SINGLE PARENTS’ WORK ASPIRATIONS

A. Project Summary

More single parents are being asked to move into paid work. But jobs attained by single parents are often low pay and low status. The project will investigate diverse single parents’ career aspirations, and develop a model to help them achieve these goals.
The project has four stages:
1. Research on current work choices of single parents. We will use a review of literature and existing data to find patterns of single parent employment, pay and progress.
2. Research with single parents. Focus groups will identify the characteristics of an “ideal” job for single parents; a survey will look at single parents’ career aspirations.
3. Identification of career options. Interviews with expert will identify career paths and sectors which meet the key aspects of an ideal job for single parents.
4. Designing an employment training programme in one of the sectors identified in the previous stages. The outcome will be a model of how to support single parents to achieve their career aspirations.
The project is led by Gingerbread working with the Policy Studies Institute (PSI) to achieve the following outcomes:

• Better services and support: the project is designed to improve services for single parents, and to communicate the findings to policy makers.
• To create opportunity: the project aims to create new opportunities for parents.
• To improve voluntary sector research participation and knowledge: partnership with PSI will enhance Gingerbread’s ability to conduct research.
• Up to 190,000 single parents could benefit from this research.
• We will produce a key findings document and a main research report and will share these with participants, advisory group members, policy makers and those involved in employment service delivery.

The project will run for 16 months.

Single parents will benefit in three main ways:

1. As direct beneficiaries of employability programs influenced by this work (1-2 years after the project);

2. By having their opinions listened to and their experiences shape Gingerbread’s services and National policy

3. By taking part as research participants and as members of an advisory group

In the longer term (1-2 years afterwards), many lone parent families will benefit financially if the project results encourage them to think more widely about work options - we estimate 10% of all lone parents in the UK (1,900,000 families).

Government, policy-makers and politicians will benefit from insights into lone parents’ requirements from work, as will academics, other researchers and voluntary sector organisations. Service providers and advisors will benefit from these insights and also from suggestions produced by the research on how to meet parents’ needs.

B. Project Detail

A previous Gingerbread research project (Peacey, 2007) found that many lone parents felt the non-financial rewards of work were as important as wages. One mother said “I need the stimulation and the challenge and I need to be learning”.

However, evidence suggests that many work in jobs which lack challenge, stimulation and learning opportunities. Data from the 2006 Labour Force Survey shows that lone mothers are more likely than “couple mothers” to work in lower level jobs and less likely to have senior, managerial or professional jobs.

One in four UK families is headed by a single parent, but these families face disadvantage. The Government has set targets for more lone parents to work, and to abolish child poverty by 2020. It also intends to improve the skills of the workforce (Leitch Review, 2006). Progress towards these targets has stalled. The poverty rate for single parents’ children has remained constant at 52% for two years; the lone parent employment rate fell in 2008 to 55%; and 32% of lone parents in part time work are still poor. Single parents remain substantially less likely than couple families to hold qualifications. While most lone parents want to work - frequently saying they think it is part of being a good role model for children, employment in low skill low pay jobs can lead to stress and financial difficulties (Miller and Ridge 2008).

There are approximately 850,000 non-working lone parents, most of whom will shortly be facing a requirement to work or to prepare for work following recent welfare reforms. By October 2010 all lone parents on benefits whose youngest child is seven will have to seek work. These changes may restrict their ability to access training provision and develop new skills. Planned changes mean that non-working lone parents with children aged three to seven will have to “prepare for work”.

Data from the Family and Children Study (FACS-analysed for this application) indicates that single mothers earn less than couple mothers, after controlling for working hours and qualifications. It appears that lone parents are less likely to progress in work than partnered mothers. Evidence from the Government's Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project showed that where lone parents’ earnings increased, this was through working longer hours rather than through better-paid work (Riccio et al, 2008).

Some work exists on lone parents’ thoughts on work and aspirations for improvement, including the ERA project (Riccio et al, 2008). However, this ASPIRATIONS project has three novel aspects: firstly, it is designed to lead to the development of a new service for lone parents. Secondly, it uses a different approach to investigate how aspirations and key work characteristics vary for sub-groups of parents. Thirdly, it includes lone parents in the design and control of the work.

