LONE PARENTS who depend on social assistance are to be allocated welfare advisers within months of the birth of their children to help direct them towards training, education and work opportunities, under new Government plans.
Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin said 50 welfare facilitators would be available from September to work with lone parents and other groups on social welfare to provide one-to-one advice and support.
"We should start this type of work with a mother on the very first day and ensure she realises that her life doesn't end on the first day just because she has a child on her own," Ms Hanafin said.
"If a mother has a child on her own, she should be advised on all her options, like training, education, back to education support and basics like confidence, self-esteem, because many parents lose that very quickly when they're on their own."
She said, for example, that there was much greater scope to encourage single parents to enter back-to-education schemes.
The move to allocate lone parents with personal support relates to wider reforms being drawn up by the Government which are aimed at moving thousands of lone parents from welfare to work by making it obligatory for them to seek employment or training.
Under these plans, which have been under discussion for some years, lone parents would be required to engage in either work, training or education once their youngest child reaches a certain age. Government officials had settled on the age of seven or eight, but Ms Hanafin said this was too young and should be raised upwards.
While other countries such as Finland and Sweden oblige lone parents to enter work or training when their youngest reaches the age of three or four years of age, Ms Hanafin said these countries had a much better developed system of childcare support.
Some of the planned changes were piloted in rural parts of Co Kilkenny and in Coolock in Dublin. Initial indications are that the one- to-one approach has proved successful in establishing greater engagement with lone parents.
Ms Hanafin said she hoped a strategy on the new changes would be agreed by the end of this year, but it could take several years to roll out the new welfare reforms.
More than 85,000 lone parents are reliant on social welfare as their main source of income. Official figures show that children in these families are at much higher risk of poverty than the rest of the population.
"These plans are not punishing or penalising lone parents, it's about supporting parents to be full participants in society and not having to opt out of employment or education just because they have a child on their own," Ms Hanafin said.
"If we are seriously talking about tackling poverty, and child poverty in particular, then we have to support lone parents."
The new changes could also help to save the State significant amounts of money.
The Government currently pays out almost €900 million a year on the lone parents' allowance, compared to just over €300 million in 1997.
It pays a further €200 million in supports, such as rent allowance, to single-parent families.
Ms Hanafin said that the planned removal of the cohabitation rule - which bars single parents from collecting the lone parents' allowance if they live with a partner - would help to encourage fathers to pay maintenance for their children.
"Hopefully this will support a change in thinking for fathers to become more involved and that will support the child as well," Ms Hanafin added.
"Recent changes allow for more significant maintenance to be paid without it affecting the welfare payment."