Child Maintenance.

Promoting children’s rights to fair financial support.

There is an endless stream of data to support the need for targeted specialist support and advocacy for lone parent families, and there is no doubt they are a particularly vulnerable and diverse Child Poverty priority group. At Fife Gingerbread we specialise in engaging lone parents and families in need. Not only delivering family support services through our projects but also raising awareness of the systemic and structural challenges that hold families stuck in poverty. Challenges such as child maintenance.

“Why is Child Maintenance not treated like a benefit? Like something you’re entitled to?”

Fife Gingerbread Parent

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) was designed to promote family-based arrangements and reduce the ‘burden’ on the state to intervene. However, there is a wealth of research and evidence highlighting the failures of the existing system that in too many cases fails to meet the needs of families.

Child Maintenance is overlooked as a lever in the national mission to tackle Child Poverty. All too often we see broad far-reaching societal measures to tackle poverty, with the hope that this will ‘trickle down’ to support key family groups. However, if we are to meet Child Poverty targets we must invest in significant targeted interventions such as addressing the failing CMS.

We have been working with Poverty Alliance to revisit the challenges surrounding Child Maintenance and better understand how/if these have changed in the context of pandemic recovery and a cost of living crisis. The primary drivers for the work are income maximisation, poverty, and children’s rights.

“Child Maintenance would help me a bit towards getting things my son needs such as new shoes.” Research Participant

So far, we have learned that the system fails to consistently enable lone parents to successfully access Child Maintenance – often causing financial harm and the experience can be detrimental to the family’s health and well-being. In cases where domestic abuse is a factor, the process is particularly challenging. Child Maintenance, like poverty, is a deeply gendered issue as around 90% of lone parent households are headed by women. Additionally, the research highlighted a lack of awareness amongst practitioners of support families and Child Maintenance does not reliably feature in financial inclusion activity.

At a local level, I am hopeful that the research will reinvigorate awareness, and create a call to action. Creating capacity to take forward recommendations – working to improve the support available to help lone parents navigate the broken system.

However, the key here is that the system itself is broken and requires radical bold change. Lone parent families shouldn’t have to navigate broken systems to secure financial support for the care of their child(ren). The system does not work for families and often fails both resident and non-resident parents. We must stop tinkering around the edges and ‘making the most’ of broken systems. Child Maintenance is an example of a system where we must advocate for transformational change.

“Other parent is now trying to decrease the amount paid (which is already under the recommended amount from the Child Maintenance calculator) and applying significant pressure for me to agree.”

Research Participant

So, what could a supportive and successful Child Maintenance system look like? My belief is that the key principles that would underpin a successful system would include:

• Accessibility.

A system that is free, transparent and simple to navigate with case-workers allocated to ensure families are supported and not retelling their ‘story’ repeatedly.

• Children’s Rights.

A system with children at the heart of design and decision making. That promotes children’s best interests, parental responsibility and an adequate standard of living (UNCRC).

• Trauma Informed.

A system grounded in the understanding that trauma (such as parental separation and domestic abuse) has wide reaching impacts on the health and wellbeing of families.

• Culture Change.

A system that views Child Maintenance as an entitlement, rather than families being ‘lucky’ if they have a reliable financial arrangement.

If we can agree the fundamental principles of the system itself and design it to meet these needs – rather than those of the state – then surely the result would be radically improved?  

In July our new Child Maintenance Project Coordinator will join the Fife Gingerbread Influencing & Change Team. They will be working directly with parents to navigate the system, identify improvements that are needed and develop tools to upskill practitioners. This is part of a broader partnership project (funded by Robertson Trust) working with One Parent Families Scotland and IPPR Scotland to challenge the failures of the system, and the need to radically change the system and culture surrounding child maintenance to ensure that children and young people are given the best possible start in life with fair financial support (wherever possible) from both of their parents.