Your children

We can help single parent families on a range of topics regarding their children, including child maintenance, children getting older, one to one support and more.

Bringing up children on your own has ups and downs. It’s a lot of responsibility but it doesn’t mean that you have to be two parents rolled into one. Take a look at our children section on our ‘My life and me’ website.

Information

Caring for a child with complex needs

If a child has received a diagnosis of an illness, disability, or sensory impairment and requires extensive daily support, they are referred to as having “complex needs.” These needs may arise from birth or develop following an illness or injury.

Service

Children and parent activity groups

Being a parent on your own can be lonely at times. Meeting others in a friendly and safe environment can help reduce our stress levels and alleviate feelings of isolation, loneliness and anxiety.

Information

Child maintenance arrangements

Child maintenance is money you get from your child’s other parent to help with the cost of raising your child. This information explains ways to arrange child maintenance and what the Child Maintenance Service can do.

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Child contact arrangements

Information and advice to help you arrange contact between your children and their other parent.

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My child is turning 16

Your benefits, tax credits and child maintenance may change once your child is 16 years old. Any changes depend on what your child does after they are 16.

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Help to pay for childcare

You may get help to pay for registered childcare included in the benefits you receive.

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Free Early Learning and Childcare hours

In Scotland 3 and 4 year olds and some 2 year olds can now get 1,140 hours per year of free Early Learning and Childcare funded by the Scottish Government.

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Childcare options

Using childcare can help you juggle work, study, day to day tasks and down time. The following information describes different types of childcare available and the help to pay for it.

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Book list

We’ve put together a list of books that may be helpful for single parents, their children and extended families.

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Learning at home

Useful links to support learning at home and online.

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Children in care

Our parent and practitioner guides provide information on the changes to family finances when a child is taken into care or returns home after being in care.

News updates for single parents

View all news

Our news updates reflect the work of One Parent Families Scotland and the issues affecting single parents today.

Webinar Refugee and asylum seeker parents

11/03/2024

Single Parent FAQs: Separation – Issue 23

07/09/2023

Single Parent FAQs: Summer holidays

18/07/2023

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

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Covering your tracks

You may not want other people to know that you’ve been searching for information or help from OPFS.

When browsing the internet whether on a mobile phone, tablet or computer, you leave a ‘history’ trail of pages and sites you’ve visited.

It’s impossible to completely avoid being tracked online but if you’re worried about someone knowing which sites you’ve been looking at, there are some things you can do to help cover your tracks.

If you’re using a laptop or desktop computer, try keeping another document or website open in a new tab or window while browsing. If someone comes in the room and you don’t want them to see what you’re looking at, you can quickly switch to another window or tab.

Deleting browsing history

You can delete the history of websites you’ve visited, but it’s important to know that if you delete your browsing history, someone else using the same device may notice.

If you share a tablet, mobile phone, laptop or computer with someone, they might notice that passwords or website addresses have disappeared from their history.

Find out how to remove your browsing history and other data from some of the most commonly used browsers:

Browsing in Private mode (incognito)

When browsing ‘incognito’, the internet browser won’t store cookies or record your browsing history on the computer, mobile or tablet.

This option is available on popular web browsers i.e. -

Toolbars

If you use a search toolbar in your web browser, remember that your searched items can be saved as part of your history. Find out how to delete your searched items from the following search engines: