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Press Release | Stop Catastrophic Cut of One-Parent Family Payment Now

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Press Release

Stop Catastrophic Cut of One-Parent Family Payment Now

Child and family poverty for one-parent families is increasing under so-called reforms

(Dublin, Monday 4 May 2015) One Family – Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting and separating – demands again that Government stop the current reform of the One-Parent Family Payment which is being phased in combined with a series of disastrous cuts and few of the supports required. The reform is failing. This failure means that people who parent alone and their children suffer the highest rates of poverty in Ireland today. Fewer parents are now in the workforce and it is becoming more difficult to access education; exactly the opposite of stated government policy. The reform is currently impacting on 55,000 parents in receipt of the One-Parent Family Payment (OFP) as they are moved to different payments; mainly to the newly introduced Job Seekers Transitional Allowance (JSTA) when their youngest child reaches the age of 7 or to Job Seekers Allowance (JSA).

Karen Kiernan, One Family CEO, responds: “Calls to our askonefamily helpline have increased by almost 50% in the past 15 months.  Half of the families in emergency accommodation are one-parent families. We hear from parents who themselves do not eat dinner every day so their children can eat well. Fewer lone parents in receipt of the OFP are working now (36% in 2014 compared to 60% in 2012) and many parents have had to give up their part-time jobs as they no longer meet new eligibility criteria. Work does not pay. This is a failure for one-parent families, and for all of society.”

Karen further responds: “The stated aim of this reform process is to enable OFP recipients to access employment or education and move out of poverty, but this is not happening. The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2013 results show that one-parent family households have the highest deprivation rate at over 63% and the highest consistent poverty rate at 23%. Combined with the cuts which have hit one-parent families since 2011 and without supports such as accessible childcare/out of school care yet in place, the real results of this reform are less lone parents working and more poverty for vulnerable families.”

Stuart Duffin, One Family Director of Policy & Programmes, adds: “A reform process that was meant to lift one-parent families out of poverty is clearly failing. A measure of the success of this process hinges on the engagement of parents with their local social welfare/INTREO offices, which is non-optional and threatens penalties for non-engagement. Yet we consistently hear from parents of the lack of adequate guidance and information available to them, along with some attitudes which they find distressing. Parents are being asked to put their trust in a system that has penalised, judged and targeted them for years; and on top of this, a system which now seems to remove their parenting status when their child reaches 7 years of age.  Local office case workers must be named persons with expertise to provide guidance and support, and readily available to parents being moved to JSTA and JSA, if an engagement process is to make a real difference for one-parent families.”

Stuart continues: “Department of Social Protection staff needs to stop thinking of one-parent families as a homogenous group. Parents with degrees have reported being advised to do cookery courses or basic computer skills courses; while those more distant from education cannot access the supports they need to start their learning journey. The reform process is resulting in fewer parents being able to enter or stay in education, or to up-skill. This ‘one size fits all’ approach is doing little to enable parents to progress so that they can create better futures for their families. Government must pause this reform process immediately, review it, and – if it cannot be appropriately resourced so that it can be successful for one-parent families – reverse it completely.”

NOTES FOR EDITORS

Previous cuts that have targeted One-Parent Family Payment recipients since budget 2011 include:

  • Budget 2013
  1. Back to School Clothing & Footwear Allowance (BTSCFA): Reduced from €250 to €200 for children aged 12+, and from €150 down to €100 for 4-11 year olds.
  2. Cost of Education Allowance (paid with Back to Education Allowance, BTEA) cut completely from €300 down to €0 for all new and existing BTEA recipients.
  • Budget 2012
  1. BTSCFA, from €305 reduced to €250 for 12+, and from €200 down to €150 for 4-11 yr olds; age eligibility also increased from 2 to 4 year olds in 2012.
  2. Ongoing cuts to OFP include Income Disregard cut from €146.50 down to €90.
  3. The half rate transition payment of OFP was cut for those who were going into work and stopping payment.
  4. OFP recipients lost access to half rate payment for Illness Benefit and Jobseeker’s Benefit, where applicable.
  5. Fuel Allowance was reduced from 32 weeks to 26 weeks.
  6. Cost of Education Allowance (for BTEA recipients) reduced from €500 to €300.
  7. CE Scheme participants, many of whom were lone parents, had their training and materials grant cut from €1,500 to €500; and new CE participants from 2012 could not get ‘double’ payment, just €20 extra allowance.
  • Budget 2011
  1. Cuts included the main rate of social welfare payments reduced from €196 down to €188.
  2. Child Benefit was reduced by €10 for 1st and 2nd child / €150 to €140; 3rd child / €187 to €167; 4th and subsequent child / reduced to €177.
  3. Christmas Bonus was discontinued (half-rate partial reinstatement for some last year).

