17.01.14
Policy Exchange urges extra funding for single parents
More support should be offered to single parents, think tank Policy Exchange has suggested.
A new report, Parenting Alone, calls for Job Centres to increase funding by over £250m to help single parents to find work. It notes that more than one in three single parents are not in any kind of work.
Policy Exchange has recommended that parents should receive more intensive training when their child is three and four years old, to help them into employment. They should also be allowed to keep some part of their in-work benefit that would normally be lost if they find a job.
Selected employed lone parents claiming in-work benefits who have not seen their income rise in recent years should have the opportunity to receive a bonus taken out of their benefit reduction if they progress onto more well paid work, it added.
The report’s author, Matthew Tinsley, said: “All parents, especially young single mothers, need support. It is right the Government extended free childcare.
“However, it is also right to ask more from people to find a job. Simply relying on benefits when you are physically and mentally able to work is not fair. Policymakers must do more to help the two-thirds of a million unemployed single parents find a job.”
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