For many parents, rearing children on their own means being caught in the poverty trap. A working single parent in a major city who needs full-time childcare and who is in private rented accommodation will need to earnabout €30,000 just to survive.

How are you going to go from social welfare to earning this amount per year if you cannot get access to childcare and education, among other services? You can grumble all you want about politicians, but unless you're willing to make your voice heard when they come canvassing to your door, you have no right to complain.

Lone parents will be prepared to confront canvassers if they read A Fair Deal for Single Parents, which includes all the facts and figures you need to make your argument.

Produced by the Cherish Advocacy Network, the booklet deals with issues that affect many parents, such as poverty, childcare, accommodation and access to training and education. It also looks at birth registration issues and Constitutional discrimination.

Single parents have long been whipping boys and girls - everything is blamed on them, from social problems to high social-welfare budgets.

Karen Kiernan, manager of Cherish, wants single-parent families to become an election issue on their own terms. "Clearly an annual income of €30,000 is out of the reach of many single parents, so we are calling for increased access to education and training, as well as allowing single parents to earn more while retaining some supplementary benefits and/or the One Parent Family Payment.

"This is the only realistic way to eventually help single parents escape the poverty trap of social welfare payments," she says.

Pamela, a single parent of a three-year-old, plans to use the information in the booklet to let the Minister for Education know directly why she needs a Stay in School payment.

For a booklet, contact Cherish at: (01) 662 9212/ 086-850 9191