The concept of ‘parenting skills’ features large in professional, political and popular discourse on the role and responsibility of parents. This article explores what constitutes skills of parenting from the perspective of community health and social service providers, working with families deemed to be ‘in need’. It shows how the concept is drawn on to describe both the needs of women with whom they work and their own role in fulfilling some of those needs. It argues that ‘parenting skills’ are not only gendered, insofar as it is women as mothers who are more likely to be perceived as needing them, but that a lack of them might also be associated with marital status, age and place of residence. In looking at ‘parenting skills’ from the perspective of service providers in the context of their working lives, it is clear however that service providers, predominantly women, formulate a role for themselves in the face of poverty and poor housing which they feel powerless to change.

In November, the Secretary of State for Social Security announced that benefits would be uprated in line with inflation in April 1995. However, since 1979, there has been a widening gap between the incomes of poor and wealthier households (94—24/2—1.1). A report from the Social Policy Research Unit (SPRU) highlights government failure to uprate benefits in line with earnings as contributing to this growing inequality. Figures produced by the Government Statistical Service on the estimated take-up of incomerelated benefits for 1992 claim that more than four out of five of those eligible claim some £9 out of £10 of the available cash. The figures for family credit show a steady increase in take-up from 57 per cent of the caseload in 1988–9 to 66 per cent in 1991–2. Income support figures suggest that the take-up is now between 77 and 87 per cent.

The Commission on Social Justice set up by the late John Smith presented its proposals for the reform of Britain's tax and benefit system in October (87—22/3—1.8). They included taxing child benefit for higher earners and abolishing married couples′ allowance, a minimum pension guarantee and a national minimum wage. A Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) paper on the relationship between private insurance and the state social security system concluded that state benefits must remain the major source of provision for benefits, and suggested that there is only limited scope for further development of private sector alternatives. Meanwhile the 1994 edition of social security statistics showed that 521,320 families received family credit at January 1994, an increase of 119,900 over 1993. In April 1994 there were approximately 540,000 recipients.