CPAG want to know if you consider you are being harrassed by job centre

I am using myself as the guide for you in this as I know exactly how it feels to be me, however there are lots of very worried lone parents out there who are frightened and will not speak up for fear of reprisal not only from the job centres but from the public at large, they would though stand behind me 100%.

I am a single parent of 5 children, 2 have left home, 2 are teen girls, 16,17 and I have a 9 year old son, my girls are at college full time from Sept and my son in junior school.

I recently attended my lone parent appt and have been told that from the 3rd of Dec 2010 I will be required to sign on for job seekers as does any single parent with a child over the age of 7, this being reduced to 5, I believe from next year.

I asked how I could sign on as available for work when there is no childcare provision in our area at all, and was told that thousands of others manage.

I have no family at all, having been disowned for having black children some 16 years ago so cannot rely on extended family support for childcare.

I do not want you or anyone else to believe that I am a lazy benefit scrounger, I am not.

I have worked in the past and have whilst on benefits always done good within my community and sometimes a lot further afield as a means of giving something back.

The reason I would like to mount a legal challenge against the DWP to these unfair changes is that I believe that it discriminates against the children of single parents in a way that is detrimantal to their well being.

If I was a 2 parent family I would not be put in the position of having to sign on once a fortnight even though I would still be entitled to claim working and child tax credits if the family fell within the criteria for claiming.

I accept that lots of 2 parent families do choose to both work but you usually find that one has a main job and the other parent will work say a twilight shift once the other parent is home to care for the children.

There is no provision for childcare at present and if we are to believe what we read, the budget that has just gone will put pay to any after school clubs/breakfast clubs being provided.

If they were to be provided and I stress on the if, with 13 weeks school holidays a year by definintion a child of a single parent will be forced to go into some form of childcare within the school holidays, I believe this goes against their human rights to family life and also may well go against the rights to have the same amount of time away from school as their peers.

I also believe that it goes against the UN convention which was ratified in 1991 and although it hasn`t been fully adopted can be brought to bear in court proceedings.

Articles 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 12, 26, 27, 31.

If the after school provision was in place, what happens lets say if a high school child votes with their feet and refuses to stay, the parent is at work thinking their child is perfectly safe, the teachers/helpers are powerless to prevent the child from leaving, who is then responsible if a child has an accident?

This I think is a very grey area and not one that has been looked at in enough detail, certainly job centre staff can offer no clarity at all.

There is also little/no saving of costs to the tax payer for putting children of single parents at risk, if you take into account the working tax credits and the child tax credits, then the childcare costs if there were in fact any childcare the bill can in fact be higher and more of a burden to the tax payer than it would be having the single parent, parent their child.

I am in no way advocating that single parents should be allowed to sit at home and do nothing, but there are many many ways in which the culture of something for nothing can and should be addressed without the need to stigmatise the children in any way at all.

I am also fully supportive of any parent single or otherwise who can manage to find good and reliable childcare and then choose to go out to work.

The children of single parents are being victimised and discriminated against when they have done nothing wrong at all and in 99.9% of cases neither has their parent.

I guess the reverse arguement would be to make every parent of every child who doesn`t have a job sign on for job seekers once a fortnight? That would seem to be the only alternative to balance things so that single parent children are not discriminated against.

I was told earlier today that if a legal challenge was mounted from a discrimination point of view then the Government do indeed have a clause whereby they could invoke the rule that every parent has to work, I say go for the challenge and let the public decide, at present as it only deals with lone parents, people on disability, people are all too ready be so judgemental and label us all, I wonder if that would be the case if they were to walk a mile in my shoes?

I do hope that I have given you enough information to have a look at.

I am passionate in my belief that this is so grossly unjust to all single parents and their children, and I do realise that it would be a mammoth task to mount this challenge but I am ready to be the voice for everyone else.

I do hope that you will feel able to help not only myself and my son but every other single parent in the UK .

Poverty is not only measured in financial terms, it can be equally measured in emotional terms, something that seems to have been sadly forgotten by many in this country.