With one in every four families with children in the Republic of Ireland a one-parent family, the Government urgently needs to give due support to lone parents’ needs in the areas of employment and income support.
This is the call of One Family - Ireland’s organisation for people parenting alone, sharing parenting, and separating – this week.
With Budget 2017 around the corner, the organisation wants the Government to start taking serious strides towards lifting thousands of children out of poverty. They believe that by supporting parents in one-parent families through employment, the Government can achieve this.
One Family is asking for a particular focus to be placed on developing supports rigorous enough to keep lone parents in the workforce, if they so choose to.
Valerie Maher, of One Family, said: “Lone parents want to work and to access education so that they can create positive outcomes for their children, yet the Government consistently implies that they need to be compelled to do so.”
“One Family’s Pre-Budget Submission focuses on the need to invest in services such as childcare, education and housing as well as the need to target income supports for Ireland’s poorest children. This is how Budget 2017 can help the poorest children in Ireland,” she added.
