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New Deal for Lone Parents (NDLP)
NDLP is a voluntary scheme aimed at lone parents with at least one child under the age of 16. Participants can take up paid work for 16 hours per week or more.
A Personal Adviser (PA) based at Jobcentre Plus offers advice and support including:
information about local job vacancies;
help in applying for jobs including CV and interview preparation;
advice on in-work benefits;
help with making arrangements for childcare;
basic skills screening;
arranging training/education to update work skills;
access to work-based learning;
preparation of a personal plan for finding work;
help with the Child Support Agency (CSA);
ongoing support after participant starts work.
There is a fund available to an individual’s PA which can pay up to £300 for items such as clothing or childcare so that a job offer can be accepted. Lone parents are not required to look for work, but they are required to attend meetings with their PA. If Income Support claimants don’t attend, benefits can be reduced. Figures for the NDLP for October 1998 to January 2002 show that there were 22,177 starts to the programme in the South West.
The greatest proportion of starts was concentrated in Bristol and South Gloucestershire (15.4%), followed by Dorset (12.8%) and Gloucestershire (11.9%). These figures broadly follow the pattern of lone parent households across the region. The main aim of the National Childcare Strategy is to develop good quality, affordable childcare for children aged 0-14 in every neighbourhood, including both formal childcare and support for informal arrangements in partnership at local and national level.
The Government sees the National Childcare Strategy as a crucial component in the quest for social inclusion. The strategy was aimed to meet the needs of middle and lower income families and targeted at areas experiencing higher levels of disadvantage. The strategy utilises research that shows that good quality childcare improves the life chances of disadvantaged children, not only through the improved financial prospects of the now working parent, but actually through the care itself. At the time of writing no data was available to assess how far the National Childcare Strategy has succeeded in supporting lone parents into work or training. For the South West, it is interesting to look at the views of those interviewed in the report, Providing training and support for lone parents: evaluation of the SPAN Study Centre (JRF, 2001). In that report, nearly every lone parent with a child under the age of 11 mentioned childcare costs and the importance of looking after one’s children as major barriers to getting paid employment. Similarly, the most frequently mentioned barrier to education and training was childcare costs. Since 1997, the number of registered childcare places for under 8’s has increased significantly. However, the cost and availability is still an issue for lone parents. Childcare tax credits have been provided, but still only 20% of lone parents on Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) receive the childcare credit. Work undertaken by the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) in 2000 indicated:
Only 29% of lone parents use registered childcare;
20% of those using unregistered childcare pay for it, at greatly reduced cost;
In an ‘ideal’ situation, the vast majority of parents surveyed said they would prefer an ‘informal’ provider (ie relatives or friends) to a registered minder in any event. Certainly, there needs to be accurate and detailed monitoring of the scheme to check what benefit has accrued to the families in greatest need. This, like many of the strategies developed by Government to address the problems faced by the ESF target groups, is reliant upon the agencies in any local area working together to ensure that there is a seamless link between those involved in childcare and development from birth through to age 14. Again, partnership’ is the key word.
Sure Start programme
The aims of the programme are:
‘To work with parents-to-be, parents and children to promote the physical,
intellectual and social development of babies and young children – particularly
those who are disadvantaged – so that they can flourish at home and when they
get to school, and thereby break the cycle of disadvantage for the current
generation of young children.’ (Department for Employment and Skills)
Sure Start is an important component of the Government’s policy to deal with child poverty and social exclusion effectively. The target is for a minimum of 500 Sure Start local programmes to beset up by the year 2004. The programmes are to be focused on disadvantaged neighbourhoods, helping up to 400,000 children. 342 programmes had been approved by October 2002. The Government invested £452 million in Sure Start during the period 1999-2000 to 2001-02 (Garner, 2001). The Spending Review in July 2000 announced an extra £580 million for Sure Start over the period April 2001 to March 2004.
