Chamber and committees

One Parent Families Scotland Submission

OPFS submission on the impact of Covid 19 on Children and Young People living in One Parent families

One Parent Families Scotland (OPFS)

One Parent Families Scotland (1) is the leading organisation working with single parent families in Scotland. Building on over seventy-five years of advocacy and service delivery expertise, OPFS provides single parent tailored information, advice and support, along with training activities, employability programmes and flexible childcare.

Our vision is of a Scotland in which single parents and their children are valued and treated equally and fairly. Single parents are involved at various levels in OPFS. In this submission we have used the experiences and input of single parents, experts by experience, to inform our evidence.

OPFS delivers ‘support for families’ services in 5 local authority areas and provides a unique national, specialist information and advice service to single parents and practitioners on key single parent issues. Information, advice, and support can be accessed through a range of multi-channel options. In 2020 /21 OPFS supported over 7,000 parents, children, and young people across Scotland. OPFS campaigns with parents to make their voices heard to change the systems, policies and attitudes that cause child poverty.

We support single parents who face daily struggles, often on their own with no support network in place, adapting to challenges and putting the needs of their children before their own. In this current landscape, with so many evolving issues, our work is for, influenced, and inspired by the strength shown by single parents before and during the coronavirus pandemic.

To ensure we understand the impact of Covid 19 on the families we work with we implemented a ‘COVID-19 Single Parent Family Impact Monitoring System’ gathering the experiences of single parents through our local and national channels to capture key areas of concern (2). We track and communicate key service responses and policy relevant issues arising from direct work with single parents. This ongoing feedback provided us with evidence which show the key issues are low income, family need, parent and child mental health and wellbeing and domestic and financial abuse

Single Parent Families

Poverty and isolation have an impact on parent’s and children’s wellbeing, causing stress, anxiety, and poor mental health. The challenge of being both sole carer and breadwinner has been magnified by the impact of the present Covid 19 crisis. We know from research by Caledonian University that 84% of single parents reported being lonely before lockdown. Isolation, loneliness, and poverty have a significant impact on mental health - causing anxiety, low mood, and depression {3).

The Covid-19 pandemic has intensified the deep inequalities already felt by low income single parents and their children, with the impact of job losses on sectors such as retail, care and cleaning where single parents (predominantly women) are employed, along with a decrease in availability of new roles. The pandemic emphasises the need for investment in single-parent focused support.

Single parent families face the potential for financial problems stretching beyond the immediate pandemic period. The crisis in employment brought about by Covid-19 is experienced differently based on class, gender and ethnicity with these factors contributing to who performs ‘key work’ and who is able to work from home (4). Research suggests that the Covid-19 crisis will affect women adversely as they are 47% more likely to have lost their job, many of these women are single parents (5).

Children in single parent families in Scotland are more likely to live in poverty, and for longer, than couple families. The proportion of children in single parent families living in poverty has been increasing in recent years. Most children in poverty in single parent families live with a parent who is not in work, in a family where there are young children, or where adults are also disadvantaged by health problems, lack of private transport or low qualifications. Where children in poverty in single parent families also live in a household where someone is disabled, or where there are three or more children, they are likely to be even more disadvantaged: this is important as many do so. A recent briefing from Public Health Scotland shows (6)

• Single Parent Families make up 25% of all families, and 92% are headed by women. Around 80% of single parents are aged between 25 and 50 years old and less than 1% are teenagers (7)

• Most (65%) single parents with dependent children in Scotland are in paid employment

• Four in ten (90,000) children in poverty in Scotland live in a single parent family and 39% of children in single parent families live in poverty.

• Two thirds of children in poverty in single parent families (66%) live in families where no one was in paid employment. A quarter (23%) live in families where the parent works part-time.

• Families often belong to more than one priority group. For example, among children in poverty: 40% of children in single parent families also have a disabled person at home; over half (54%) of children in a family with a younger mother are also in a single parent household.

• Single parent families are more likely to live in ‘deprived areas’. In the ‘most deprived’ decile, more than five in 10 (53%) of families claiming Child Benefit are single parent families, while in the ‘least deprived’ decile, this is one in 10.

A recent survey of 1083 single parents across the UK found that 80% of single parents experienced discrimination and 96% wanted single parents added as a protected characteristic in the Equality Act (8)

The impact of Covid-19 on children and young people in Single Parent Families

This written response is based on the everyday experiences of single parents and their children living in the communities where OPFS has local services- Glasgow, North & South Lanarkshire, Falkirk, Dundee and Edinburgh. It also includes feedback from our national advice and information service which provides support and a listening ear to single parents across Scotland.