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About One Family

One Family was founded in 1972 as Cherish and is Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families and people sharing parenting or separating, offering support, information and services to all members of all one-parent families, to those sharing parenting, to those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and to professionals working with one-parent families. Children are at the centre of One Family’s work and the organisation helps all the adults in their lives, including mums, dads, grandparents, step-parents, new partners and other siblings, offering a holistic model of specialist family support services. These services include the lo-call askonefamily national helpline on 1890 66 22 12, counselling, and provision of training courses for parents and for professionals. One Family also promotes Family Day and presents the Family Day Festival every May, an annual celebration of the diversity of families in Ireland today (www.familyday.ie). For further information, visit www.onefamily.ie.

Available for Interview

Karen Kiernan, CEO | t: 01 662 9212 or 086 850 9191

Stuart Duffin, Director of Policy & Programmes | t: 01 662 9212 or 087 062 2023

Further Information/Scheduling

Shirley Chance, Director of Communications | t: 01 662 9212 or 087 414 8511

 

Hands

Press Release | Marriage Equality Referendum ‘No’ Campaigners: Stop Using and Abusing Lone Parents

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Press Release

Marriage Equality Referendum ‘No’ Campaigners:

Stop Using and Abusing Lone Parents

(Dublin, Friday 17 April 2015) One Family – Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting and separating – is dismayed by the untruths being promoted by many main ‘No’ campaigners in the lead up to the Marriage Equality Referendum on 22 May. One Family rejects the suggestion that people parenting alone will lose rights if the Referendum is passed and notes the extensive evidence-base showing that children do just as well in one-parent families as married two-parent families when sufficient resources are in place.

Karen Kiernan, One Family CEO, responds: “As an organisation which has worked with and for people parenting alone and sharing parenting for over 40 years, we know that successful outcomes for children are not determined by the form their family takes. What matters, and what all reputable research shows, is that children who have positive relationships at home – whether this is with a lone parent, two parents of both or same sex, or with other supportive family members or guardians – do just as well as children from what some refer to as the ‘traditional family’.  The challenge we face in Ireland is increasing child poverty and again, research and our decades of experience show that it is living in consistent poverty that results in more negative outcomes for children, whatever their family form is.”

Karen further responds: “Campaigners stating that only a married mother and father can meet a child’s needs are not only misrepresenting facts, they are hurting any family that does not conform to their restricted ‘ideal’ and ignoring the wonderful diversity of families that already exists in Ireland. One in four families in Ireland is a one-parent family. These are wonderful families, with strong, resilient parents doing the best for their children.”

Stuart Duffin, One Family Director of Policy & Programmes, adds: “There have also been comments made that people who parent alone will have fewer rights if the Marriage Equality Referendum is passed or that unmarried parents are not ‘equal’. This is erroneous, untrue and has nothing to do with the referendum. All unmarried families whether headed by one or two parents will continue to remain outside the Constitution and extending rights to more people to marry will not make any difference.”

Recent research on family form as relating to outcomes for children includes:

  1. Growing up in a One-Parent Family: The relationship between family structure and child outcomes – Growing Up in Ireland: National Longitudinal Study of Children

http://ulir.ul.ie/bitstream/handle/10344/3638/Growing_Up_in_a_One-Parent_Family.pdf?sequence=2

  1. Families with a difference: the reality behind the hype – University of Cambridge

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/features/families-with-a-difference-the-reality-behind-the-hype

  1. Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/18/wedded-to-wedding-does-marriage-matter-for-children and  http://www.growingupinaustralia.gov.au/

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About One Family

One Family was founded in 1972 as Cherish and is Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families and people sharing parenting or separating, offering support, information and services to all members of all one-parent families, to those sharing parenting, to those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and to professionals working with one-parent families. Children are at the centre of One Family’s work and the organisation helps all the adults in their lives, including mums, dads, grandparents, step-parents, new partners and other siblings, offering a holistic model of specialist family support services. These services include the lo-call askonefamily national helpline on 1890 66 22 12, counselling, and provision of training courses for parents and for professionals. One Family also promotes Family Day and presents the Family Day Festival every May, an annual celebration of the diversity of families in Ireland today (www.familyday.ie). For further information, visit www.onefamily.ie.

