Ms Karen Kiernan:

I thank the Chairman and the committee for inviting One Family to this meeting. Prior to Christmas, I appeared before the committee wearing another hat. It is great to have the opportunity to address the committee as a representative of One Family.

We know that one-parent families are consistently over-represented in all measurements indicating poor outcomes and poorer well-being, such as poverty, deprivation, employment, homelessness, fuel poverty and poor living standards, all of which are particularly prescient at the moment. In recent years, there have been multiple independent and Government-commissioned research reports on one-parent families, all of which indicate the poorer outcomes that are experienced and that need to be addressed. These reports include recommendations from the Joint Committee on Social Protection in 2017, which is referenced in the current programme for Government commitments. The most recent data from EU survey on income and living conditions, EU-SILC, published last month, shows children in one-parent families are six times more likely to live in poverty than children in two parent families. We find this to be a shocking indictment on the policies that were supposed to be affecting and supporting one-parent families over the last decade.

The research mentioned not only shows the problems, it also offers a range of policy responses and solutions which, if implemented, could reduce child poverty in one-parent families. I chair the child poverty sub-committee of the Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures National Advisory Group on Children and Young People. Dr. Keilthy is also a member of that sub-committee. We support and reiterate the recommendations of the comprehensive report provided to the Minister last year by this group. We believe there should be a new national action plan on child poverty, with a specific target to reduce child poverty, as well as measures to improve outcomes for parents and children in one-parent families. Based on that, we have four main recommendations. The first is around income inadequacy, which is a core driver of poverty in one-parent families. The focus of Government’s response should be on social welfare income and the deep and persistent problems causes by the absence of a child-centred statutory child maintenance system. One Family recommends this be addressed by the establishment of such a service and also by benchmarking social welfare rates against the cost of a minimum essential standard of living.

The second recommendation is in regard to childcare. Parents in one-parent families have an additional burden when it comes to childcare responsibilities, but this is often overlooked by the State. For example, parents are required to move from one-parent family payment to jobseeker's transitional payment when their youngest child turns seven years old and again from jobseeker's transitional payment to jobseeker's allowance when that child turns 14. These are arbitrary measures. They do not relate to the developmental or care needs of the child or the circumstances of the family. In line with the EU child guarantee framework, we recommend free access to quality, accessible early years and school-age childcare for all one-parent families as part of a wider move to publicly-funded childcare.

The third recommendation is in regard to the creation of pathways to education and work. There are a number of barriers to education and quality employment that are, unfortunately, unique to one-parent families. These include an emphasis on activation rather than the education needs of lone parents, restrictions on accessing education support schemes based on housing supports and means-testing of grants. We recommend: tailoring employment and training supports; improving in-work income supports to make work pay, which is vital; supporting lone parents to take up and increase their working hours; and the introduction of a living wage. We strongly recommend that an education first approach should be taken to activating lone parents and eligibility for grants, specialist bridging programmes and other educational supports should be expanded.

The fourth recommendation relates to housing. We know that one-parent families are much more likely to experience homelessness, housing insecurity and poor quality housing than the rest of the population. People who are separated or divorced often face specific challenges relating to existing or prior ownership of the family home. One Family recommends a housing-first approach to increasing the output of built and acquired local authority and approved housing body social housing units to try to address the housing needs of one-parent families. We also need to make sure that both parents can access appropriate family homeless accommodation should they need it and improve access to support schemes for people who are separated or divorced.

I thank the committee members for their attention.