Our project has four stages. The first three are research stages and feed into the fourth; the design of a new employability program for single parents based on the findings of the research. The research stages have seven aims, detailed below. We will use several approaches: analysis of existing data and new questionnaire data, analysis of focus groups and expert interviews, and literature review.

1. Research into the current work and career choices of lone parents.

This stage has two parts: examining existing data to give a clear picture of single parents in work and how they compare to couple parents, and a literature review summarising existing work on lone parents’ requirements from a job and helpful training programmes.

Aim 1. To establish the patterns of single parent employment at present and compare these with the employment of mothers in couples.

Aim 2. To establish how wages and career progress relate to job type and employment sector for lone parents.

Aims 1 and 2 will be met by investigating existing data to examine the work and career choices of lone parents who have taken part in national surveys. This will be undertaken by Gingerbread with advice from PSI. Preliminary analysis of Family and Children Survey (FACS) and Labour Force Survey (LFS) data has revealed that lone mothers are more likely to be in jobs of a lower socio-economic category, and that they have lower wages even with the same qualifications as mothers in couples. We will refine and extend this work to give an accurate picture of single parents in work and describe differences between sub-groups where possible, reflecting the diversity of lone parent families.

Aim 3. To bring together existing work on single parents’ requirements from work.

This will be achieved through a review of the literature. This part of the work will be conducted by PSI who have expertise in the area of lone parents and employment as well as in reviewing and appraising research evidence. The literature review will provide a comprehensive review and appraisal of the existing evidence on:
- the delivery and outcomes of previous employment programmes for lone parents;
- the existing literature on lone parents’ advancement aspirations and perceptions of job quality (ie what constitutes “a good job”);

Many programmes introduced to move lone parents into work and improve their retention and progress in work have been independently evaluated. A review of these evaluations' findings can usefully inform the design of a lone parent employability programme in stage 4 of this research. The review will identify the key factors associated with successful programme outcomes and assess which strategies are most effective for sustainable employment. The analysis of lone parents’ aspirations and perceptions of job quality will inform the next stage of the research.

2. Research with single parents.
This stage engages with our service users as research participants and then at the end of the process, invites their feedback and seeks recommendations from them on how to make use of the findings - providing a vital “reality check”. There are three aims to this stage of the project.

Aim 4. To identify the key characteristics of an 'ideal job'.

We will investigate the emphasis parents place on different aspects of paid work: wages, working hours, proximity to home, chances of progress in work, friendliness and sociability of the workplace, terms and conditions of employment which affect how well a job can fit around the family, personal interest in the work, the perception of how useful the work is to wider society, and other factors that are likely to emerge. We use the term 'key characteristics' to describe these.

This will be achieved through a three-stage approach.

STAGE1. Focus group discussions with six groups of between 5 and 7 lone parents will identify which characteristics of a job lone parents would consider when searching for work or thinking about career choices. The first half of the discussion will identify what key characteristics parents consider when searching for work, and the second half will be a points allocation exercise where the group decide jointly how much value to place on each characteristic. This will indicate the relative importance of key characteristics, and allow insight into parents' decision-making processes when considering aspects of work. Discussion will be electronically recorded, and led and moderated by Gingerbread's researcher Amy Skipp who has experience of designing and moderating focus groups.

Three groups will be run with working parents and three groups of non-working parents, because research suggests that lone parents may develop different views and aspirations about employment once they have been in work for a period of time. The groups will be held in London, Manchester and Cardiff, where Gingerbread has offices and good local knowledge. The Cardiff groups will focus on parents living in rural areas. Parents living locally will be identified from our database of 18,000 members and invited, by letter and follow-up phone call, to join a group. When recruiting to the groups we will record demographic data and ensure that our groups are varied on these measures, and, if possible, that the groups’ composition reflects the known demographic characteristics of lone parents.

Focus group participants will receive a £20 'thank you' shopping voucher as recognition of their time and contribution and will have childcare expenses met.

