You asked
This is a request under the freedom of Information Act. I am trying to work out, by the gender of the parent, how many parents are divorced and have dependent children with whom they are living.
I have looked at:
- the Divorces in England and Wales: Children of Divorced Couples table (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/divorce/datasets/divorcesinenglandandwaleschildrenofdivorcedcouples); and
- the people by families by type and presence of children (https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/datasets/familiesandhouseholdsfamiliesandhouseholds).
The problem is that I cannot extrapolate lone parent families into families with divorced parents. Can I get any data that you might have or may be able to extract that demonstrates how the living arrangements of dependent children are distributed post divorce by the gender of the divorced parents? Trends rather than a snapshot in time would be most useful.
We said
You have requested information about the population of the UK who are lone parents with dependent children under the Freedom of Information Act.
Special tabulations of data are available to order (subject to legal frameworks, disclosure control, resources and agreements of costs, where appropriate). Such enquiries should be made to: families@ons.gov.uk. We recommend that you contact the Families team directly in order to discuss your data requirements in more detail.
As this information is already available to you via this route ONS considers that S21(1) applies to this request and the information does not have to be supplied under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. S21(1) is an absolute exemption and no consideration of the public interest test needs to be applied.
If you choose to contact the Families team they will be able to discuss your requirements with you, including the geographies and variables that are available, they will also be able to discuss any likely costs surrounding the production of the data that you have requested. They will be pleased to help you.