Jobseekers

Single parents' charity Gingerbread says the reforms leave single parents high and dry.

Chief Executive Fiona Weir said: "The coalition government says it wants to make work pay and to support single parents into work, but the reality is that today thousands of single parents are being set up to fail.

"Government needs to act fast to improve availability of jobs with flexible working hours, improve the job-search support provided from day one of a claim, and increase access to childcare.

"Gingerbread welcomes the aim of new welfare reform proposals to make work pay, but the timescale for their implementation is too long for the single parents affected by today's change.

"We urge the government to introduce short-term measures to help make short-hours jobs pay, and to review recent decisions to cut help with childcare costs which will create a further barrier for single parents trying to get into work."

There are also concerns the reforms could prevent some single parents from entering further education.

Chief Executive of Family Action, Helen Dent CBE said: "Welfare reform is prioritising getting single parents of younger children into work, yet many low-income single parents with ambitions to find decent jobs face significant barriers to their education and training.

"Unless the Government leads on tackling these barriers, lower-income single parents will be frustrated in their ability to obtain employment that would lift their families off benefits.

"It is a shame that when parents have taken an imaginative approach to finding a place in the labour market by studying for a more unusual profession or overcoming barriers to study by distance learning, that there is no public funding to support their initiative."

There are many videos on sites such as YouTube with members discussing the many issues involving Single Parents, some of the views expressed range from completely idiotic to an intelligent and well researched opinion. Many of the idiotic never seem to discuss the fact that there are many men who are single parents too! It seems to suit the idiotic mind to wrongly assume that the majority of single parents are Vicky Pollard clones.

This lady makes a lot of sense in what she says and the issues that she raises. I think many of the very valid points she raises are things that many people have not stopped to consider because the media and the government has been painting the Vicky Pollard image of single parents for so long that people have have lost the ability to use their own mind and think for themselves.

The Guardian Report - Don't send children to school at four, warn experts

Save the Children - Welfare reforms to hit poorer working women, pushing 250,000 children deeper into poverty

The Guardian - Universal credit will make 150,000 single parents worse off, study finds