A new measure in favor of the most vulnerable families. A “single-parent family” card opening to advantages or even preferential rates was proposed this Thursday by the Senate women’s rights delegation, in a report exploring several avenues to better support and accompany “solo” parents.
After having interviewed institutions, associations and concerned parents for three months to identify the difficulties encountered by single-parent families, senators Colombe Brossel (socialist, environmentalist and republican group) and Béatrice Gosselin (related to Les Républicains) led the drafting of this report. listing ten recommendations.
A card for leisure and transport
The delegation's proposal would therefore be a card giving entitlement to advantages and preferential rates for certain services and benefits (school canteen, public and collective transport, leisure, summer camps, after-school activities, sporting and cultural activities, mutual insurance).
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Unlike the “large families” version, such a card would also be “a means for single parents to report themselves as such” to the administrations or their employer. During the hearings, some employers indicated that they wanted to offer more flexible arrangements to their single parent employees (more flexible hours, teleworking, etc.), but did not know precisely how to identify them.
Many alimony payments still unpaid
The senators also emphasize the economic fragility of these families: “15% of single-parent families who would be eligible do not benefit from either the RSA or the family support allowance (187.24 euros per month per child, paid in the event of failure of the other parent"), underlines the report, which recommends communication campaigns on access to rights.
The mission also tackles the issue of alimony “which is not paid in almost a third of cases”. It recommends “more ambitious objectives for reducing non-payment rates” and considers the option of “withholding tax if these objectives are not achieved”.
1 in 4 families are single parents
The Minister for Equality between Women and Men, Aurore Bergé, recently supported the idea of such a “card” to improve the “more specific recognition that we owe to single-parent families”.
One in four families in France are single-parent, with a woman at the head in 82% of cases, recalls the delegation's document. According to INSEE, poverty affects 45% of children who live alone with their mother.
Since the beginning of March, two parliamentarians have also been working on the issue of single-parent families, mandated by Matignon. On the same subject, the socialist deputy Philippe Brun launched a transpartisan group in the National Assembly in October in order to arrive at a bill in the first half of the year.