A dearth of ‘family friendly jobs’ could throw the coalition government’s plans to get more single parents back to work into disarray, according to research.
 

In its emergency budget, the government said that 100,000 lone parents whose youngest child was aged five – rather than the former age of 10 – would be required to look for work from next year in a bid to save the benefits system some £380 million by 2015.
 
Measures introduced by the last government will already result in 100,000 single parents with youngest children aged between five and seven moving from Income Support to JobSeeker’s Allowance this year.
 
But research by charity Gingerbread among 500 lone parents indicated that a huge 97% had seen either no or very few positions that were advertised as being flexible or within school hours. A further 95% had seen no or few job-share arrangements, while 62% had seen no or few part-time posts.
 
Gingerbread likewise took a sample of the jobs available in two London newspapers over a two-week period in May to explore the validity of the findings. It found no job-share or part-time positions and discovered that 93% of the posts advertised were not flexible. Only 11% of the jobs were part-time and only 6% flexible in some other way.
 
In its report entitled ‘Changing the Workplace’, the charity said: “We know that across the labour market, there has been a fall in full-time working during the recession. But we think that, rather than opening up new part-time jobs to employees, employers are reducing the hours of their existing workforce to save costs without making redundancies.”
 
Moreover, the market most likely to offer flexible working was the public sector, but the projected fall in jobs here meant that such opportunities would inevitably become less available, the report added.
 
As a result, Gingerbread called on the government to ‘make the workplace work better’ for single parents rather simply put pressure on them via the benefits system to find employment.
 
“Benefit savings and tax revenues from more working parents will help Government meet its ambitious public saving plans. And greater flexibility in the workplace will lead to more engaged employees, and lower turnover costs for employers,” it argued.
 
Therefore, the charity proposed that the government make flexible working available to all employees before introducing legislation requiring single parents whose youngest child was five to look for work. It should at the same time also review the support available to small-and-medium businesses without a dedicated HR function, for example, by piloting an online forum on the BusinessLink web site.
 
But employers could also help by ensuring, for instance, that key meetings, training and social opportunities were scheduled within core working hours so that part-time and flexible workers could attend. They could likewise ensure that bosses were adequately trained to manage flexible working arrangements.
 
The study also suggested, however, that all adverts for public sector vacancies should include the possibility of job-sharing or part-time hours, while managers should be asked to set out a clear business case to justify those situations where they felt such an approach was not possible.
 
The last government’s request that JobCentre Plus encourage employers to consider whether vacancies could be made available on a part-time basis should be continued. But Work Programme providers could also be asked to demonstrate their success in placing parents in employment in order to encourage them to find creative ways to boost flexible working.
 
Introducing a system of paid parental leave to cover school holidays and child illness would likewise make a “huge difference” to parents’ ability to cope with family emergencies and put them in a better position to manage both work and personal commitments, the report said.
 
Therefore, a task force on Children and Families should be set up to investigate the options, drawing on international best practice, although as a first step, the government could introduce a set number of paid days for the care of ill children. This scheme would work in a similar way to Statutory Sick Pay for individuals.
 
To improve work incentives for parents, the government should also meet 100% of parents’ childcare costs through the tax credit system. It could likewise guarantee the last government’s pledge to pilot a scheme to increase the amount parents can earn before they lose benefits. Employers could also help here by advertising vacancies for 16 rather than 15 hours, enabling parents to claim Working Tax Credits.