Covid: Single parents 'struggling' as children forced to self-isolate

Single parents say they are struggling to pay bills while self-isolating due to not having access to a £500 grant during the coronavirus pandemic.

People who are forced to stay off work after testing positive for Covid-19 or being contacted by tracers are eligible to apply for the sum.

But parents or carers who need to look after a child sent home from school due to the virus cannot claim.

The Welsh Government said the scheme would be kept "under review".

Applications for the £500 grants, set up to support those on low incomes, opened a fortnight ago following criticism of a delay in getting it up and running.

People can access the grant if they test positive or are contacted by contact tracers, and cannot work from home during the 14 day self-isolation period.

But charities warned the criteria means those told who had to stay home to look after children, if there were cases at their schools, would not be able to claim.

Ellie Harwood, from the Child Poverty Action Group, said many living in deprived areas would do jobs that could not be done from home, and so would have to go without pay.

"For lone parents, particularly, the prospect of two weeks without any money coming in is really difficult," she said.

"We just know that so many families struggle to make ends meet even though they're in work.

"More often than not, particularly with lone parents, there's quite a lot of research that shows that mothers, and it normally is mothers, will go without, they won't eat three meals a day."

When Louise Hall was told to keep her eight-year-old son off school after a positive case in his year group in October, she had to stop working.

The child therapist, from Newport, said no-one in her support bubble lived nearby to help care for him and she was not eligible for any government support.

She said she had already had to get "creative and flexible" with paying bills.

"I needed to be there for my son because he's not old enough to be left at all," she said.

"If I don't work, we don't eat and that's very hard as a self-employed person because you have to wait for invoices to be paid anyway, you have to wait for cash flow."

She said the £500 would pay for almost all of her rent, and make a big difference to their lives, and she worried there would be more cases and he would have to isolate again.

Dawn Cartwright, from Penrhyndeudraeth, Gwynedd, has been home with five of her children for the last two weeks after positive cases were confirmed at their school.

The teaching assistant said she had been living for "two weeks with no wages at all" after needing to stay home with them.

"I'm allowed to go to work but working in a primary school, do I go to work and risk spreading the virus or stay at home and look after the children? It's very hard to know what to do," she said.

"It's very hard. Christmas is coming up but the bills need paying first. I know a lot of families who are struggling with knowing what to do."

Ms Cartwright, who has been relying on working tax credits to get by, but said she was now having to decide what bills to pay when she gets her next pay check.

"I'd like them just to think they're asking us to protect people by staying home...but there's no help to be had," she said.

Now the action group has called on the Welsh Government to follow Northern Ireland and allow people to claim if anyone in their household is told to self-isolate.

"Sometimes it is easy to overlook the specific circumstances of certain types of families when these schemes are planned," Ms Harwood said.

Plaid Cymru said low income working parents of isolating children "cannot be excluded from self-isolation payments without an alternative".

The party's equalities spokeswoman Leanne Wood said: "Alternative childcare is not an option when children are formally required to self-isolate, therefore parents and carers have no other option than to miss work as a result."

Ms Wood called for the Welsh Government to allow parents to show a child's self-isolation record as proof they were eligible for support.

A Welsh Government spokeswoman said the self-isolation scheme was designed to remove the financial barriers some people face when asked to self-isolate.

"It is similar to the schemes in place elsewhere in the UK," she said.

"We keep the scheme under review."