Single Parent Rights

📉Did you know the UC savings limits have not increased since they were set in 2006?

👛These limits create barriers for survivors of financial/ economic abuse. They also limit many single parents ability to secure their financial futures.

📋A fellow single mum and Single Parent Rights campaigner has set up a petition to increase the limits in line with inflation.

✍️Please sign & share if you agree that these limits should be increased.

💪 Here Single Parent Rights we have campaigned for these limits to be raised and a house buyer ISA to be introduced which is exempt from the savings limits.

🧑‍🧒‍🧒Without these changes it's impossible for many single parents to purchase a house and is more costly for both families and tax payers as people are trapped in over priced rentals indefinitely.

🔗 https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/777605

☀️What’s your Single Parent Summer bingo score?

Share yours below 👇 

⏩Anyone got a full house 👀

SingleDad

🔊New research out from Pregnant Then Screwed reveals the shocking truth we know about the inequalities single parents face. 

👉Higher rates of pregnancy and maternity discrimination

👉Lower rates of retaining employment after maternity leave 

👉Greater childcare costs as a proportion of income 

👉Higher rates of rejecting flexible working requests 

❌These statistics don't just reveal the failings of policies, they show that single parents with young children are excluded from the wider support needed to sustain paid work alongside caring responsibilities. 

❓Think things need to change? 

✍️Write to your MP today to let them know that single parent equality must be addressed. 

🔗Use our template in stories/bio or drop us a DM for the link.

Do you have children under 5?

A journalist is keen to speak with a single parent with pre school aged children who is struggling.

It's on the back of research which shows single parent families with pre school children are more likely to experience food poverty than other family structures.

📩DM us if you're keen to speak with them.

We will be emphasising that the research to show the need for better support for single parent families, such as Free School Meals for those in nursery and healthy start vouchers for all families on receipt of UC.

Summer is well under way across the UK☀️

🧑‍🧒‍🧒 What do the holidays mean for you? The best and the worst? 

💬 Childcare costs?
💬 Lazy days?
💬 Juggling work and kids?
💬 Family time?

Tell us in the comments what you love and hate about the summer holidays as a single parent👇

SingleMum SingleDad SummerHolidays

📰As the new PM gets to grips with the new role, we've sent him a briefing outlining what needs to change. 

🔊Until single parent discrimination is recognised and tackled, inequalities for single parent families will continue to grow. 

🗣️That's why we are calling on him to:

👉Conduct a review of discriminatory policies and reform those identified as discriminatory

👉Create single parent lived experience panels to input into policy design 

👉Embed a single parent lens to all policy making decisions 

⚖️Only once single parent families are treated as an equal and valued part of our society will ALL children be able to thrive. 

📰I wrote for the Big Issue about our recent research into single parent discrimination in the private rental sector.

🔗 https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/single-parents-blocked-renting-housing-crisis/

🔊While the Renters Rights Act introduces some protections for single parents, it misunderstands the nature of single parent discrimination.

🧑‍🧒‍🧒When it comes to renting, single parents aren't only discriminated because of having children or being in receipt of housing benefit. They are rejected simply for being a single parent.

⚖️Until single parent discrimination is recognised as a form of discrimination in its own right, policies will continue to be designed in a way that doesn't tackle the discrimination that exists.

SingleDad

Last week, the PM apologised for the forced adoptions of the 185,000 babies who were forcibly taken from single mothers between 1949 to 1976. 

For many, this apology comes far too late, and for those families who were torn apart, the loss can never be undone.

While the PM acknowledged that the shame was never theirs to carry, the stigma which allowed the system to operate this way remains ignored. Forced adoption didn't happen in isolation, they were enabled by a society that judged, excluded and punished single mothers. 

Those extreme policies may now be behind us, but while single parent families are more common than ever, the stigma is still all around. 

Our work interrogating how single parent families are treated reveals how this stigma still runs through our systems. Whether that's requiring single mothers of newborns to single handedly earn the same as a couple without children to avoid being benefit capped, or creating a system which means three-quarters of single parents in receipt of UC and renting are living in poverty, every family policy is seeped in the same generations old stigma. 

Single parents have always borne the brunt of cruel and inhumane policies: from the workhouses to forced adoptions. Now the government has finally acknowledged how wrong these policies were, it's essential they also acknowledge that the stigma which enabled these systems is the very same one that allow structural poverty to thrive today.

To all those children and mothers whose families were torn apart, our heart breaks for you. We hope this apology brings some recognition and acknowledgment of your suffering. We also hope it helps to open up discussions of how single parent stigma must end once and for all. 

SingleParentStigma

All week we've been sharing findings from our report
⏩Locked Out: Single Parent Discrimination in the UK’s Rental Sector

👀The findings paint a worrying picture

📊Unsurprisingly, 95% of you said you want better legal protections for single parents

❓The Renters Rights Act will help, but will it be enough?

⚖️This isn't about pity, it's about rights.

🧑‍🧒‍🧒Every family should have the right to a decent home.

📑Read the report to find out more and write to your MP today✍️

🔗https://www.singleparentrights.org/rental-discrimination-research

🔊The financial precarity of single parent families in private rentals is shocking:

👉75% of children in single parent families that are renting and in receipt of UC are living in poverty - almost twice as high as the rate for children in two parent families

🗣️That’s why we’re calling for change

📑Read the report to find out more and write to your MP today✍️

🔗https://www.singleparentrights.org/rental-discrimination-research