Available for Interview

Karen Kiernan, CEO | t: 01 662 9212 or 086 850 9191

Further Information/Scheduling

Shirley Chance, Director of Communications | t: 01 662 9212 or 087 414 8511

 

Cuts to Carer’s Allowance for Lone Parents Reversed by Tánaiste – But what about working lone parents?

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Press Release 

Cuts to Carer’s Allowance for Lone Parents Reversed by Tánaiste –

But what about working lone parents?

(Dublin, Wednesday 4 March 2015) One Family – Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting and separating – welcomes Tánaiste Joan Burton’s announcement yesterday regarding people in receipt of the One-Parent Family Payment (OFP) who are also eligible for the half-rate Carer’s Allowance. That they will not now lose their half-rate Carer’s Allowance as had been previously stipulated is progress. However, we warn that Government also needs to urgently rethink how OFP activation measures are impacting on over 30,000 lone parents this year, particularly those working lone parents who will be hardest hit.

Karen Kiernan, One Family CEO, responds: “While this necessary turnaround is welcomed, the Tánaiste also referred in the Dáil debate on the Social Welfare Bill yesterday to 10,000 lone parents who are currently in employment, saying that ‘the majority will have an immediate incentive to increase the number of hours worked each week to 19’ and, being then eligible to apply for Family Income Supplement (FIS) and the Back to Work Family Dividend (BTWFD), would ‘be financially better off than their current position’.”

Karen further responds: “Sadly this statement again demonstrates the separation between Government’s perspective and the lived reality of one-parent families in Ireland today. The reality for most people is that they cannot simply demand that their employers increase their hours of employment because the Tánaiste thinks it’s good policy. This also ignores the reality that a lone parent with one child currently in employment and earning €200 per week while receiving FIS will be financially worse off by up to €38.32 per week after losing their entitlement to the OFP in July.”

Stuart Duffin, One Family Director of Policy & Programmes, comments: “This news will be welcomed by parents who provide caring supports for an adult; those who had lost their Carer’s Allowance entitlement of €86 per week last year and the 800 people who were scheduled to this year. It is a lifeline for the most vulnerable families with children who also care for family members who are ill, elderly or have special needs. It should have been just about the last thing Ministers should have considered cutting in the first place.”

Stuart continues:  “This announcement by the Tánaiste may help the rest of Government to rethink how we deliver welfare reform which is crucial for people in acute need. We know that lone parents want to work and 53% are already in the labour market.  What we keep calling for is provision of affordable, accessible, quality childcare which remains the greatest barrier to those parenting on their own in returning to the workplace or education. There needs to be a joined up plan of delivery across all Departments.”

The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2013 results published on 21 January this year showed that those living in households with one adult and one or more children had the highest deprivation rate in 2013 at 63.2% and the highest consistent poverty rate at 23%. Reforms and activation should not force any lone parents who are in work to have to give up their jobs.

While the Department of Social Protection has committed to clearly communicating with all lone parents affected by the changes, we are also hearing from parents about gaps in knowledge in many local social welfare local offices where staff are not familiar with the impacts of the changes to the One-Parent Family Payment. This can lead to provision of inadequate or incorrect information to lone parents and causes unnecessary worry and stress for one-parent families.

Lone parents want to create the best possible outcomes for their children. With the right policies, the right time-frame, and the right level of political will, choices can be made to enable those thousands of one-parent families suffering deprivation to grow out of poverty and achieve better futures.

One Family continues to call on the Department of Social Protection to Get It Right for One-Parent Families #GetItRightDSP.

