Glasgow-based organisation One Plus, which runs childcare training as one of its initiatives to help lone parents into work, found a heavy concentration of lone-parent families in areas defined by the Scottish Executive as suffering multiple deprivation.
A quarter of Scotland's families - 151,484 - are headed by lone parents, an increase of 66 per cent since the 1991 census. In the four most deprived areas of Scotland, lone parents account for more than 60 per cent of families, One Plus found.
The Scottish Executive is committed to eradicating child poverty by 2020 and to increasing the number of lone parents in employment to 70 per cent by 2010. Currently 26 per cent of lone mothers work part time and 21 per cent full time.
But at One Plus's annual conference held in Glasgow last Friday, deputy minister for communities Johann Lamont said she believed the Executive was 'moving in the right direction'. She said, 'Our work to support lone-parent families with children is already making inroads in our fight against inequality. We will continue to concentrate our efforts on fighting deprivation among lone parents. I look forward to working with One Plus to help us achieve that aim.'
The Scottish Executive is providing 100,000 funding to One Plus for Fresh Start, a mentoring project which supports lone parents into work.
John Findlay, director of One Plus, said, 'The statistics speak for themselves. We believe a more comprehensive joined-up approach to lone-parent families could have significant economic and social benefits.
These would come from increasing the skills and employment potential of lone parents and boosting the future productivity of the children in families benefiting from high-quality early education and care. This approach builds on existing Government initiatives.'
Other speakers at the conference included Professor Robert Wright from Stirling University, an economist and leading demographer, who spoke about the impact of Scotland's declining and ageing population on the labour market.
He said, 'Spending public money on family-friendly policies that make it easier for parents, particularly women, to combine employment with child rearing could lead to a large increase in participation rates, which would do much to counteract the negative labour market consequences of population decline and population ageing.'