Feature: Not just scroungers
By Doireann Ronayne
A couple of weeks ago, the woman next to me accidently hit the emergency alarm on the tube as she tried to move aside to create more space for a lady who was pregnant.
Although I’ve seen Londoners brazenly refuse to budge for 90-year-olds and kids on crutches, on this occasion, the heaving, sweaty mass of passengers could be forgiven as the woman had hopped on at the last moment. It was November, it was roasting and I was tired after a long day. But suddenly, I felt quite lucky as I thought about how much harder being on the tube must be if you’re carrying a baby around.
This woman – who was offered a seat after the emergency alarm palaver- was very well-dressed and looked as if she worked in the City. Unlike thousands of other mothers, many of them single parents, who are less fortunate.
It will come as no surprise that poverty levels are highest in the north-east and in inner London. Along with people with disabilities and some marginalised ethnic groups, single parents consistently fall into the poverty bracket.
I know very little about single parenting. Or parenting, for that matter. But I do know just how expensive and difficult living in inner London is, so I dread to think how much more challenging that must be with children.
Job centre phobia
I went along to a conference organised by the Single Parents Alone Network (Span) on Thursday at Westminster, eager to hear what enlightenment work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper would bestow. The aim of the conference was to understand better how to empower lone parents and lift them out of poverty.
Waiting for Ms Cooper to arrive I sat next to a distinguished-looking man angry at Jobcentre Plus and the fear its staff instil. Steve Swan, who is responsible for winning welfare to work business for charity Tomorrow’s People, dismissed the benefits system as “a dog’s dinner”.
In a heartfelt manner, he spoke of the difficulty he has in even getting some of the people he helps to sign on for state benefits. He said that they sometimes come around to the idea after he has made numerous attempts.
If you’re lucky enough to have never been out of work, then you can’t imagine what a nasty experience the job centre is, he explained.
The staff often barely look at you and will avoid talking to you unless they need a specific answer. Instead, they talk over your head to each other. About sandwiches. And instead of providing advice and help, they do their best to strike fear into anyone unfortunate enough to have to enter their lime green premises.
Very few people believed that the job centre was genuinely offering help to single parents. However, Surinder Khera, skills and employment coordinator at South Action Children’s Centre, has been participating in a pilot scheme which places the job centre in each of the three children’s centres in the borough of Ealing. She believes that this is making a difference. Undoubtedly a positive move, should it really be necessary to force Jobcentre Plus staff out of their familiar environment so that they engage with people in a human and respectful way?
A cool reception
When Ms Cooper arrived, she used an awful lot of words but there was very little substance to any of them. When asked a direct question about cutting support for single parents, she babbled about the child poverty bill in the Queen’s Speech. No mention of the unlikelihood of the government reaching its goal of halving child poverty in 2010, of course.
The group was angry and disappointed at the idea that single parents are scrounging off the state. And they were less than impressed at the minister’s attempts to score political points by Tory-bashing. At times, it was as if the minister got confused and thought she was in the Commons instead of addressing an audience that works tirelessly to promote better opportunities for single parents in work, childcare and further education.
They worry about getting a good job ten miles down the road and having no way to get there and not finding any childcare in the area. The single mother who confided that she could not afford £8 to send her two children swimming had little appreciation for such churlish baiting of the opposition. Ms Cooper certainly should have considered her audience more carefully when she spoke.
And despite the tax credits that the minister is so proud of, for many single parents wages are still too low. One mother said that she is worse off financially but wants her children to see her head off to work. “The only way I’m better off in a job is that my kids see me get up to go to work. Financially better off? Forget it,” she told me.
She argues it will take parents who have been unemployed for a long period up to five years to get where everyone else is. What does she mean, where everyone else is? “You know, buy a new fridge to replace the one that hasn’t been working properly. All the things in the house that have been falling apart because you haven’t had the money to do anything about it.”
This is something that the government does not take into consideration when it immediately cuts off benefits the moment someone has found a job. Continuing to pay benefits for a certain period of time would offer a real incentive for people to get back to work.
Skills for life
An overhaul of the benefits system and a shake-up of Jobcentre Plus would be an enormous help, not only to single parents, but to every group in society. After all, going back to work should not be a penalty.
Stacey Morgan, head of development at Hillcroft, an educational charity for women, also shunned the government’s simplistic approach to getting back to work. She explained that they offer a whole range of courses – from ‘Skills for Life’, an introduction to teaching, to Gateway courses that enable single mothers to get five GCSE A-C grades and enrol on employability courses which focus on soft skills. She highlighted the low levels of self-esteem among single mothers.
Anyone who has been out of work even for a short time will see their confidence dip. In a country that works the longest hours in Europe and a society where people increasingly define themselves by work, jobseekers can start to truly dread the inevitable “what do you do?” question. It’s not hard to imagine that single parents start to lose their sense of self-worth. Particularly if they are cut off from other adults and spending all day looking after young children. Ms Morgan pointed out that one of their biggest challenges is getting single mums to recognise that they have any skills at all.
Lacking in confidence due to not being in employment, the low self-esteem of single parents takes a further battering due to stigmatisation. Reality TV programmes that feature Britain’s youngest mums – who are usually single mothers – have done little to move the debate on single parents on from the concept of ‘scrounging’ off the state. How wonderfully refreshing if a television broadcaster decided to focus on empowerment instead!
The education escape route
Over lunch I chatted to Sue Cohen, director of Single Parents Alone Network (Span). She is the woman you’d want to talk to if you were stressed out or in a panic. Leading the round-table discussions, she exuded a quiet confidence, occasionally steering the conversation one way or another when speakers got excited and went off-piste. You get the impression that she’s the sort of lady that makes things happen, who doesn’t give up without a battle.
Span began when a group of single parents in inner city Bristol in poor living conditions decided to take action. When Ms Cohen became coordinator of the project in 1990, she said the level of stigmatisation and discrimination in the UK shocked other countries. She believes that the government needed a scapegoat for the high numbers of people on benefits in the early 90s and they targeted single parents. “The battering that single parents got in that era had its impact on the next generation,” she remarked.
Ms Cohen thinks that a stronger focus on education is needed. Fed up with single parents being forced to work in low-skilled, poorly paid jobs, she warned that if they are not supported to further their education, they are in danger of remaining second class citizens forever. She is angry about the government’s new policy of removing funding for parents with a child over seven.
Does she believe that the Labour government has tackled child poverty? Not really. Although there was a boost with the tax credits and a commitment to addressing poverty and childcare, some of the good work has been reversed with many single parents unable to do further study.
Most of the child poverty researchers, charity workers and single parents at the event believed the lack of integration across government departments is still poor and the ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda and the creation of new posts such as the Children’s Commissioner are not delivering on their promises.
As budgets are cut in every policy area, the parents at Thursday’s event were aware that they face even tougher months and years ahead. But the mood was far from despondent. This recession they will not be scapegoated. They are determined to prevent the stigmatisation of the 80s and early 90s taking root. And, judging by the remarkable strength of character I saw on Thursday, I’m inclined to believe them.
