Policy | Why Reform of the One Parent Family Payment is Not Working and Our Solutions

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Today we have sent the document below to all Ministers, TDs and Senators to clearly outline why the current process of One-Parent Family Payment reform is failing and to put forward solutions. This document can be downloaded as a PDF here.

WHY REFORM OF THE ONE-PARENT FAMILY PAYMENT IS NOT WORKING AND ONE FAMILY’S SOLUTIONS    

Today there are over 215,000 one-parent families in Ireland – 25.8% of all families with children (Census 2011). Of the 95,000 parents in receipt of the One Parent Family Payment when reform of this payment was first announced in Budget 2012, none have benefitted from the reform and an approximate 10% are worse off financially as a direct result of being activated, all are worse off due to cuts. The calls total to One Family’s askonefamily helpline is approaching an increase of 50% in the past 15 months.

Reform of the One Parent Family Payment (OFP) is being phased in with the stated aim of enabling lone parents to move from social welfare into education and employment. To date almost 15,000 parents have been moved from OFP when their youngest child reached the age of at least 7 years old; with almost another 40,000 parents scheduled to be transitioned to other payments – primarily the newly introduced Job Seeker’s Transitional Allowance (JSTA) or Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA) – in July 2015. Currently, 65,000 people are in receipt of the One Parent Family Payment.

What are the failures of this reform?

This current system of reform, combined with cuts that were introduced at the same time and the lack of required supports, is failing families. More one-parent families are living in higher levels of poverty. Reform has done little to support lone parents in overcoming systemic barriers, as it has not been appropriately resourced and effectively planned across government. This reform does not address the lived realities and challenges that can be associated with parenting alone.

Reform Doc Graphic_How do we know it is failing and why is it failingWhat is One Family calling for?

Graphic_PAUSE and REFORMWhat are the solutions?

We are calling for changes in order to address the catastrophic failures that this reform process has created which have resulted in higher levels of poverty, and lower levels of employment and education for one-parent families. The solutions we put forward will make measurable, genuine improvements to the lives of some of the most vulnerable families in Ireland, creating the way for a more productive, inclusive and sustainable workforce and society.

Since 2012, One Family has also promoted our 10 Solutions Campaign; a holistic, low to no cost model of progressive reform that would make government policies more successful and life better for one-parent families. Below we expand on some of the negative impacts of the current reform process and summative solutions.

FAILURES AND SOLUTIONS

Reform Doc_Table 1

 

 

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Statement | Clarification of One Family Policy Position in Relation to One-Parent Family Payment Reform

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Statement

One Family is very disappointed by comments made in relation to our policy work on TV3’s Tonight with Vincent Browne show on Wednesday 1 April 2015. To set the record straight, One Family does not endorse the reforms to the One Parent Family Payment (OFP) as currently being implemented by Government.

We have stated previously that changes are necessary as one-parent families are continuously those most at risk of, or living in, poverty in Ireland today which is not acceptable. We have made numerous proposals and submissions to Government on how progressive, positive changes could be made – changes that would improve the lives of lone parents and support them to build better futures for their families – and actively engaged with the Department of Social Protection on how best to achieve this. However, One Family does not endorse these reforms as currently being implemented as they will fail.

Our policies and submissions are informed by the parents we work with, those parents from around the country who participate in our Policy Panel, those who take our surveys, and those who engage with us through our askonefamily helpline and in many other ways. These include our 10 Solutions which are low or no-cost changes that Government could implement which would help in improving outcomes for people parenting alone. One Family has always been clear that badly planned and implemented reforms combined with cuts will not work to move one-parent families out of poverty.

The comments made by Deputy Joanna Tuffy on Tonight with Vincent Browne on Wednesday could be taken as an implication that One Family approves of the reforms now being enacted. This is a misrepresentation of our policy stance. While the Department has made some adaptation to its original reforms announced in Budget 2012 – with, for example, the introduction of the Job Seekers Transitional Payment (JST) which we welcomed – it is simply not enough and we have consistently highlighted this. Reform should not seek to address lone parents as a homogenous group. Changes must be informed by the reality of the lives of people parenting alone.

The real impact of these current reforms is that many thousands of parents will experience catastrophic reductions in their weekly income. Parents being moved from the OFP to JST or Job Seekers Allowance include parents currently in part-time employment. Many will now be forced to give up their part-time jobs, due to a complex and unwieldy system. This will result in even greater levels of poverty being experienced by these families. We have called for free part-time education to be made available to lone parents in acknowledgment of their caring responsibilities, for those who wish to pursue it. For those parents presently in employment and education or who wish to return to either, the biggest barrier remains the lack of availability of affordable, accessible, quality childcare. Despite promises made in the past, this issue has yet to be adequately addressed. All of this is being compounded by a serious lack of consistency and clarity of information being communicated to parents at some local social welfare/INTREO offices, creating severe uncertainty and stress for parents already struggling.

One Family presented stark evidence of the real impact of the current reforms to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection on 18 February, as did representatives of SPARK. Deputy Tuffy chairs this Committee but was not present at that time. However, we have always engaged with the Deputy and with representatives of the Department of Social Protection and will continue to do so. As our CEO Karen Kiernan stated to the Committee on closing in February: “One Family has always called for and supports the reform of the payment. The problem is that it was combined with cuts. It was never really going to work and it has not been working to date. From now on, better implementation and planning are required. There is a lot that could be done but there are many errors on the ground about which we are very concerned. We have heard about the litany of cases of people who have actually lost money. We are concerned that the payment is not working now. In order for it to work, changes are needed. I will leave it at that. Our door is wide open in terms of collaborating and assisting.” The full transcript can be read here.

