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New child maintenance changes could hit poorest families
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27/10/08 Child support changes which start on Monday 27 October could lead to fewer rather than more poor children receiving child maintenance, pushing those families hardest hit by the current downturn into deeper crisis, warns One Parent Families|Gingerbread in a new briefing.
From 27 October all single parents on benefit, who currently have to apply for child maintenance via the CSA, can decide for themselves whether to continue to use the Agency; make their own private arrangements; or do without child maintenance altogether.
But recent research from the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions (1), suggests nearly one in four single parents on benefit may drop out. It found that 24% of lone parents on benefit receiving or due to receive child maintenance, or waiting for an assessment said they would probably not make any child maintenance arrangements at all in future - neither a voluntary arrangement with their children's father nor one organised through the Agency.
Child maintenance continues to be a significant reason why single parents call the charity's Lone Parent Helpline - accounting for more than one in 10 calls to its advice service - a figure which is expected to rise as the changes come through.
From 1st November the CSA's current functions will formally transfer to the new Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission(C-MEC). The CSA will operate as now until at least 2011 but will do so as an arm of C-MEC until it is wound up.
Fiona Weir, Chief Executive of One Parent Families|Gingerbread, said:
"We fear that many poor single parents on benefit will struggle to agree private child support arrangements and their children may end up doing without. This would be disastrous for the children affected and for the Government's child poverty targets.
"Greater investment in services to help parents deal with the financial and emotional consequences of separation is urgently needed, as is active promotion of the Government's child maintenance scheme to those parents who will find it difficult to make private arrangements work.
"The new agency faces immense challenges. Today only one in three eligible children get child maintenance. We need to build a culture that sees it as socially unacceptable not to support children after separation and to make sure that the most vulnerable do not lose out."
Notes to Editors:
(1)Wikeley N, Ireland E, Bryson C and Smith R, Relationship Separation and Child Support Study, DWP Research Report No 503,2008
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