department of social and family affairs annual report 2006 - Welfare.ie

This project has been developed and is being coordinated
by the Department’s Western Regional
Office in Galway.
* Family Income Supplement (FIS)
Campaign
As a result of increased income limits provided in
Budget 2006, a national advertising campaign to
promote and encourage people to apply for FIS
took place in March 2006. In 2006 the section
received 33,051 applications compared with
22,744 in 2005 (an increase of over 45%). New or
first time applications alone in 2006 were 13,591
compared to 7,781 in 2005. This increase is largely
attributable to the advertising campaign.
* Supporting Lone Parents
One of the key tasks in the Ending Child Poverty
initiative under Sustaining Progress is to address
obstacles to employment for lone parents.
The Senior Officials Group on Social Inclusion
was mandated late in 2004 to examine the issue
and report back to the Cabinet Committee on
Social Inclusion with specific proposals. A subgroup
of the Senior Officials Group, chaired by the
Department of the Taoiseach, with a secretariat
provided by DSFA, was set up to examine the
obstacles to employment for lone parents,
with particular emphasis on income supports,
employment, education, childcare and support
programmes and information. A Departmental
Working Group was also established to review the
income support arrangements for lone parents,
looking at issues including the contingency basis
of the one parent family payment, cohabitation
and the fact that the payment can act as a
disincentive to the formation of partnerships and
discourage joint parenting.
parents; focused provision of childcare; improved
information services for lone parents and the
introduction of a new social assistance payment
for low income families with young children.
The paper also proposed the abolition of the
cohabitation rule as a condition for receipt of the
proposed social assistance payment.
Publication was followed by a consultation
process with representative groups and other
interested parties.
The Senior Officials Group on Social Inclusion is
currently developing an implementation plan
to progress the non-income recommendations
such as childcare support, education, training and
activation measures.
The development of the details of a new social
assistance payment to replace the One Parent
Family Payment is currently underway and will
have the long term aim of assisting people
to achieve financial independence through
supporting them to enter education, training and
employment. See Goal 3, objective 3.
* Supporting people with disabilities
A multi-agency project initiated in September
2005 was completed in 2006. The objectives of
the project were, to provide an integrated point
of contact for people with disabilities with a
multi agency assessment of training needs and
employment potential and to assist people with
disabilities to progress to employment and other
opportunities. Preliminary research involved one
to one consultations with young people (aged
16 to 25 years) in receipt of Disability Allowance
in counties Longford, Offaly and Westmeath.
The findings of the project will inform the
development of measures by the Department
to assist people with disabilities in maximising
participation in social and economic life.
Goal 2: people of working age
Both reports were published jointly in March as
a Government discussion paper Proposals for
Supporting Lone Parents. The report put forward
proposals for the expanded availability and
range of education and training opportunities
for lone parents; the extension of the National
Employment Action Plan to focus on lone
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