The government has been urged to immediately overhaul its controversial pre-employment scheme, Parents Next by the providers contracted to administer the program. The services have revealed how parents are being referred to charities because their welfare payments have been wrongly suspended.

The cases – which have prompted not-for-profit job service providers to ask the minister to intervene – include a woman who had her payments suspended because she was admitted to hospital while 33 weeks pregnant and could not report to Centrelink.

Peak body Jobs Australia has told the jobs minister, Kelly O’Dwyer, that participants – who are predominantly single mothers – were being told to visit emergency relief on a Friday to get food for the weekend because their payments could not be restored until Monday.

Those in rural areas who did not have smart phones or internet data were also facing suspensions because they could not report to Centrelink, it said.

The providers have urged the department to remove Parents Next from the targeted compliance framework (TCF), a system that results in welfare recipients having their payments suspended and eventually facing sanctions if they do not meet certain activities.

A Senate committee inquiry is being held into the program, which has faced criticism after it was rolled out nationally and made compulsory for about 75,000 parents in July.

Participants, who can have a child as young as six months, are required to report their attendance at a compulsory activity, often story time or playgroup, as well as report their fortnightly income, even if they are not in work. Failure to do results in a suspension of their parenting payment.

Guardian Australia has previously reported how one woman had her payment suspended for a week after not marking her attendance at a “story time session” because she had taken her child to kindergarten instead. Another woman said she faced payment suspensions due to a tech glitch that prevented her from reporting to Centrelink at all.

Jobs Australia said in a letter to O’Dwyer and the deputy secretary of the Department of Jobs and Small Business Nathan Smyth that the TCF should be suspended immediately until the program was redesigned in consultation with providers and other stakeholder groups.

“Jobs Australia met with the minister’s office on 18 December and requested these concerns be given priority in the run-up to the Christmas break,” said its executive, Debra Cerasa.

Asked how the department would respond, a spokesman told Guardian Australia the vast majority of people were benefiting from the program.

He said it helped people “eligible parents with young children to plan and prepare for employment by the time their youngest child reaches school age”.

“The targeted compliance framework has many safeguards to ensure that parents are not inappropriately or unfairly penalised,” he said.

“The Department of Jobs and Small Business is currently preparing a response to the Senate inquiry into Parents Next. One of the topics the department will address in its submission is the application of the TCF to Parents Next.”