Priority List : Single Parent Support Australia Top 20 policy issues

1.   Poverty in families, particularly single parent families:

�      Realistic income for women who choose to stay home with children or who can�t find jobs.

�      Extending eligibility for SPP to women until the youngest turns 18 or leaves full time study

�      Tackling the problem of high Effective Marginal Tax Rates which create poverty traps and are a workforce disincentive.

2.   Access to full-time work with a living wage and parity between women�s and men�s wages.

3.   Access to part-time work (if desired) with wages backed up by adequate income support.

4.   Access to a family-friendly workplace with industrial policies which recognise family needs.

5.   Making families safer for women and children through a national commitment of resources to: (a)help survivors of domestic violence to achieve and maintain safety, (b)enable adult and child survivors to recover from trauma and ( c) assist perpetrators to change their behaviour.

6.   A national network of child handover and supervised contact centres and a redefinition of �children�s best interests� which prioritises children�s safety ahead of  contact with abusing parents.

7.   Improved investigative and legal responses to child sexual assault, and reforms to common assault laws which extend to children the same legal protection from assault as that applying to adults.

8. Improved access to the legal process for women and children through increased resources to legal aid.

9.   Reforms of gender bias in legal concepts (eg. �the reasonable man�), and amongst legal practitioners and the judiciary in the Criminal and Family Law Courts.

10. Reforms to increase the returns to children, and the income collection rate of the Child Support Agency.

11. Access to affordable, secure housing.

12. Access to quality free health care.

13. Access to free quality primary, secondary and tertiary education and adequate income support to allow students to finish their education.

14. Access to affordable, appropriate, quality child care, and out of school hours care for young people to 15 years.

15. Policies and programs which support the needs of single parent families in the process of re-unification after foster placments.

16. Access to support services and adequate income support for carers for sick and/or disabled dependents.

17. Access to specialist community support services for minority groups including NESB and ATSI populations.

18. A commitment to provide quality, accessible social welfare services to families in rural and remote areas

19. Improved political candidate selection processes to promote more women into politics

20. Implementation of CEDAW and the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

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