Janet Allbeson of the Gingerbread Charity has claimed that recent changes to child maintenance arrangement could force some parents to give up on receiving financial support.
Child maintenance is financial support that helps towards a child’s living costs when the parents have separated.
Many parents are worried that by putting up cost barriers to using the new Child Maintenance Service, some single parents who really need the new CMS to ensure that their children get money from the other parent may simply just give up all together.
This new method will see a £20 application charge for the parent making the claim. If there is a breakdown in payments then a 20% fee is placed on the paying parent but the receiving parent will also be charged a 4% fee from the payment that would have otherwise gone to the child.
Around 30% of parents have already tried some type of private arrangement which has broken down, almost 60% have very conflicted or almost non-existent relations with the other parent and over half have experienced violent abuse from the other parent.
All the evidence shows that the vast majority of parents who turn to the statutory maintenance service are doing so from necessity and not from choice. This method is often used as a last ditch effort after communications have broken down between the two parents involved and thus the government has to step in and take control of the situation.
If some are pressured into settling for unstable or inadequate arrangements then this will mean that the children will be the ones to lose out in the long run.
Parents Should Sort Things Out for Themselves
Work and pensions minister Steve Webb has claimed that this new method encourages parents to try and reach an arrangement between themselves without involving any great bureaucracy, which would be good thing for everyone, including the taxpayer.
“The goal here is to get more child maintenance for more children and to make it the default that even though parents may have separated they can sort things out for themselves rather than using a government agency.” He said.
Mr. Webb thinks that the £20 one off payment is good value for money, arguing that the government will do all of the calculations on behalf of the parent and therefore have a much more efficient system in ensuring that the correct amount of money goes to the children.
This new method will allow the government to gain immediate access to parents wages via the HMRC’s computers, allowing maintenance to be assessed within a number of days ensuring that the people who need the system will get a much better one and the children will end up better off than before.
He also defended the penalty charges that have been put in place, saying that the paying parent will not have to pay the 20% additional charge as long as they are making regular payments to the receiving parent, and the 4% charge for the receiving parent will only be applicable if the government is successful in getting a regular flow of maintenance. And if payments are then made to the receiving parent all of these charges would drop away.
All in all this seems like a very nice opportunity for separated parents to sort things out in an amicable and respectful way, however if this is not possible and there is no other way to handle the situation, parents can always fall back on this plan.
You can watch BBC’s coverage of this claim right here.
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