of social development was blindly implemented as an umbrella rule, ignoring the grass root level realities within this particular community. Hence the researcher aims, on a broader perspective, at finding the missing link between the prevalent child poverty in UK and the lacunae that exist in government policies (Alexander & Mohanthy, 1997, pp.19).

 
Chapter 3. Research methodology
A sample survey will be conducted in a selected locality where there is a considerable percentage of Afro-Caribbean population. This survey will find out, using a questionnaire, why an Afro-Caribbean lone parent is not benefiting from the New Deal for Lone Parents and what barriers are there for an Afro-Caribbean lone parent to get financially sound employment and social security in UK. Along with this, a content analysis of the UK government’s policies regarding lone parents will be undertaken to add more validity to this research. The research involves questionnaires with lone parents who answered questions concerning their current position as well as the position of their parents. They were posed questions on their lifestyle, level of income, situation in family and their family background, including cases of domestic violence, language competence and others (See App.). The main purpose of the questionnaire is to reveal the current socioeconomic position of African and African Carribean lone parents, cultural problems and employment opportunities. The study involved 1,000 lone parents of African adn African- Carribean origin. 600 subjects were male, 400 were females. The age of subjects varied from 21 to 60.
Chapter 4. Review of literature
One major study on the economic status of lone parents in UK was done by J. Millar and Karen Rowlingson (2001). Millar and Rowlingson (2001, pp.180) have found that the majority of lone-parent families in Britain are White but some ethnic minority groups are over-represented among lone-parent families (such as Afro-carrebian women). Another study (Giddens &Griffiths, 2006, pp.215) has also substantiated this as a fact by noting that “there are far fewer black women aged between twenty and forty four living with a husband than there are white women in the same age group.”

Millar and Rowlingson (2001, pp.183) have observed, “the link between high rates of lone parenthood and lack of labour demand causes problems for lone parents for seeking paid work.”These researchers (Millar & Rowlingson, 2001, pp.183) have inferred that one reason for the high rate of lone parenthood in certain areas is owing to the deficiency of decent paid jobs for men in the locality, which detracts them from becoming “husband-father-breadwinners.” Hence they (Millar & Rowlingson, 2001, pp.183) have suggested that “improving employment opportunities in deprived areas for both men and women could therefore increase the labour market participation of lone parents, while at the same time reduce the number of lone parent families.”

It was when New Labour came to power in UK that the policies on lone parents underwent a drastic change. Millar and Rowlingson (2001, pp.15) have noted that many additional benefits paid to lone parents, both in and out of work, were abolished saying that this was a drain on public expenditure and also a threat to traditional two-parent family. In response to the huge outcry raised against this measure, later some benefits were replaced in an altered form of child welfare measures. (Millar & Rowlingson, 2001, Forward, pp.15).

The New Deal for Lone Parents, a new scheme introduced by British government in 1997 was a real break through in relation to the problems of lone parents. A research report by Kandy Woodfield and Helen Finch (1999, pp.7), namely, New Deal for Lone Parents: evaluation of innovative schemes, Research Report No. 89, has scrutinized this scheme in detail and made some valid observations. This research was carried out by Social and Community Planning Research on behalf of the Department of Social Security, UK.The report has stated that the new deal programme had offered:

“a tailored package of help and advice on jobs, benefits, training and child care, through the provision of advisers (or caseworkers) who work on a one-to-one basis with participants. Lone parents with school age children (aged 5 years 3 months and above) are invited to participate in the programme; lone parents whose youngest child is below school-age may ‘opt in’ to the programme by requesting to participate.”
Thus the new policy expects lone parents having children of school age to seek work. But the question that remains is whether it is a politically correct approach to impose work on lone mothers.
Millar and Rowlingson (2001) have made an indepth analysis of the employment pattern of lone parents in UK. The employment rate of lone parents has been found to be low as compared to other developed nations. One such finding is that only 70% of the lone parents are employed as compared to 80% in France. (Millar & Rowlingson, 2001, pp.2). Since the New Deal for Lone Parents introduced by the government in 1997, according to Walker and Wiseman (2003, pp.127) 42% of ethnic minority groups have left the programme. This is serious information, which needs further enquiries to identify the causes.