All former one-parent family payment recipients who transitioned to a jobseeker’s allowance or jobseeker’s transitional payment have access to my Department’s Intreo service. This is the first time that my Department is proactively engaging with lone parents.
My Department is now fully engaging with jobseeker’s transitional payment recipients, i.e., lone parents whose youngest child between 7-13 years of age. These customers are being identified and called for a one to one engagement with a case officer who assists them to produce a personal development plan. This plan guides them towards appropriate education, training and employment opportunities. As these engagements progress over time, it will be possible to analyse and report on the outcomes for these lone parents including training, education and employment, which will inform future policy developments in this area.
While the customer is on the jobseeker’s transitional payment access to these supports are potentially available for up to seven years. This is a much broader support than the 12 month engagement that normally applies for jobseekers from their one to one meeting. The aim of this broader support is to improve the individual’s employment prospects.
Former one-parent family payment recipients who moved to a jobseeker’s allowance (JA) payment i.e. those with a youngest child 14 year of age or older, gain access to the Intreo supports via the standard process for jobseekers commencing with a group engagement with a case officer.
Lone parents who are in receipt of a jobseeker’s payment have access to the wide and comprehensive range of education, training and employment programmes that are available. There is a wide multitude of programmes designed to cater for a diverse range of individual and specific needs. These include employment programmes such as Community Employment and TÚS, which are the responsibility of my Department. It also includes the broad range of vocational courses available through the Education Training Boards and higher level programmes, which can be supported up to Level 8, which are available through high level education bodies under the remit of the Department of Education and Skills.