The transcripts will be analysed using a thematic analysis approach. Broad thematic categories will be identified in the data by careful reading of the transcripts, these categories will then be broken down further and coded by themes and sub-themes. Particular attention will be paid to understanding why parents are making their choices about work's key aspects, and the researchers will be alert to new 'key characteristics' which emerge from discussion.

The research with focus groups is not intended to be representative of all lone parents, nor will we imply that it is. Rather, it is intended to allow insight into the kinds of things that lone parents feel are important in a job, and the factors that they take into account when deciding whether a job is a 'good job'. It will also be the essential first stage in the design of the questionnaire research, described below.

STAGE 2. The focus group and literature review findings will feed into the development of a questionnaire. Lone parents (Gingerbread’s members) will be asked to take part in an online questionnaire which will collect demographic data on age, sex, number and age of children, current employment type and status, urban/rural residence and educational qualifications, and ethnic background and disability status of self and child. The questionnaire will be piloted with two Gingerbread Groups of lone parents (informal meeting groups). Online participants will then repeat the same 'points allocation' exercise as the focus groups to identify the key characteristics in their own 'ideal job'. We expect to collect data from at least 500 individuals. This will identify which are the most important key characteristics of work to lone parents overall to support Aim 5.

Aim 5. To develop a typology of single parents' career aspirations.

Single parents are a highly varied group and we do not envisage that this research will suggest a 'one-size-fits-all' approach, although it will be useful for policy makers and employment service providers to know what the most popular key characteristics are. Where the data allows, we will identify whether parents’ priorities vary with such characteristics as disability status, ethnicity and gender. The data from the questionnaire survey will be further analysed to determine whether other useful categories of parents emerge from the data. For example, some things that might emerge could be one 'cluster' of highly-qualified parents who are prepared to trade-off high salaries for a lower income and shorter hours, and another 'cluster' of parents who have low qualifications who place a high priority on in-work training. Such groups would be looking for different types of work and services working with these parents would increase their success if the approach and support they offered was tailored. (These are examples and we would not approach the data with predetermined categories in mind).

Previous experience with online research with lone parents has shown that response rates improve dramatically with an incentive to participate. We will maximise participation by offering participants the chance to win one of twenty £10 vouchers. The use of incentives can affect the representativeness of a research sample, but we feel that the survey sample does not need to be completely representative of lone parents in general: we are aiming for an indication of the important key characteristics rather than trying to describe the whole population of single parents, we also feel that the typology analysis does not require a representative sample in order to identify useful groupings. We will emphasise in reports and dissemination that this sample has not been designed to be representative and will also show how participants compare to the whole lone parent population. Gingerbread will conduct this section of the work with some support from PSI.

Aim 6. To gain feedback and comment from parents on possible career options.

STAGE 3. The original focus groups will be reconvened for discussion of the findings from the expert interview and desk-based work detailed below. Discussion will be recorded, transcribed and analysed in the same way as the first round of focus groups. We may need to 'top up' the groups with new members if we cannot re-contact all the original participants and will follow the same recruitment and consent procedures. Discussion will focus on parents' initial 'gut feelings' about the proposed ideas, followed by closer examination of the reasons behind these feelings and, any barriers that exist and how they could be overcome. This is an important and participatory element of the research; providing new insights and ideas we could not get elsewhere.

3. Identification of jobs and careers that meet most or all of parents' main priorities

Aim 7.  Identify at least one suitable job, career path or training option for each major “cluster” of lone parents.

This stage will take forwards the findings of the first stages to identify careers or employment sectors that contain some or all of the key characteristics which the main groups of parents identified. The composition of our sample of interviewed experts will depend to some extent on the findings of the prior research stages. However we would expect to include experienced careers advisors, staff from large and small training providers, and experts (from academia, policy or economics) who have a good overview of the labour market. Our advisory groups and PSI will be consulted on this stage of the research.

We will interview 15 to 20 experts from a variety of backgrounds. We will explore their perceptions about “suitable jobs” for lone parents and challenge them to think more widely and produce suggestions for work and employment sectors that could meet these needs. We will also discuss employers’ attitudes to lone parents and possible barriers to employing lone parents. Interviews will be recorded and transcribed. They will then be analysed and shared with our advisory groups.

