Today, Gingerbread are proud to launch Single Parents, Equal Families: our manifesto for change, co-produced with a group of amazing single parent campaigners.

Using years of real-life experience, thorough research, and collaboration with single parents, Gingerbread and a dedicated team of single-parent campaigners have come together to put forward our proposals for the next government. Our full list of recommendations is included in the manifesto, which can be found below, but we urge the next government to:

• Undertake a full review and reform of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) and introduce a minimum CMS payment from government
• Take action so that a whole range of flexible working options become normalised and available allowing single parents to find work that meets their skill level, supported as appropriate by dedicated single parent work coaches.
• Invest in a childcare system that supports single parents, including ensuring any childcare entitlements are available to those who are studying or training.
• Take action to ensure adequate levels of benefits are paid to single parents and make sure the benefit system is fair. This includes reforming the Universal Credit conditionality system, and abolishing two-child limit on benefit policy
• Introduce a process so that all impact assessments for new policy look at the impact that changes would have on single parents.

It’s essential for politicians to prioritise single parents and their children. The policies of the next government will shape the future, so let’s ensure they work effectively for single-parent families and their children.

If you are interested in finding out more about our campaigning work – please email campaign@gingerbread.org.uk.

Please also share our manifesto with your MP – you can tweet them the link using the suggested text:

As a single parent in your constituency, I wanted to draw your attention to the @Gingerbread #SingleParent #GeneralElection Manifesto (link to this page here) & ask you to support #SingleParentsEqualFamilies @MP’s twitter account.

A huge thank you to the Gingerbread election campaigns group, and our other single parent contributors for their work on this.