Policy Submissions

OPFS contribution to inform the Scottish Government’s thinking about how community care grants and crisis loans should operate in future.

One Parent Families Scotland welcomes the Finance Committee’s decision to devote part of its scrutiny of the 2012-13 Budget and spending review on the extent to which it will encourage a preventative approach to public spending.

In our response to the child poverty consultation, we have called on the Government to indicate what measures will be taken to deal with the impact of UK policies on families, to review the availability of childcare and to increase employment opportunities which will lift lone parents out of poverty.

OPFS has responded to the Scottish Government's consultation on financial capability. We welcome measures to improve the way agencies work together, particularly the suggestion that the Scottish Government has a role in co-ordination of services supporting financial capability such as our Helpline and associated welfare rights advice. We would also like help to link them to local service co-ordination. We also seek recognition that some of the issues families face stem from a lack of income to withstand unexpected events, and that the delivery of public services can cause additional difficulties such as centralisation increasing travelling costs to access services.

OPFS welcomes the opportunity to respond to the DWP's latest green paper on welfare reform, "No one written off: Reforming welfare to reward responsibility." Our response is based on OPFS experience of working with lone parents through extensive service delivery & through ongoing consultations which inform our policy positions. This paper briefly describes the work of OPFS to give a context to the relevance of our input and then makes some general comments on the proposals before responding to proposals in the Green Paper of key relevance to one parent families.

This submission presents evidence from OPFS to feed into the Local Government and Communities Committee’ Inquiry into Child Poverty. The contents are drawn out of feedback from lone parents attending various focus group events and a major conference held in Glasgow on the 28th June 2008.
In all this involved over 60 lone parents. The key points from this submission are summed up.

OPFS' initial response to the abolishment of Incapacity Benefits and Income Support by 2013.

Tackling Poverty, Inequality and Deprivation in Scotland.
Scottish Government Consultation, Submission OPFS, July 2008

SSAC Consultation, Submission by OPFS, June 2008