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About One Family

One Family was founded in 1972 as Cherish and is Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families offering support, information and services to all members of all one-parent families, to those sharing parenting, to those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and to professionals working with one-parent families. Children are at the centre of One Family’s work and the organisation helps all the adults in their lives, including mums, dads, grandparents, step-parents, new partners and other siblings, offering a holistic model of specialist family support services. These services include the lo-call askonefamily national helpline on 1890 66 22 12, counselling, and provision of training courses for parents and for professionals. One Family also promotes Family Day and presents the Family Day Festival every May, an annual celebration of the diversity of families in Ireland today (www.familyday.ie). For further information, visit www.onefamily.ie.

Available for Interview

Stuart Duffin, Director of Policy & Programmes | t: 01 662 9212 or 087 062 2023

Karen Kiernan, CEO | t: 01 662 9212 or 086 850 9191

 

 

Dad and child's hands

One-Parent Family Payment Presentation to Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection

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Press Release

Get It Right for One-Parent Families

One Family Presents to Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection on Impacts of One-Parent Family Payment Changes

– Policy Changes will lead to Increased Poverty

(Dublin, Wednesday 18 February 2015) One Family – Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting and separating – today calls on the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Social Protection to petition the Táiniste and the Department of Social Protection to Get it Right (#GetItRightDSP) for one-parent families.

One Family is invited to present to the Committee today and will stress the reality of the impacts of changes to the One-Parent Family Payment (OFP) which will hit one-parent families this year. Almost 39,000 OFP recipients are being moved to the Job Seekers Transition Allowance (JST)on 2 July.

Stuart Duffin, Director of Policy & Programmes, explains: “This is a result of the decision announced in Budget 2012 to restrict eligibility for the OFP to people parenting alone whose youngest child is aged seven or under. However, the supports that should accompany this policy implementation to ensure its success– particuarly the promised accessible, affordable, quality childcare – have not been delivered, while one-parent families continue to suffer the highest rates of poverty and deprivation of any family type in Ireland.”

Stuart continues: “Over 29% of one-parent families are at risk of poverty and 63% of all one-parent households experience deprivation; this is despite the fact that 53% of lone parents are currently in the labour market. We are hearing from many of these working lone parents, who already finely balance household budgets on a knife-edge, that it will no longer be feasible for them to remain in their part-time jobs. These changes will lead to even greater and deeper poverty for one-parent families.”

One Family calls for an integrated and SMART action plan to help ease confusion and stress for those parents who will be moved from OFP to JST in July, and for the creation of a simple customer charter by the Department of Social Protection where claimants are given clear, sensible and correct information.  The Department needs to take responsibility for the impact its policies will have on families who are in need of service from it and other Departments as these changes take effect.

Stuart further comments, “It is absolutely clear that there is growing inequality in  Ireland,  that tackling it must be a national priority and that fixing the administration of  social welfare and its support services will remove a key trigger for deeper deprivation for those parenting alone. Also, it is clear that no child or parent should be going hungry in Ireland today. Low pay, rising housing and energy  costs are key drivers of family poverty, but the missing piece of the puzzle is that for many lone parents ‘work does not pay’ leaving families increasingly exposed to poverty of opportunity. Ireland needs a whole of public service response not a siloed service that leaves families struggling and parents demotivated.”

Lone parents want to work and they want to create the best possible outcomes for their children. With the right policies, the right time-frame, and the right level of political will, choices can be made to enable those thousands of one-parent families suffering deprivation to grow out of poverty and achieve better futures.

About One Family

One Family was founded in 1972 as Cherish and is Ireland’s leading organisation for one-parent families offering support, information and services to all members of all one-parent families, to those sharing parenting, to those experiencing an unplanned pregnancy and to professionals working with one-parent families. Children are at the centre of One Family’s work and the organisation helps all the adults in their lives, including mums, dads, grandparents, step-parents, new partners and other siblings, offering a holistic model of specialist family support services. These services include the lo-call askonefamily national helpline on 1890 62 22 12, counselling, and provision of training courses for parents and for professionals. One Family also promotes Family Day and presents the Family Day Festival every May, an annual celebration of the diversity of families in Ireland today (www.familyday.ie). For further information, visit www.onefamily.ie.

Available for Interview

Stuart Duffin, Director of Policy & Programmes |t: 01 662 9212 or 087 062 2023

 

 

 

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.