4. Design of a pilot employability program in a new area for Gingerbread

This final stage is largely desk-based and will demonstrate how the findings from the research can be used in practice. We will design an employability program for which we can then seek partners and funding towards and after the end of this project.

Gingerbread has substantial experience running high-quality programs for lone parents which give them valuable work experience, increase work-related skills, and/or move them into paid work or closer to employment. Our largest projects at present are with Marks and Spencer, Barclaycard, and Manchester City Council but we also run many smaller community-based projects. Overall, around 650 lone parents go through one of our programs each year and we have an excellent record at helping parents to move into work. We are ideally placed to make practical use of the research findings by using them as the basis for designing a new high-quality programme for single parents.

The design of a pilot project will consist of the following steps:

- Gingerbread staff brainstorm the results of the research, identify objectives for a pilot model and scope out an action plan for developing a model in an identified type of work.
- When determining the identified area of work we will take into account the following vital factors: market demand for the skills or employment sector identified, sustainability of the work, and lone parent feedback from the second focus group round. We may consider the prospects in this field for progress, and the potential earnings of parents working in this area, but only if parents themselves have identified these as key characteristics of good work.
- Identification of key experts and stakeholders within this field
- Review findings from experts and draft outline for pilot model
- Draft model, agree internally and circulate to experts and stakeholders for comment
- Review comment feedback from experts and adapt model accordingly
- Finalise model and write up in detail - sign off internally.
- Write up detailed and outline versions of the model for external use.


C. Research outputs

The three research stages will be written up as the project proceeds, with the aim of producing an in-depth Research Report at the end of the project covering the background, methodology, results and discussion of all three stages. The Report will be shared with our key stakeholders and available through our website for anyone with an interest in the details of the work. The report will also be summarised in a “Key Findings” document designed for wide dissemination. This will include an outline of the resulting new employability program, described above. The Key Findings publication will be the main way of telling our audiences about our findings.

Gingerbread will write most of the content of both reports, with input from PSI, who will write the sections on the literature review. As the work proceeds we will share drafts with our key stakeholders and with lone parents through our advisory groups and act on their comments and recommendations where possible. There will also be a detailed version of the employability program, which we will be able to use to seek funding and partners.

D. Monitoring

The research will be project managed by Gingerbread’s Director of Policy, Advice and Communications. The progress of the project will be monitored and evaluated on an ongoing basis against the project plan. This includes regular opportunities to communicate with stakeholders and research participants. Regular project progress reviews will happen via specific monthly meetings of the project team (to include performance against budget) as well as in regular fortnightly supervisory meetings between the Director of Policy Advice and Communications and the Research and Policy Officer. This will also provide the opportunity to identify issues and trends and the action required to respond to them. Any serious challenges will be monitored closely to ensure that the identified action is taken and desired outcomes are being achieved. The project plan also includes three reports back to Gingerbread’s senior management and board of trustees who have overall responsibility for all Gingerbread’s work.

We will recruit two advisory groups: one consisting of lone parents with a wide variety of work and career experience, and one consisting of other key stakeholders. These groups will advise on research design and conduct in order to maximise the chances of the results of the research being appropriate and useful to all our important audiences. We will incorporate and act on the groups’ recommendations wherever possible. In the very unlikely event of serious disagreement between the research partners and an advisory group, the research partners reserve the right not to take all recommendations on board and commit to providing written reasons why to the members of both advisory groups, to the Gingerbread board and to the BIG Lottery Fund.
Gingerbread will disseminate information and feedback about the project to both the expert and the lone parent advisory groups on a regular basis. We will also report to the BIG Lottery Fund as required.
Gingerbread's ethos is that we can only continue to be the unique centre of expertise for single parent families with their continued involvement in our work. We are committed to working with single parent families; listening directly to their changing needs and requirements, requesting their feedback and taking forward their views at both a social and political level. In order to ensure that this project is directly relevant to lone parents’ lives, we have proposed the establishment of a lone parent advisory group, who will play a key role in monitoring the project. We will also provide information throughout the project to our wider single parent membership, via our regular monthly e-bulletin. Built into the research is the idea of returning to research participants in order to test initial conclusions against their understanding and experience.

