Single parent charity Gingerbread has once again expressed concern over planned changes to child maintenance arrangements that are currently going through Parliament.
The changes will mean the closure of all cases currently handled by the Child Support Agency (CSA) and the introduction of fees for parents who need to use its replacement body, the new Child Maintenance Service (CMS).
The Government hopes that imposing charges to use the new service will encourage more separated parents to come to their own private arrangements for child maintenance. However, Gingerbread is concerned that instead the fees will lead to parents deciding to go without child maintenance, which will ultimately mean that children lose out.
According to Gingerbread, during Parliamentary scrutiny of the changes, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has already flagged the draft regulations for the special attention of the House, warning that: “although the transfer scheme may make savings, it may imperfectly achieve the overarching policy objective of providing financial support for children”. By 2017/18, the government expects to be collecting £145 million per year in fees from both parents.
In addition, says Gingerbread, DWP figures show that one third (33%) of applicants to the CSA had a previous private arrangement that had failed. Almost two-thirds (59%) either had no contact with the other parent or were not at all friendly, posing real challenges in being able to agree maintenance arrangements
Gingerbread Chief Executive Fiona Weir said: “The new service should have securing reliable maintenance for children at its core, but instead it will jeopardise existing arrangements and put financial pressure on struggling single parent families.”
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