We will continue to work with whomever we can. One Family’s door remains wide open to the Committee and to the Department for collaboration and assistance.

Minister Supports One Family on Need for Court Welfare System

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Min Frances FitzgeraldToday the Children and Family Relationships Bill moved to another stage in the Dáil as Minister Frances Fitzgerald brought it to the Select Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality for discussion and amendment.

Having put much time and effort into representing the needs of diverse families in this legislation, One Family attended the Committee today and was delighted to hear strong support for our ongoing call for a comprehensive court welfare system and Child Contact Centres. The Minister referenced the pilot Child Contact Centre services that One Family researched and then ran with Barnardos. She spoke about the extent of support work required with parents sometimes before contact with a child could begin.  She also discussed our policy submission on the Children and Family Relationships Bill and we look forward to engaging further to support the development of a world class court welfare system through the upcoming reform of the family law courts and the two year review of this Bill.

Read our Child Contact Centre Services Evaluation here.

Read our policy submission on the Children and Family Relationships Bill here.

Behavioural Economics and Social Protection Policy

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Adam SmithOne Family Director of Policy & Programmes, Stuart Duffin, writes on the topic of behavioural economics and social protection policy.

Behavioural economics improves the realism of the psychological assumptions underlying economic theory, attempting to reunify psychology and economics in the process, and should lead to better predictions about economic behaviour and better policy prescriptions.

Because economics is the science of how resources are allocated by individuals and by collective institutions like firms and markets, the psychology of individual behaviour should underlie and inform economics, much as archaeology informs anthropology. However, economists routinely – and proudly – use models that are grossly inconsistent with findings from psychology. An alternative approach is behavioural economics, which seeks to use psychology to inform economics while maintaining the emphasis on mathematical structure that distinguishes economics from other social sciences.

Behavioural economics represents a reunification of psychology and economics. Early thinking about economics was shot through with psychological insight. For example, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith described all the ways in which people care about the interests of others. In his later book, The Wealth of Nations, he suggests that people get dinner “not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker” but “from the regard [of those agents] to their own interest”. The latter passage is one of the most famous in economics, whereas Smith’s earlier book on moral sentiments is ignored. Why?

The answer is that two trends led economics and psychology along different paths this century (although both were trying to make their disciplines more scientific). One trend was that theorists like Samuelson and Debreu worked hard at formalising economics mathematically, with physics as inspiration. Psychologists were also inspired by natural sciences – by experimental traditions rather than mathematical structure. As a result, to an economist, a theory is a body of mathematical tools and theorems. To a psychologist, a theory is a verbal construct or theme that organises experimental regularity.

This divergence in methods and ways of expressing knowledge pushed economics and psychology apart. A second trend kept the fields apart. In the 1940s, economists took up logical positivism with a special twist (called the “F twist” after its advocate, Milton Friedman). Because theories with patently false assumptions can make surprisingly accurate predictions, economic theories that assume that individual agents are highly rational and willful, judge probabilities accurately, and maximise their own wealth, might prove useful even though psychology shows that those assumptions are systematically false. The F twist allowed economists to ignore psychology. Many theorists also thought that relaxing rationality assumptions would inevitably lead to analytical intractability. Lived realities and new thinking have shown cases in which this is wrong.

A behavioural diagnosis and design process would provide a means of identifying and addressing key reasons that social protection policy in Ireland is not performing to expectation; uncover behavioural bottlenecks that are amenable to solution; and identify structural issues. The diagnosis process encourages Government to step back and examine multiple possible explanations for under-performance before embracing a particular theory or solution, thus improving the likelihood of success.

One-Parent Family Poverty Demonstrated By Household Finance and Consumption Survey 2013

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CSOThe Central Statistics Office (CSO) published the results of the 2013 Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) 2013 today, which was undertaken between March and September 2013. The HFCS collects data on household assets and liabilities, income, consumption and credit constraints. The figures released  demonstrate the effects of the overt discrimination and disadvantage experienced  by one-parent families in Ireland as a result of Government tactics and policies. This is shameful.

Stuart Duffin, One Family Director of Policy & Programmes, responds: “This is yet more very worrying data on the situation of one-parent families, in particular in terms of their level of savings, assets and also debt, particularly on non-mortgage loans. While lone parent households make up 4.4% of all households covered by the survey, they only account for 0.7% of total net wealth.”

“This is bad news for parents struggling on low and insecure wages, coping with rising living costs and no coordinated supports,” he continues. “Parents are short of the money essential for basics. This impacts on and can define a child’s life; denying opportunities and quality of life which increases the odds of a damaged future and a lifetime of disadvantage.”

This follows closely on and reinforces data from the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2013 published last Wednesday which shows that 63% of one-parent family households in Ireland suffer deprivation, and the lived daily realities of the one-parent families One Family supports.

Read our response to SILC 2013 here.

The CSO press release can be read here and the Household Finance and Consumption Survey 2013 downloaded here.