The scheme has a set of specific objectives, which can be summarised as follows:
improving social and emotional development – supporting early bonding and the
early identification of children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, with the
stated target to ‘reduce the proportion of children aged 0-3 in the 500 Sure Start
areas who are re-registered within the space of 12 months on the child protection
register by 20% by 2004’;
improving health – support for parents before and after the birth of a child with a
stated target of a six percentage point reduction in the proportion of mothers
smoking during pregnancy 2005/6;
improving children’s ability to learn – by promoting early learning, the improvement
of language skills and the early identification of special needs. The target for this
objective is to achieve a reduction of five percentage points in the number of
children with speech and language problems requiring intervention by age four;
strengthening families and communities – building community capacity to ensure the sustainability of the programme and ‘create pathways out of poverty’. This objective seems a little less specific than the previous three, but its target is one of the most ambitious – the reduction in the number of children aged from birth to three living in workless households. By 2004 the figure should have fallen by at least 12%.
All local Sure Start programmes must provide core services such as outreach and home visiting and support for children and parents with special needs. Key principles must be adhered to, including the involvement of parents and carers to build on their life skills, and ensuring the most disadvantage families do not suffer from any stigma by ensuring that all local families can access the services.
Problems
In spite of the introduction of Sure Start and NDLP, the position of African Caribbean lone parents has merely changed for better because they do not have opportunities to benefit from these programs. Many lone parents look for opportunities to access training, the emphasis is on immediate entry into employment, and there are many lone parents who are keen to work but are far from ’work-ready’. They need to know that support is available to prepare them for the leap into the labour market. Low qualification levels in general mean lower wages, and many lone parents consider they are contributing more by being at home with their children than they would be in the employment opportunities immediately open to them. Although there are indications from Government that education and training is seen as an exit route from social exclusion, education and training for many lone parents in particular is not a real priority. They are, however, a key group of ‘returners’ that, encouraged into the labour market, will have much to contribute towards increasing productivity levels and meeting skills needs. Supporting lone parents into work in a tight labour market experiencing serious skills shortages in vital services is critical.
NCOPF quotes research that has concluded that how recently any training has been undertaken is also important. Those who train one year are twice as likely to obtain employment the next year as those who did not (although motivation could also be a factor influencing those statistics). However, whatever is made available must meet the needs of the target group. It has to be said that education and training per se is not seen as a key barrier to work by most lone parents. A survey conducted by MORI for NCOPF in 2001 showed that the main concerns for lone parents were:
having to spend time away from their children (34%);
the cost of childcare (28%);
childcare availability (19%).
65% of parents experience high levels of stress due to attempting to achieve a work-life balance (i.e. working and caring for children). Stress was mainly due to:
lack of paid time off with sick children;
working hours that don’t fit in with the school day;
lack of flexibility at work;
in-work benefits set too low.
Undertaking education and training courses can cause the same difficulties, often exacerbated by a greater reliance on benefits. The timing of courses and availability of childcare is crucial, and as research shows that only four in ten lone mothers drive and only three in ten have access to a car, opportunities must be local – sited in the areas of greatest need. In such a situation, African Caribbean lone parents are in a disadvantageous position in the labour market of the UK because they have a poor educational background, they may have poor language competence, and they have to provide for their children as well as many other problems which leave them not time and opportunities to improve their job opportunities. On the other hand, NDLP and Sure Start are very important programs because they contribute to the development of strategic policies aiming at the support of lone parents and their integration into the labour market of the UK.
Furthermore, the questionnaire has revealed the fact that many African and African Caribbean lone parents suffer from poor language competence. At the same time, their children turn out to be more proficient in English that increases the risk of cultural barriers and generation gaps between African and African Caribbean parents, on the one hand, and their children, on the other. The position of African and African Caribbean lone parents is aggravated by the low level of income because the overwhelming majority of respondents involved in the questionnaire (see App) belong to low-income families. Moreover, manay lone parents are deprived of the support from the part of their spouses, whereas the help from the community and state agencies is insufficient to maintain normal or average standards of living. Moreover, the questionnaire has revealed the fact that many African and African Caribbean lone parents still feel being excluded from the community because of their cultural background and poor language competence.