The health of lone parents is unlikely to improve through welfare to work schemes, according to Scottish research.
The study by Glasgow University’s MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit led the Cochrane Review showed welfare to work interventions have “little to no effect” on health, contrary to the claims of successive governments.
It also found lone parents find work by themselves when jobs are available.
The research compared lone parents who were in welfare to work interventions with lone parents who were not. The system was the flagship policy of former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who quit the Government before the last general election.
The findings suggested the impact of such interventions were probably too small to be noticeable and found that effects on employment rates were small.
The study’s lead author Dr Marcia Gibson said: “Successive British government administrations have argued that mandating employment for lone parents will increase employment, reduce poverty and improve health for lone parents and their children.
“However, the evidence from our Cochrane Review indicates that welfare to work probably does not change lone parents’ health and may have negative effects in some cases.
“In conjunction with evidence from other studies, our findings also suggest that economic conditions are likely to have a stronger influence on lone parent employment.”
The studies included in the Cochrane Review were large welfare to work studies, conducted in North America where welfare reform was implemented in the 1990s.
They compared what happened to lone parents who were in welfare to work interventions with lone parents who were not.
The authors argue the findings are important because North American welfare policy has had a strong influence on policy in the UK under successive UK administrations since 1997.
A review by the same author which was published in BMC Public Health last year, suggested that welfare to work could have negative impacts on health and well-being.
Dr Gibson said: “Our previous qualitative review suggests that many lone parents linked welfare to work programmes with increased stress, anxiety and depression.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article