Project Time Schedule

General project management milestones and deliverables, with dates:

PSI and Gingerbread joint responsibility:

Ethical approval sought and granted from PSI ethics committee: 15 January 2010

Gingerbread and PSI to meet to discuss progress at least once a month during the project: Every month

Report and Key Findings launched: July 2011

Main stage of dissemination completed: August 2011

Gingerbread responsibility

Advisory groups recruited: mid March 2010

First advisory groups meeting (discuss focus group topic guide and general project design): end March 2010

Second advisory groups meeting (discuss recruitment for expert interviews, findings from lit review part 1, focus groups, and input into questionnaire design): early June 2010

Third advisory groups meeting (discuss questionnaire findings, expert interview findings, literature review part 2 and gaps in data) by end October 2010

Fourth advisory groups meeting (discuss draft report and key findings): by end April 2011

Evaluation completed of employability program, lone parent inclusion in project, and success of new research approaches: September 2011

Evaluation of Outcome 1 completed (“Stakeholders have deeper and more practical insights into lone parents' ideal characteristics of work”). September 2011

Gingerbread research time on project management: 22 days

Task 1: Focus group research

Undertaken by: Gingerbread with support from PSI

Begins: March 2010

Gingerbread research staff time: First round 29 days, Second round 40 days

Gingerbread non-research staff time: 5 days

PSI staff time:3 days

Gingerbread key milestones and deliverables: First round of focus groups completed by end April 2010

First round of focus group analysis completed ready to feed into questionnaire development: end May 2010

Report section on first round of focus groups drafted by end May 2010

Second round of focus groups completed: end Dec 2010

Second round of focus groups written up in draft: end Feb 2011

Task 2 :Questionnaire research with single parents

Undertaken by: Gingerbread with support from PSI

Begins: May 2010

Gingerbread research staff time: 29 days

Gingerbread non-research staff time: 5 days

PSI staff time: 5 days

Gingerbread key milestones and deliverables: Questionnaire designed and programmed by mid June 2010

Questionnaire field period completed by mid July 2010

Preliminary findings of questionnaire written up by end Aug 2010

Task 3: Expert interviews and desk research to identify career options

Undertaken by: Gingerbread with support from PSI

Begins: July 2010

Gingerbread research staff time: 25 days

Gingerbread non-research staff time: 8 days

PSI staff time: 5 days

Gingerbread key milestones and deliverables: 15 experts identified for expert interviews: by end August 2010

Topic guide designed for expert interviews: by end July 2010

Expert interviews and desk research concluded and written up by end October 2010

Task 4a: Secondary analysis of existing data

Undertaken by: Gingerbread with support from PSI

Begins: May 2010

Gingerbread research staff time: 30 days

Gingerbread non-research staff time: 5 days

PSI staff time: 5 days

Key milestones and deliverables:

Data for secondary analysis obtained: June 2010

Write up of secondary data analysis completed: end Nov 2010

Task 4b: Review of existing work

Undertaken by: PSI

Begins: April 2010

Gingerbread research staff time: 2 days

Gingerbread non-research staff time: 3 days

PSI staff time: 58 days

PSI Key milestones and deliverables: Write up literature review end Sept 2010

Task 5: Write report

Undertaken by: Gingerbread and PSI together

Begins: Ongoing throughout project

Gingerbread research staff time:50 days

Gingerbread non-research staff time: 30

PSI staff time: 24 days

Key milestones and deliverables (Gingerbread only)

Short document for key stakeholders with emerging findings (from first round focus groups, desk research, secondary analysis and questionnaire research): end October 2010

'Implications for policy and practice' section of report written: March 2011

Report and summary printed: July 2011

Key milestones and deliverables (PSI and Gingerbread together)

First draft of full report and key findings summary March 2011

Final version of report and Key Findings summary. May 2011

Proof-reading and design process completed: June 2011

Task 6: Design new employability program

Undertaken by: Gingerbread with small input from PSI

Begins: February 2011

Gingerbread research staff time: 5 days

Gingerbread non-research staff time: 50 days

PSI staff time: 5 days

Gingerbread key milestones and deliverables: Employability program designed and in a format ready to seek external funding: June 2011