| Lone parents speak out against poverty |
| group/org | Community Group in Glasgow |
| submitted by | Twimukye Mushaka |
Lone parents speak out against poverty
Jane (not real name) is a refugee woman from Africa. When she was granted leave to stay in Scotland, she did a full time course in social care at college. After she got her certificate, she was determined to work and luckily secured a job offer with a recruitment agency in Glasgow. However, one condition of the job was that she would need to be flexible to work mornings, back shifts or night shifts. The challenge was as a single parent, she could not find anyone to leave her three year old daughter with at night. Working tax credit child care element rules demand that she uses a registered child minder in order to claim a percentage of child care costs from Government.
For two years, Jane has been waiting for a childcare placement for her daughter and was told she would only get a place when the child turns three.
When the child turned three, Jane was invited to bring her daughter to the nursery but was then informed that the child would only be eligible for a free child care place in January 2010. In order to gain work experience, Jane has had to pay for her child care from her income support to enable her do some volunteer work with a local community group. Her daughter goes to nursery for 2 and half hours a day, at the cost of £6 a day which works out at £30 per week. Given the income Jane currently gets, it is very straining to get by on her limited budget, she says.
Jane would rather live on less money a week so that her daughter can get used to staying at the nursery while she prepares to look for work. Her major concern is that as a single parent, government needs to recognise that finding flexible child care is a problem. Her view is if government is to achieve its drive of getting people off benefits then they (Government) needs to consider allowing parents to pay any one they trust to look after their children even if they are not registered child minders. From Jane’s lived experience, it is difficult to find a registered child minder for night shifts, and for her with no extended family support in Scotland, lack of child care is her main barrier to accessing employment. Government needs to be flexible on this matter and failure to do so will lead to many lone parents like Jane to find it practically impossible to enter the job market.
Case study compiled Twimukye November 2009