Single Parents in 2023
Posted 21 March 2023
We designed this research to provide an up-to-date picture of what it means to be a single parent in the UK in 2023, and to see what has changed since we produced our last report...
Published on 29 September 2020
Drawing on analysis of Labour Force Survey data, qualitative interviews with 16 single parents in London and discussions with Jobcentre Plus Partnership Managers, this report explores the impact of extending the job-seeking requirement under Universal Credit to parents whose youngest child is aged three or four, focusing on single parents in London. It presents an overview of the characteristics of the group of single parents who will be affected by this policy, discusses their attitudes to and experience of the new requirement and makes a series of recommendations for a range of governmental departments and bodies, to improve the long-term work outcomes for this group.
Single parents with pre-school aged children in London are a relatively distinct group in terms of their employment rate and level of education, factors which inevitably make job-seeking more challenging. Single parents tend to see the new work requirement for those with pre-school aged children as unrealistic, describing a shortage of suitable jobs, difficulties in finding matched childcare and the availability of limited technology to job-seek. Their experiences of Jobcentre Plus support have been varied and there is little evidence that flexibilities for this group are being widely communicated. The Covid-19 crisis is set to exacerbate some of these difficulties, and so make single parents’ fulfilment of the job-seeking requirement even more challenging.
Key recommendations
Gingerbread want the government to deliver on the personalised support that it promised for single parents on Universal Credit with pre-school aged children and is calling for recommendations for change from both national and local government in London.
National recommendations
London recommendations