Lone Parent Activation in Ireland: Putting the Cart before the Horses?

Abstract

Lone parents and their children are the biggest group at risk of living in poverty in Ireland, and activation is regarded as the solution to this problem by policymakers. While workfare requirements are now placed on lone parents whose youngest child is aged 14 or over, we question the capacity of the current activation policy to deliver an adequate income for these families. Drawing on evidence from other countries and the current Irish context, we argue that the absence of tailored support for lone parents, low levels of educational attainment, difficulties with childcare, the efficacy of financial supports to provide income adequacy and the failure to take into consideration their parenting responsibility mean that the implementation of the policy is fraught with difficulty.

Dual conditionality in welfare and housing for lone parents in Ireland: Change and continuity?

“…The reform abolished features of the OFP that support lone parents to take up part‐time employment. This decline in financial work incentives for those working part‐time meant recipients in paid employment were financially worse off (Ireland, ), whereas in‐work benefits were inaccessible for lone parents in precarious employment (Millar & Crosse, ). Lone parent's incidence of in‐work poverty rose from 8.9% in 2012 to 20.8% in 2017 compared with 4.2% for two‐parent families (SVP, ).…”

Street-Level Practice, Personalisation and Co-Production in Employability: Insights from Local Services with Lone Parents

“…Thus, keyworkers were sometimes required to help service users to comply with Jobcentre Plus obligations, before moving on to the real work of addressing their barriers to employability. (Rafferty and Wiggan, 2017), and limited by weaknesses in the availability of childcare (Millar and Crosse, 2018). Nevertheless, service users often described how keyworkers (and the broader MIW programme) had responded to their personal choices, aspirations and preferencesclear evidence of coproduction in action.…”

“…Unemployed LPs face specific barriers to work, including: poor access to childcare services; gaps in skills and work records, often linked to time out of the labour market due to caring; and low self-esteem and self-efficacy, sometimes linked to social isolation (Millar and Crosse, 2018). There is also evidence that LPs are at greater risk of mental health problems (Stack and Meredith, 2018).…”

The (in)adequacy of in-work benefits in Irish lone parent labour market activation policy

“…Prior to the policy change, in 2010 there were 92,326 recipients of OFP, 49 per cent of whom were in paid employment and in receipt of an income disregard (CSO, 2012) at a time when there was an unemployment rate of 13.8 per cent. While proposals for lone-parent activation have been in the policy domain since 2006 (see Millar and Crosse, 2018), the decision to implement labour market activation for Irish lone parents was made in the context of commitments made under the Troika bailout (the three-year economic rescue programme implemented by the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Union (see Hick, 2018). The policy was framed in terms of savings to be made in the context of reforming social protection, moving from a contingency-structured regime to one that identifies claimants by reference to their relationship with the labour market.…”