Custom essays on Employment issues of African Carribean lone parents in the UK – An Overview

In the past, there has been a lot of discussion on the position of lone parents in society and the dependence on benefits and social housing. Concern increases with attention drawn to the number of teenage pregnancies and the fall in the number of those living in the traditional family structure. More than a fifth of all families in Britain are headed by a lone parent – this is three times higher than 20 years ago. There is, however, a huge variation in the needs of lone parents – one size doesn’t fit all. Their needs are influenced by factors such as race, age of children and family support network. There should no longer be a stereotypical view of a lone parent as a ‘problem’ as it has now been recognised that there are myriad routes into lone parenthood. It must also be recognised that no one is a lone parent for life as the dependency of any child inevitably weakens as it grows older, allowing the parent to make other life choices.
Whatever the needs of the individual parent, there can be no argument that the focus for the support of lone parents should always be on the welfare of the children. The rightwing argument relating to the cost to the welfare state and dependence on state benefits is misdirected – it is not the parent that is the focus of support but the children involved.
Where a parent is not in work, resources should be available to support them into employment that offers sufficient income to improve the lives of the family and enable them to come out of the benefits system.
The PSI, in its long-term study of lone parents, found that 85% of lone parents had worked in the past and almost all of them are keen to work again in the future. Benefits have been developed by the current government to encourage those bringing up families to work rather than rely totally on benefits. Working Tax Credit tops up the earnings of working people on low incomes and includes support for the costs of qualifying childcare. Child Tax Credit is a new credit available to families with children on an income of less than £60,000 per annum.
However, the best jobs need higher qualifications, and as will be discussed in the main body of this chapter, lone parents too often have few or no qualifications and out-dated work experience. In such a way, it is obvious that education is crucial for the employment of African Caribbean lone parents because higher education means larger job opportunities for them. In this respect, it should be said that education is crucial issue because many African Caribbean parents are deprived of an opportunity to receive education. To put it more precisely, many African Caribbean lone parents are semi- or low-qualified and they do need the support from the part of the state and children of African Caribbean lone parents should have larger educational opportunities. Otherwise, they would be unable to improve their job opportunities consistently and take a better position in the labour market as well as a higher social standing.
Furthermore, on analyzing the current situation in the labour market and the position of African Caribbean lone parents, it is worth mentioning the fact that they are deprived of equal opportunities compared to Britain-born employees because of language barriers. What is meant here is the fact that many African Caribbeans have poor language competence. Therefore, they are unable to afford competition from the part of employees, who are proficient in English. As the matter of fact, language barriers often become unsurpassable barriers for African Cariibean lone parents because they do not have time to study language because they have to take care for their children and keep working. Naturally, in such a situation, they just do not have time to learn language. Therefore, being deprived of an opportunity to study and to learn language, they are virtually doomed to have semi- or low-qualified jobs. As a result, they cannot always provide their children with a sufficient back-up to help them to get higher education. At the same time, their level of income remains low and they do not have ample opportunities to get better and well-paid jobs because of the lack of the language competence.