Single Parents, work and poverty

'Well if you stop smoking, stop buying any magazines or papers, get rid of your pet, don't go out ever, get rid of your phone and don't ever buy any presents for your children then you might be able to pay your rent'

Going through income and expenditure forms with single parents who are trying to work is an increasingly depressing task.

Today I had 3 single parents who all worked as carers. All needed a car for their job and I wondered why any of them bothered working at all.

Housing benefit can disregard up to £45 of weekly income, over what the law allows you to live on, before it starts knocking off 65p for every £1 you earn from your housing benefit award and also reducing your Council tax award. As it's likely that your paying tax on that £1 then until you get to zero housing benefit your not really actually any better off by working more hours, that is presuming you can work more hours.

All of my clients were paying far more than £45 a week on petrol and on their car (insurance, tax, MOT, maintenance etc, HP etc). In fact their expenses more than consumed all of the working tax credits they got.

So there I was looking at the income and expenditure sheets saying to the client that in fact they should in effect pretend they were on benefits when it came to what they could spend. The fact that I'm even writing that is thoroughly depressing. Should a single parent in these sorts of situations need to have a partner just to make it worth while working?

As a taxpayer supporting all those who don't work I would hope the answer is no, but from my experience it's a yes!

I appreciate that the clients I saw were on low incomes but then it shouldn't really matter should it?

Additionally the rapid increase in petrol prices over the last few years, from 77.9p in 2003 per litre to 103.9 per litre (and rising quickly) in 2008 seriously effect clients such as those I saw today who already have no spare income. A pound a week on fuel is either a pound less on food or a pound more in debt. Can one blame such clients if they decide to give up their car and go back to income support.