Asked by: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the funding announced in the Budget Statement for the Department for Work and Pensions' relationship support work will be spent on the department's Reducing Parental Conflict Programme, to be launched next year.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
We published Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families in April 2017 where we announced a spend of up to £30m to launch the new Reducing Parental Conflict Programme.
Planned spend in 17/18 is £5.91m. Funding allocations to projects/business areas in future years are decided on an annual basis and are subject to internal prioritisation – the funding that was announced as part of the 2017 Autumn Budget safeguards £15m pa investment on relationship support/parental conflict in 18/19 and 19/20.
DWP has no plans to fund other projects than those mentioned in the budget statement, however, strengthening families is a cross-government objective and other government departments will be able to confirm their own plans in this area.
Asked by: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, following the Budget Statement, what is their planned expenditure on the Department for Work and Pensions' relationship support work for (1) 2018–19, and (2) 2019–20.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
We published Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families in April 2017 where we announced a spend of up to £30m to launch the new Reducing Parental Conflict Programme.
Planned spend in 17/18 is £5.91m. Funding allocations to projects/business areas in future years are decided on an annual basis and are subject to internal prioritisation – the funding that was announced as part of the 2017 Autumn Budget safeguards £15m pa investment on relationship support/parental conflict in 18/19 and 19/20.
DWP has no plans to fund other projects than those mentioned in the budget statement, however, strengthening families is a cross-government objective and other government departments will be able to confirm their own plans in this area.
Asked by: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, prior to the Budget Statement, what was their planned expenditure on the Department for Work and Pensions' relationship support work for (1) 2018–19, and (2) 2019–20; and where these figures were published.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
We published Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families in April 2017 where we announced a spend of up to £30m to launch the new Reducing Parental Conflict Programme.
Planned spend in 17/18 is £5.91m. Funding allocations to projects/business areas in future years are decided on an annual basis and are subject to internal prioritisation – the funding that was announced as part of the 2017 Autumn Budget safeguards £15m pa investment on relationship support/parental conflict in 18/19 and 19/20.
DWP has no plans to fund other projects than those mentioned in the budget statement, however, strengthening families is a cross-government objective and other government departments will be able to confirm their own plans in this area.
Asked by: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
Her Majesty's Government whether they continue to collect data against the family stability indicator measures, in particular (1) the percentage of all children who are not living with both their birth parents, broken down by age of child, and (2) the percentage of children in low income households not living with both parents compared to the percentage of such children in middle to higher income households.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
The Department for Work and Pension’s publication Improving lives: Helping Workless Families, presented evidence on the root causes of disadvantage and their impact on the outcomes for children. This included nine national indicators to track progress in tackling the disadvantages that affect families’ and children’s lives and replace all the former social justice outcomes framework indicators. A copy of this framework has been attached.
One of the new indicators measures parental conflict to reflect evidence that inter-parental relationship quality is of fundamental importance to children’s outcomes, including their mental health, wellbeing and future employment prospects. On the basis of this evidence and after consulting with academics, a new indicator has been developed. This measures quality of the inter-parental relationship among coupled and separated parents as the proportion of children in couple-parent families experiencing relationship distress. Where parents are separated, research suggests that positive involvement from both parents in the child’s life can help address the potential negative impacts of parental separation therefore as a proxy for the quality of relationship between separated parents the proportion of children in separated families who see their non-resident parents regularly is also being measured.
The Analysis and Research Pack published alongside Improving Lives, presents an update of the proportion of children in couple-parent families living with parents who report relationship distress, broken down by the age of the child. The measure is not broken down by income.
Asked by: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
Her Majesty's Government whether it is their policy to continue with the plans to address parental conflict in workless families set out in Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families, published in April.
Answered by Baroness Buscombe
Improving Lives: Helping Workless Families set out our plans to tackle the root causes of disadvantage, with a focus on workless families. As part of this approach, we announced an innovative new programme of support to help parents, whether they are together or separated, to reduce conflict. This is based on the most recent evidence, which tells us that children who are exposed to frequent, intense and poorly resolved conflict are at risk of experiencing poorer long term outcomes. Plans are currently underway to develop this support, and more details of this will be announced in due course.
Asked by: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the impact of the introduction of Universal Credit on the existence and size of couples penalties; whether this differs from the impact arising from existing benefits, and if so why; and whether couples penalties increase or decrease depending on the income of those claiming Universal Credit.
Answered by Lord Henley
The information requested is not available and to collect it would incur disproportionate cost