SIGNIFICANT findings come thick and fast in a study of welfare-to-work initiatives for lone parents published by Glasgow University.
The headline-grabber is that while the UK Government continues to insist that people’s health will always improve if they get into work, lone parents don’t seem to have got the memo. Perhaps that’s because the punitive regime which forced them to seek work as soon as their youngest child turns five, but now requires them to do so when children are just three or four, tends to force them into poorly paid, insecure work, adding to their stress and childcare worries.
In fact, studies from the US, where such policies were imposed earlier and more aggressively, showed little or no effect on the mental or physical health of mother or child. Meanwhile studies in a number of countries including the UK have now linked welfare to work with stress, anxiety and depression.
But the University of Glasgow policy briefing by Dr Marcia Gibson threw up many other important results too. There is no evidence, it says, that compulsory work requirements help encourage people back into the job market. In the good times, both those on welfare-to-work-type regimes and control groups tend to work at similar rates, giving the lie to popular stereotypes about “idle scroungers”. Likewise when the economies crashed, both groups struggled.
Another finding was that punitive US policies had seen children forced to care for siblings while their lone parents met welfare-to-work commitments. Parents spoke of a loss of control. In some cases, cut off from support they became “detached” from society, with no apparent income from either work or benefits. One study suggested some were being forced to stay in dependent, abusive relationships or turn to prostitution or crime.
To what extent is all this replicated in the UK? We don’t really know. A four-year study of lone parent obligations ordered by the UK Government 10 years ago was cut short after two when Coalition ministers declared the policy a success. Information from charities about the impact of forced welfare to work is much less reassuring. But ministers refuse to recognise the findings.
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