What has One Parent Families|Gingerbread been doing about all this?

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April 2008

One Parent Families|Gingerbread has been campaigning on your behalf. We have been telling the Government what lone parents tell us about the problems they have with the CSA and what is needed to ensure that more children can benefit from receiving child maintenance. Some of the proposed changes show the Government has listened to us, but there is still plenty to fight for. We want:

to be sure that parents with the day-to-day care of a child do not feel pushed into unsatisfactory voluntary maintenance arrangements, when what they need is a strong and effective Government service which is focused on collecting adequate levels of maintenance on a regular basis for their children.
lone parents on Income Support or income-based Jobseeker's Allowance to be able to keep all the child maintenance that is paid without it affecting the amount of benefit they receive, just as happens with Working Tax Credit.
to ensure that the large amounts of child maintenance owed to lone parents from the days of the CSA will be pursued and not simply written off . If C-MEC decides that that nothing more can be done in a particular case, we think the parent with care should then get compensation, where she can show that the CSA - through inaction or incompetence - bears some responsibility for the failure to recover the child maintenance owed.
the new C-MEC to take more active steps to deal with attempts by some non-resident parents to conceal their income or minimise the amount they have to pay by manipulation of their financial affairs.
a higher threshold of two nights, rather than one, before the parent with care's child maintenance is reduced to take account of the number of nights a child spends with the non-resident parent.
a child maintenance guarantee, in the form of ‘advance maintenance', where the non-resident parent has failed to pay. This would not remove the obligation on the part of the non-resident parent to meet his child maintenance responsibilities. The Government is not currently considering this but, if the proposed reforms do not significantly increase the proportion of children in lone parent families being supported by both parents, we will renew our calls for a maintenance guarantee.

Next page: How can I get my views heard by the Government?

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Lone parents caring for a child with a disability or long- term health problem

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