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The UK's national charity for working parents and carers

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The Big Give Christmas Challenge


Until Tuesday 10th December, any donation you make through the Big Give Christmas Challenge will be matched – doubling the impact of your support. Whether big or small, every donation helps us create a fairer working world for parents and carers.

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Least access to justice – a definition

Working Families defines ‘parents and carers who have least access to justice’ as those who lack access to, or the ability to act on, advice due to social disadvantage (e.g. a lack of finances or agency in the workplace), or practical barriers (e.g .a lack of knowledge or time).

This might include low-income workers in insecure work or time-pressured new or single parents feeling vulnerable in work.

Where these factors intersect, working people are most at risk of being unable to access their rights and entitlements.

Full version of our definition

Working Families defines ‘parents and carers who have least access to justice’ as those who lack access to advice, and those who lack the ability to act on advice. Barriers to both of these include practical barriers such as finances; language, literacy and communication; disability, physical and mental ill-health; geography (e.g. rural areas or areas without local advice services); digital exclusion; being a victim of domestic violence or trafficking; being an asylum seeker or refugee.

Additionally, we consider barriers around the knowledge, confidence, time and skills needed to access advice, such as lack of knowledge of rights; stigma around accessing benefits or advice; lack of confidence and skills to assert rights; lack of confidence in engaging with services; complex issues that make it hard to know where to start with advice; ‘seldom-heard’ or ‘hard-to-reach’ families; and being in a time-pressured stage of life (such as having recently given birth).

We further acknowledge that parents and carers from disadvantaged groups are less likely to have access to justice: this includes minoritised ethnic groups, disabled people, LGBTQ+ parents and lower-income parents.