the town of Ris-Orangis adopts a series of measures to support single parents

In Essonne, the town of Ris-Orangis has just voted for a special status to support single parents.

“Single moms and dads, you are no longer alone” : this is the message from the town of Ris-Orangis, in Essonne. On May 22, it just voted for a status for single-parent families with a series of measures to support these single parents. The town hall is taking the lead in a transpartisan bill tabled following last summer’s riots. The perpetrators of the violence, young people often from single-parent families, had shed light on their social difficulties. In Ris-Orangis, these measures partially relieve these single mothers and fathers.

In front of the school where she takes her 10-year-old son, Zara, a cashier, talks about the daily difficulties of juggling her professional and personal lives: “You have to do everything. You have to take him to school, you have to take him out from time to time… I tell myself that I’m lucky because I have my family.”

The town hall provides priority nursery places for single parents of very young children, spaces for discussion and relaxation and a counter for requests for aid. Space-time and support are what Zara lacks: “For example, I have help for the canteen but even that, sometimes I don’t have time to do it so I pay in full. And that’s still hard.”

Even more so for these families who live, half of them, on 1,320 euros per month. Ris-Orangis wants to facilitate their requests for access to housing and the construction of a building for single parents. Zara widens her eyes: “Ah well, I’m going to find out. It suits me because I’m in private accommodation and it’s a bit expensive for me. When you only have one paycheck at home, it’s not easy.”

In this city where 30% of families are single parents – more than 1,700 in total – the PS mayor, Stéphane Raffali, wanted to implement these 21 measures as quickly as possible: “Our interest in these questions has accelerated since the riots of last summer since after analysis of the profile of children, adolescents, young adults who had participated in these revolt movements, generally they had known either the services of child protection, or had grown up in single-parent families, so we said to ourselves that we absolutely had to work on additional help for these families.

The cost of these measures, partly already in place, has not been disclosed by the town hall which will also offer workshops to encourage the learning of the French language in allophone families, or even identify bilingual municipal agents to support these families in their efforts.