Child Maintenance: Promoting children’s rights to fair financial support.

In the UK child maintenance has (for many years) been a system that is broken and failing families. At Fife Gingerbread we believe children have the right to fair financial support from both parents wherever possible. The current system promotes family-based arrangements, where families create and manage their own financial arrangements to support their children. However, where this is not possible the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) must have the skills, powers, and motivation to step in to ensure fair financial support for children. Child Maintenance is an overlooked lever in our national mission to tackle child poverty, and it has the potential to tip families from surviving towards thriving.

At Fife Gingerbread we have collaborated on two partnership research projects which you can access on our website Bairns Come First (2016) and Child Maintenance During a Cost-of-Living Crisis (2023). Sadly, despite the time between these research projects we have seen little change or improvement and many of the same challenges persist. Inevitably exacerbating inequalities for children surviving in low-income households and women’s poverty.

Our aspirations are to be part of the solution to transforming the child maintenance system to put children’s rights at the heart of decision making.

This year we were lucky enough to be part of a successful partnership bid led by One Parent Families Scotland (OPFS) that secured funding for a two-year Child Maintenance project. We will be working with a skilled partnership including OPFS, IPPR Scotland, and Poverty Alliance. Working together to fulfill three key objectives:

1.      To make evidence-based recommendations to achieve systemic & transformational change to the UK child maintenance system. 

2.      To develop options where Scottish Government are devolved further powers to make the child maintenance delivery process more efficient and effective. 

3.      To develop and test, within the existing status quo, new approaches to child maintenance locally – working with families to enable an increase in the successful receipt of child maintenance for children. 

Fife Gingerbread will be responsible for leading on the delivery of the third objective.

The story so far…

Kerry (Child Maintenance Project Coordinator) started the role in Summer of 2023 and the early days of were focused on getting to know the project partnership, understanding her role, developing a project plan, ensuring processes were established, and engaging key stakeholders.

The critical aspect of the project is income maximisation. Working with resident lone parents to navigate the current system, despite its flaws. We are working closely with Poverty Alliance to evaluate the impact of this activity.

Since August the project has received 40 referrals (the majority of whom are lone parents supported by Fife Gingerbread) of which 32 have engaged for an initial discussion about the support available. So far, 25 lone parents have been empowered with information and advice on their next steps and entitlements and there will be light touch follow-up to check in with their journey. Additionally, 7 parents have engaged with Kerry for active casework to support their Child Maintenance journey.

The circumstances of families requiring active casework are incredibly complex and affected by trauma. Here are a few anonymised ‘real life’ scenarios of why this support is required:

 Lisa has 2 children and experienced domestic abuse.

She has tried to pursue Child Maintenance herself but Dad was inconsistent with payment and when she came to us there had been no payment to support the children for four months. Lisa was worried about any repercussions due to the domestic violence if she approached the Child Maintenance Service for help.

Molly had a ‘live’ claim with the Child Maintenance Service, but had never received a payment and the arrears owed had been written off on two occasions. The case was even closed during ‘lockdown’.

Molly thought she wasn’t allowed to open another claim for her children – she has poor mental health and was very anxious about looking into this again. She did not feel she had any support in the past, and had never received a penny so ‘what’s the point?’

Claire has a Collect & Pay arrangement and as Dad is claiming Universal Credit this is £7 per week for her child. But in three years she’s only received three payments.

Claire has shared knowledge and evidence that Dad is actually working, but this was rejected. And despite telling the Child Maintenance Service about domestic abuse she was advised to take pictures of him working as further evidence.

The project has been ‘up and running’ for a short space of time, so watch this space for the learning and outcome of support child maintenance claims. We are firm advocates for Children’s Rights, and we believe that fair financial support can help our children lead safe, happy, and healthy lives. It’s not a lot to ask!

To date, 5 parents have had successful claims for their children, and the first payments were made (a total of £1004 in the first month) and a total of £3026 from the beginning of the project. We are also mitigating the 4% Collect & Pay fee for one parent to maximise the household income.

A further 11 lone parents await outcomes for new claims.  We will closely monitor this data as, unfortunately, this still has the potential to break down as unlike the benefits system there is limited financial dependency of regular payments for lone parents families meaning finances are still precarious.

In addition to providing direct support to lone parents in Fife, an important aspect of the work is around capacity building. How can we create capacity in Fife (and beyond) to open more conversations about Child Maintenance with lone parent families? Kerry has engaged with key stakeholders locally such as Womens Aid, Fife Law Centre, Relationship Scotland and Citizens Advice & Rights Fife. Looking to better understand their knowledge and how we could support. This has led to a monthly drop in at Women’s Aid where three parents and four practitioners have engaged so far.

Additionally, a Child Maintenance training session will be tested both internally and externally over the coming months with the ambitions to roll this out more broadly across Scotland in the second year of the project. The purpose of this will not be to make every participant an “expert” in Child Maintenance, it is a complex and bureaucratic system, but to empower and build the confidence of practitioners and volunteers to have confident conversations with lone parents about Child Maintenance. Our research found that Child Maintenance is often avoided or overlooked during income maximisation / financial inclusion conversations with families.

Next steps…

Kerry will continue to build her caseload and knowledge, and in the New Year, we intend to open referrals more broadly in Fife to extend the support available. Additionally, the training for practitioners and volunteers will be finalised and we will begin to offer this to providers in Scotland. The partnership with OPFS and IPPR Scotland will continue to deliver and we will contribute to the wider systems change work to transform the system, as we must do better than simply help families navigate a system that is broken and not fit for purpose.