We would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to share the experience of single parent families of the impact of the pandemic. This submission will draw explicitly on the feedback from single parents themselves, their experiences during the crisis. Across our services we have heard how Covid has exacerbated stress and mental health issues for parents and their children who were already experiencing stress and pressures of living on a low income. Some families we work with do not have resources to meet their most basic needs. They tell us they feel exhausted by the stress of living on a low income intensified by the impact of the pandemic.

Often parents find themselves cutting back on the quality or quantity of food for themselves to ensure their children eat well. Having a safe place to sleep is one of the most basic of human needs, yet families affected by the benefit cap are struggling to secure their family home. Many of the parents engaging with OPFS have been affected by domestic abuse still ongoing or in the past. This results in the (mainly) single mothers affected having extremely low self-esteem and confidence.

Living on a low-income increase’s parents’ stress levels, increases social isolation and loneliness which in turn affecting relationships and child and family wellbeing. In the longer term, poverty affects parents and children’s’ health and wellbeing, limits their ability to live full and fulfilling lives and can affect their life chances. The diagram in Annexe A has parent & child wellbeing at the heart and shows the interconnected issues which impact on this, with Covid- 19 intensifying existing disadvantages.

The normal coping strategies used by families on a low income have been badly disrupted by Covid-19. Parents and carers draw on and contribute to informal mechanisms of family and community support (for example visiting friends for a meal when money is short), and can turn to emergency support from local services (this now goes far beyond food banks, for example our local services often provide help with clothes, school uniforms, baby equipment etc. Many parents felt the increase pressure of extra cost with less income.

Research tell us that when the UK went into hard lockdown in March 2020, these mechanisms for navigating life on a low income suddenly became very difficult, if not impossible, to sustain (9). For example, the restrictions on household mixing and non-essential trips removed the opportunities for direct family and community support, while much local authority provision was disrupted. Parents and carers on a low-income highlighted factor that impacted on family wellbeing since the pandemic began.

• Having children at home meant higher spending on food, energy and on ways to entertain or distract children when so many outdoor leisure activities were no longer an option.

• Remote schooling in particular has been very expensive for families that have had to buy a laptop, for example, or arrange for broadband access. Others just couldn’t afford it so some children suffered the impact on their education as a result.

• The cost of certain items (most obviously food) has risen for many: promotions have been reduced and cheaper items are harder to obtain. Many families were forced to use more local but expensive stores to avoid public transport or to get groceries delivered, while charity shops have been harder to access.

• Restrictions on household mixing and non-essential trips constrained family and community support, while vital free services such as libraries were often closed over the period of lockdown and while restrictions were in place.

• Single parents unique situation was often not recognised for example we heard from parents who were turned away from supermarkets because they were accompanied by their children.

• Single parent families were often not included in the groups which were identified as being at risk by local authorities during lockdown, even though they were uniquely affected by being trapped at home with their children.

The experience of families with whom OPFS works with shines an unforgiving light on the absence of targeted, adequate support for families on a low income, who today face the ongoing impact of the insecurity of Covid-19 and increased financial pressure. It underlines how important it is to understand properly differential experiences across different groups in society

For example across all our services some of the families we work with have children who have been in care or on the edges of care and where the parent themselves is care experienced.(13% of parents using the Falkirk service are care experienced and 30% of the families have had some of their children removed, some are under Supervision Orders and some are under a Section 25 order.) The impact of Covid and the ongoing pressures has been particularly difficult for families in these situations.

The mental health impact of Covid on children has featured heavily in feedback across all of our services. For example, some parents told us the daily statistics of deaths and cases had “caused turmoil for children’s emotions” with some reporting they were “afraid and scared”.

In our Covid Impact Reports parents told us their children had feelings of anxiety about every aspect of their lives. They picked up on what their parents were going through and what was reflected in the news and on social media. Tensions caused by poverty, isolation and loneliness which had been bubbling under the surface in homes became intensified. In some cases, children experienced adverse childhood experiences for the first time.

Parents reported that their children have become more withdrawn that they were out of the way of socialising. With some children feeling they couldn’t leave their bedroom, or their house and parents struggled to get children to go back to school. Some quotes describe these experiences:

One parent said about her son “the light went out in his eyes”

“The first two weeks of home-schooling were an absolute nightmare”

“I am worried about the future with my children.”

