Tess Ridge

Relationships of care: working lone mothers, their children and employment sustainability

Lone mothers are a key target group for government policies to increase employment participation rates. Employment sustainability is central to achieving this goal and thus it is important to understand the factors that affect sustainability. When the lone mother starts work, her daily life changes in various ways, and so do the lives of her children, and perhaps also other family members who may become involved in childcare, or in other forms of help. These social relationships – at home, in work, in care settings, at school – may be a key element in employment sustainability, and one that has not yet been systematically explored in research. This article draws on data from an ongoing longitudinal qualitative study of lone mothers and their children, which has been following the families from the point that the mothers left income support and started working for at least 16 hours per week. The analysis starts from the assumption that sustaining work over time is a process that actively involves the family as a whole and not just the individual lone mother. In this article we explore how social relationships, inside and outside the family, are central to the ‘family–work project’ of sustaining employment.

Excluding Children: Autonomy, Friendship and the Experience of the Care System

The concept of social exclusion is increasingly important in policy and research but has rarely been addressed from a child-centred perspective. Childhood is a social experience in itself, one that has its own norms and customs, and where the demands of participation and inclusion may be considerable, likewise the costs of exclusion. This paper explores the meaning and experience of social exclusion for children by focusing on a particular group of children and young people, those ‘looked after’ in the public care system. The sample involved children who had minimal contact with their parents, and who although not currently materially poor were vulnerable to a high future risk of experiencing poverty. They thus provided a valuable opportunity to explore some of the relational aspects of social exclusion. Using in-depth interviews to explore the meaning of friendship in their lives, the study revealed the importance of social relationships for these children, andin particular the impact of the care system on their capacity to make and sustain social networks. The findings suggest that the relational aspects of poverty are not just consequences of material poverty but can have a dynamic of their own, one that may have a particular resonance for children. This has implications not just for children in the care system, but also for children in families, where family poverty and the restricted social and economic integration of parents may also have an impact on children’s capacity for developing social relationships and wider social networks.

Lone mothers and paid work: the ‘family-work project’

When a mother starts work, her daily life changes in various ways: time, money, relationships, quality of life, and well-being are all subject to modification and potentially greater uncertainty. This is also true for her children, who must adapt to changed circumstances and perhaps play a different role within the family as a consequence. Sustaining work and care over time means that the situation of being a working family must become part of the everyday and regular practice of the family, and this actively involves all family members. This article explores this concept of a ‘family-work project’ through a qualitative longitudinal study of British lone mothers and their children, starting as the mothers took up work and following the families for four to five years. The research captured the experiences of the families as they negotiated the demands of sustaining employment while living on a low, but complex, income.

Educational Relationships and Their Impact on Poverty.

This paper explores the premise that children in poverty are disadvantaged in their potential to learn by the extent and quality of their social networks and educational relationships. The research examines the quality and sustainability of educational relationships between children and adults in out‐of‐school activities. We build a theoretical argument to suggest that children with a greater number of successful, formal and informal educational relationships stand a better chance of success in terms of on‐going learning and rewarding employment. The study probes how children act as agents in developing and maintaining educational relationships with adults and the constraints on the use of their own agency in negotiating more formal educational settings. It explores educational relationships out of school and compares and contrasts the educational relationships experienced by children in poverty with a matched sample of those in more affluent circumstances. In doing so, it illuminates the nature and scope of educational relationships in supporting children’s engagement with learning; identify perceived gaps in their experiences and capture their explanations of the cause. Learning how to develop and sustain relationships, how to work with others, make use of, and build on other’s expertise are vital in improving life chances and these are the skills much demanded by employers. This research contributes to the understanding of the relationships that support the learning of children in poverty and of the barriers that obstruct their development in school.

Supporting Children? The Impact of Child Support Policies on Children's Wellbeing in the UK and Australia

This article presents a comparative child-focused analysis of child support policies in the UK and Australia (an influential forerunner to the development of the UK child support system). Using a child-focused approach that places the best interests of children at the centre of the inquiry, it assesses how children have fared in each country in relation to three key criteria: first, the extent to which child support policies have succeeded in addressing the issue of child poverty; second, how child support policies have influenced the degree of conflict that children can experience between their separated parents; and, third, how equitable child support policies are in relation to children in ‘first’ and ‘second’ families. By focusing solely on childrens wellbeing, the article shows how competing interests and social and political pressures can influence and distort policy outcomes, perversely affecting childrens lives. The article concludes that child support policies in both countries have failed in several critical areas to put childrens best interests first. In response to issues and concerns raised by using a child-focused approach, key reforms to the UK child support system are proposed.

