Ms Valerie Maher:

As Karen said, the second half of the presentation will focus on access to education and in-work supports. I will start with education because rather than taking a work first approach we must examine an education first approach in the context of low educational attainment among lone parent households. We welcome the commissioning of an examination of some of the barriers lone parents face is accessing higher education. It is being conducted by Dr. Delma Byrne and her colleagues at Maynooth University. We have contributed to that and I understand they have been given an extended amount of time to include the voice of lone parents. It is imperative that we talk to all of the people involved and particularly the people who are impacted most. Research has shown that better educated parents have better educated children and that those children have better social and emotional outcomes and better health. For families headed by a lone parent, the education level of the mother is more important for children's well-being than the type of family structure in which they live. Educating lone parents is essential. This offers a clear rationale for supporting lone parents to access education, thus improving their children's outcomes.

Unfortunately, what we hear from the lone parents we work with is that it is not so much that they do not wish to access education, but that there are a number of barriers in place that prevent them from doing so. We hope that whatever findings arise from the report from Maynooth University will be taken on board and that appropriate policy responses will be put in place, regardless of the investment that might be required to do that. The recommendations we have included in our submission to the committee are recommendations we have put forward many times over the last couple of years in our pre-budget submissions, so they are not new. With regard to specialist bridging programmes, One Family has developed the New Futures programme. It acknowledges that many lone parents are distant from the labour market and need specific supports to get them back into education or employment. Our programmes look at some of the barriers lone parents might have internally relating to motivation and self confidence, help them with some of the practical barriers there are in place and offer them specific supports to get back into education.

We believe jobseeker's transition payment should be extended to parents who are engaging education, regardless of the age of their youngest child. Currently, if lone parents whose children are over 14 years of age wish to engage in education they must transfer to back-to-education allowance, but there is an issue with that regarding access to the Student Universal Support Ireland, SUSI, maintenance grant. The link between housing tenure and people's access to supports to enter education must be broken. It is unfair that somebody living in social housing can stay on their jobseeker transition one-parent family payment and avail of the SUSI maintenance grant, which is an essential support for child care, travel to university and the various costs associated with education. In the absence of having that additional income from SUSI it is practically impossible for lone parents to access education and improve their future outcomes.

With regard to in-work supports, labour market reforms must acknowledge the importance of balancing parenting and work. Lone parents have sole parenting responsibility and that must be taken into account when we are trying to activate lone parents into the labour market. Some of the specific challenges lone parents face include the lack of affordable child care and precarious work, such as zero-hour contracts. Policies are required which promote access to employment, support the work of parenting and offer more flexible work contracts to allow parenting to take place in conjunction with work.

Transitioning from welfare to work is not a simple transition for many people. It is a complex issue that involves input and understanding from all Government Departments, not just the Department of Social Protection. It is necessary that parents understand this complex system and that they are not just being pushed through into work without a full understanding of why that is happening. As a result of the one-parent family payment reforms, lone parents with children over 14 years of age must now transfer to jobseeker's allowance. With that comes the conditionality of being available for and seeking full-time work.

This particular cohort has been disproportionately impacted because for a start, if one's child is 14 or 15, he or she spends four to five months of the year outside of school so the idea that such families no longer need child care is not true. In many cases, this cohort would have been in receipt of social welfare payments for a long time. We hope that officials in the Department have an understanding of that and that front-line staff are given appropriate training to support these people into work and that conditions are not being applied without recognising some of the challenges they face. We know that lone parents at work have been negatively impacted by the reforms and many have not gained financially. This can disincentivise employment, which goes against the point of the reforms.

It goes without saying that affordable and accessible child care is essential for lone parents to work. Lone parents who participate in the workforce or who are engaged in education and training require care of their children. They do not have somebody else in the household to assist them with that and must have affordable and accessible child care to be able to access education or work. There has been a public consultation on the new single affordable child care scheme which it is proposed to commence in September. We have some specific concerns on that scheme and our full submission to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs is available on our website, the link to which is contained in our written submission to this committee. We are particularly concerned about the schemes currently available which have capped weekly fees, with parents paying between €15 and €25 per week. Under the new proposal, such schemes will be scrapped. Quite a high number of lone parents access those schemes currently and we are concerned that child care fees will increase for those lone parents. Our recommendation is that the Department of Social Protection should liaise closely with the Department of Children and Youth Affairs in order that there is an understanding of how the two interact and nobody is sanctioned or made to enter education or employment as a result of the conditionality of his or her payment in the absence of affordable and accessible child care.

We believe that lone parents in receipt of the jobseeker's transitional payment should be seen as a distinct group with a specific set of needs. Indeed, that has been acknowledged by the Department by virtue of the fact that the payment has been set up. There is an opportunity to expand the availability of the payment to lone parents whose children are over 14 and who want to access education. This would take away some of the barriers faced by that cohort. We welcome the increase in the income disregards and the small increase in basic social welfare payments announced in the budget. However, there needs to be a broader understanding and awareness of people who are in receipt of overlapping provisions or additional supports from the Department and the impact of these increases. For example, a lone parent who is working part time and in receipt of rent supplement will not benefit financially from the increases because the social welfare increases are accompanied by a proportionate decrease in the rent supplement. A lot of these things can be confusing for lone parents and the system can be complex in that regard.

I have already mentioned our recommendation regarding lone parents whose children are over 14 and who want to access education. We also recommend that lone parents in employment whose children are aged between seven and 14 be allowed to receive the jobseeker's transitional payment and the family income supplement together. We further recommend that the qualifying hours for family income supplement be reduced to 15 per week. In the context of the reforms, a number of lone parents have found it very difficult to increase their hours of work and have not been able to access the family income supplement as a result.

We believe that lone parents who are in receipt of social welfare supports should be allowed to participate in community employment, CE, schemes but should be offered an additional payment of €50 per week as opposed to the standard €22.50 payment. This is just an acknowledgement of the costs of going to work, travel expenses and so forth and we believe it would incentivise more lone parents to use CE schemes as a bridge to entering full-time or part-time employment.

We welcome the opportunity to continue to work constructively with policy makers and relevant Departments, particularly the Department of Social Protection with which we have a very good relationship. We want to ensure that children in one-parent families become less likely to grow up in poverty and that Ireland becomes a fairer place for all families.

Finally, I wish to advise the committee that we intend to launch a report on the national survey we conducted on shared parenting.

It will be launched in the Mansion House on 13 January and we would welcome members to the launch. Some of the issues arising from the survey pertain to social protection. They include issues related to maintenance and difficulties being experienced by people who are sharing parenting in accessing payments from the Department of Social Protection. We would welcome the attendance of members.