The Department of Work and Pensions has published a new strategy for helping workless families and improving the lives of an estimated 1.8 million children in the UK who live in workless households.
Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families used evidence from Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study led by survey experts at the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.
Analysts at the Department of Work and Pensions worked closely with the researchers from the Understanding Society Policy Unit to examine the data to build up a picture of the lives of workless families over time.
“This
government paper is
underpinned by a strong evidence base that has been created with the cooperation of leading academics, analysts and policy
-makers
across government as well as local authorities and front-line workers. It takes the best existing evidence and adds new insights
by combining survey and
administrative data. This has allowed us to reach a more detailed and sophisticated understanding about
the root
causes of disadvantage and their impact on
the outcomes of children in families where no parent is working.
Despite record levels of
employment, some families face numerous barriers
to work and experience
long
–
term
worklessness. Around half
of children in
workless families are living with parents who have at least three
potential
barriers to work,
such as
ill
health, low qualifications or
lone parenthood.
Our
new analysis shows just how stark the difference is between outcomes
for children in
working and workless families.
Children growing up in workless
families are almost twice as likely as children in
working
families to fail
to
reach the expected levels at
all stages of their
education.
We
used
the Understanding
Society
survey
for the majority of the analysis in
this
paper. It
not only provides a rich range of information on families, but
follows families
over
time. This enables a
longitudinal perspective of
disadvantage and worklessness.”