‘Nothing to do’: The impact of poverty on pupils' learning identities within out‐of‐school activities

This article reports the findings of a project funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which explored the participation of children in out‐of‐school recreational activities. The experiences of children living in poverty were compared and contrasted with their more affluent peers. The aim of the project was to explore these out‐of‐school activities as sites of learning and to identify the impact of the childrens experiences on the development of individual ‘learning identities’. Through in‐depth interviews with 55 children it was concluded that there were substantial differences in levels of participation and in the learning gained from these activities by two different groups of children, and stages in the development of their different dispositions towards the activities were shown. Attempts to identify the roles occupied by the children within a community of practice led the authors to question the extent to which the terms ‘core’ and ‘periphery’ can adequately account for the activity within such a ...

‘It Didn't Always Work’: Low-Income Children's Experiences of Changes in Mothers’ Working Patterns in the UK

Underpinning Labour’s welfare-to-work policies is an assumption that employment will benefit disadvantaged children and their families. However, the effect of low-income and unstable employment on lone mothers and their children is uncertain. This article draws on interviews with children drawn from a qualitative, longitudinal study of low-income working family life, to explore the accounts of those children whose mother’s entry into the labour market was unsuccessful. The article examines how children experienced their mother’s employment and the impact of ‘failed’ work transitions on their well-being and their perceptions of the value of work for them and their families.

Educational relationships in out-of-school-time activities: are children in poverty missing out again?

Poverty may be the major obstacle to positive life chances in the UK. Ennals and Murphy (2005) suggest that escape from the poverty trap is more likely for those who remain in education after the age of 16. However, school life may bring problems for children from low income families, with learning assuming a lower priority than social acceptance (Ridge, 2005). This article argues that young people in poverty are also less likely to participate in other learning activities. The nature of learning in out-of-school-time settings is explored and the distinctive features of the educational relationships that underpin out-of-school-time learning are discussed. We conclude that children from disadvantaged backgrounds who have acquired an understanding of educational relationships are more likely to develop positive attitudes to learning. Strategies to redress the added disadvantage that non-participation in leisure activities creates for young people in low income families are suggested.

Madri single che lavorano: uno studio longitudinale

Following Families: Working Lone-Mother Families and Their Children - Analysis of poverty dynamics based on large-scale survey data shows that there is limited mobility across the income distribution for most individuals and families. Some people may get better-off over the lifecourse, as their careers develop and wages rise, but overall most poor people do not become very rich and most rich people do not become very poor. Lone parents are at high risk of poverty in the UK, but this poverty risk is reduced for those who are in employment and who receive state financial support through Tax Credits to supplement their wages. This article reports on longitudinal qualitative research which has involved repeat interviews with lone mothers and their children over a period of three to four years. The analysis here explores the experiences of sustaining employment while living on a low, but complex, income and highlights the challenges faced in seeking financial security in this context.

Book Review: Children and Social Welfare in Europe

uses this to measure homelessness. There is a need for a more critical assessment of these figures and notions of unfitness before the result would be convincing. The numbers emerging for different countries are not intuitively convincing and are inconsistent with the authors conclusions that more public housing is needed to deal with homelessness. Belgium and Spain, with very little public housing, appear to have very low levels of homelessness compared with the UK which has the largest public sector of any of the countries considered. The logic of this data would suggest that lower homelessness is associated with less public housing, rather than the conclusion the author draws. Furthermore, the assumption that more public or social housing would deal with homelessness and exclusion is not compatible with debates on segregation and disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Good housing alone is not enough. There is too little in the book about housing markets and housing policy and too little attention is given to the limitations of a legally based right to housing and whether this could be a diversion from policies designed to raise housing standards among those who are worst housed. Overall, these three books provide striking evidence that successful comparative analysis either needs to be very focused or have a very clear framework. Where this is lacking, as in the Avramov collection, comparisons between countries become confusing and misleading and the opportunity to bridge different research traditions and build more robust accounts through comparison proves less successful. Alan Murie University of Birmingham, UK K. Pringle