Delautre, Guillaume

Ten Years of the New Deal for Lone Parents in the United Kingdom - 2008.


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The British experiment with employment strategies is often used as a reference in international comparisons, but they are limited to strategies aimed at youth or the long-term unemployed, which are more emblematic of the workfare. However, in 1998, the Labour Party implemented a voluntary programme designed to help lone parents find work, the New Deal for Lone Parents (NDLP). This employment strategy revolves around a tax credit device aimed at people with low income and is integrated into a global strategy of social policies centred around child poverty. Having started from a situation particularly marked by under-employment and poverty in single parent households as compared to other European countries, the government has since recorded substantial results in these domains. According to the evaluations undertaken for the Department for Work and Pensions, the NDLP has, above all, demonstrated its effectiveness in the case of those lone parents closest to the labour market. The government recently launched a reform to its employment strategy, which, in the case of this subpopulation, primarily aims at toughening the conditions for receiving the aid benefits.