DIY Child Maintenance will not work for everyone

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13/12/06 Responding to today's White Paper on child support, One Parent Families (OPF) welcomed the decision to establish a new system intended to ensure that children get the maintenance they need but urged ministers to do more to lift the children of lone parents out of poverty. One Parent Families' Chief Executive Chris Pond said:

"We are pleased that 50,000 more children will be lifted out of poverty by allowing parents on 'the old scheme' to keep £10 of their maintenance if they are on benefits, but twice this number could have been lifted out of poverty if all maintenance against benefits had been disregarded. Giving parents the option of making their own child maintenance arrangements is right, but the major problem of non-payment must be dealt with, and we need a strong and competent Agency which will step in at once if a lone parent requests it. Do-it-yourself child maintenance will not work for everyone.

"The Government must also step up measures to collect the mountain of debt legally owed to lone parents, largely due to the past failures of the CSA. The Agency's own figures show that it has collectable debt, after deducting bad and doubtful debt, of £1.4billion. Yet in the next three years, it plans to collect just £100 million - a mere seven per cent of this amount. A generation of children is at risk of losing vital funds, which could make a difference to their lives. Greater energy needs to be expended to collect the arrears more quickly.

"Receipt of child maintenance makes a real difference to children's lives. Today the proportion of lone parent families receiving child maintenance (at 32 per cent) is no higher than it was before the CSA was introduced. Ultimately, the success of the Government's reforms will be judged by how many more lone parent families will benefit from child maintenance in the future and how many children are lifted out of poverty."

Press contact: Jane Ahrends 020 7428 5416 or 0788 1951138

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