“I am feeling lonely and anxious with everything that is going on just now”

“Lockdown has raised several issues in our family and both my daughter and my self’s mental health has deteriorated. Managing this is a worry”

“My teenage son and I nearly came to blows because of the pressure of living with very little money and home-schooling during lockdown. I have no other family support. Where can I get support?”

“I have a child off school self-isolating. I have had a benefit check and I am getting what I am entitled to, but I do not have enough money to live on”.

“I am having to stay off work because my child has to self-isolate due to someone at school. I cannot work from home. What are my employment rights, and can I get financial help while I am at home for 14 days?”

During lockdown and the ongoing impact of Covid-19 children had to stop doing all the vital things that are part of their everyday life, which are crucial to their wellbeing. Many were living with domestic violence, parental addiction, poor parental mental health as well as acrimonious separations and poverty. During the darker periods of lockdown, the negative effect on isolated parents experiencing a lack of peer and family support was traumatic. Some families had been pushed into extreme poverty experiencing stigma, shame, and loss of self-esteem.

Consequently, the fallout from the current Covid-19 pandemic crisis has been significant. It has led to a range of interconnected problems such as, social, educational, health, financial and emotional. For many, the pandemic has reinforced pre-existing inequalities. It has been especially arduous for young people and children living in some of the poorest communities in our society.

We are concerned that the impact of this will result in a “tsunami” of mental health problems among children as a result of Covid 19.

Recommendations

Family Poverty

1. The Government should immediately re introduce the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit (UC) it introduced in April 2020 with the increase being extended to those on legacy benefits and passed on in full to those subject to the benefit cap.

2. End the benefit cap and 2 child policies which increase child poverty in single parent families

3. The UK Government should provide greater support for families with children, whether delivered through Child Benefit or Universal Credit, to provide a decent level of support to families on a low income, and to prevent rising levels of hardship.

4. The Scottish Government should implement the increase in the Scottish Child Payment in 2022.

5. Missed schooling needs to be mitigated by higher funding for extra tuition for low income families as well as ensuring they have the tech and connectivity to learn at home.

Family Support

1. It's vital when thinking about children’s mental health we consider it in the context of their wider circumstances. In particular their families circumstances as well as their relationships, with their parents, siblings and peers etc.

2. Empowering parents to support their children within the family is one of the most effective ways of enabling young people to overcome poor mental health.

3. Due to additional vulnerabilities some parents need support themselves to successfully support their children and their mental health. Support parents to be better positioned to be frontline support for their children

4. A degree of anxiety is normal, children and adults are anxious at times and most children and adults have the skills and abilities to be able to overcome these but when they impact our everyday lives we need to be able to support children and their parents.

5. it’s vital to help children to build resilience and cope with stress and anxiety building their self-confidence and helpful social networks.

6. More investment is needed in mental health support for both parents and children.

"Children just don't walk in, they bring their families & lives with them"

The harmful effects of this pandemic will not be distributed equally. They will be most damaging for children in the poorest communities, and for those in already disadvantaged or vulnerable situations. The majority of single parents mainly women, are combining working with caring for their children – often with reduced or no support. Throughout the first lockdown, this was commonly experienced as an ‘impossible balancing act’, with single parents making constant trade-offs between their work and caring responsibilities. As restrictions ease single parents perceive an uncertain future, the key emerging issues for single parents and children include poverty and low income; digital exclusion; early years and school age education and childcare; stress, isolation and the impact on family wellbeing including mental health.

Every child should be able to have a home-cooked meal, a warm bed, clean clothing, and the chance to learn and play in their own home. But too many of our poorest children miss out on these essentials. It is widely felt by single parents that the unique challenges facing them and their children have not been sufficiently accounted for in policy and guidelines developed in response to the crisis. At OPFS we will continue to amplify the voices of families through their stories and participation.

One Parent Families Scotland

References

1. https://opfs.org.uk/

2. One Parent Families Scotland (opfs.org.uk)

3. https://www.opfs.org.uk/policy-doc/community-connections-briefing-papers/

4. Covid-19-and-inequalities-IFS.pdf

5. Coronavirus Crossroads: Equal Pay Day 2020 report | The Fawcett Society

6. Child Poverty in Scotland: priority groups - lone-parent families (publichealthscotland.scot)

7. https://www.gingerbread.org.uk/what-we-do/media-centre/single-parents-facts-figures/

8. Single Parent Discrimination Research & Lobbying — Single Parent Rights

9. M Power, R Patrick, K Garthwaite & G Page, COVID realities - everyday life for families on a low income during the pandemic, July 2020

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