The current system may not be fit for purpose
Thousands of children could be lifted out of poverty in Scotland if changes are made to the Child Maintenance Service, campaigners have said.
The lives of 20,000 children could be transformed due to these changes, according to a report from the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) Scotland, Fife Gingerbread and One Parent Families Scotland.
The UK Government is considering the way the system is implemented.
The report found that the current system can be complicated, slow, and deters people from making a claim.
Child maintenance reform could unlock £200 million for children in Scotland, according to IPPR Scotland researcher Casey Smith.
They say that reforms would help parents like Kira, who lives in Fife with her three-year-old son.
As a lone parent, she’s entitled to maintenance payments from his father, which are run by the CMS.
In cases where there’s no agreement, the service determines the amount due and arranges for payments to be made.
In Kira’s case, the CMS made wrong calculations, meaning she had to keep reclaiming – a process she described as time-consuming and stressful.
“I knew I had to put in a claim through the CMS,” she said.
“Although I had been working as many hours as possible, money was tight, and I needed to make sure my son would be provided for.”
When she put in her claim, Kira said the CMA based the initial payment on the part-time job her ex had had in Fife, rather than his job in London.
She said the maintenance service took action to collect the money from his employer, but when the payments were reviewed, the CMS again defaulted to his old Fife earnings, reducing her payments in error.
“I spent hours calling CMS, getting different answers from different staff, and there was no record of previous conversations,” she said.
“It doesn’t make sense that an organisation like the CMS have no procedures in place for sharing or recording information on individual cases. I am still battling with the CMS to get the money my son is owed. It’s a long, slow process, but I’m not giving up.”
The report found that over one million separated families have no child maintenance arrangement. That’s up from 600,000 in 2012.
If maintenance payments were allocated to all children who currently don’t receive what they are entitled to, Smith said it would unlock around £2.7 billion for approximately two million children across the UK, lifting around 210,000 out of poverty.
In Scotland, this would translate to around 100,000 children in separated families receiving approximately £200m.
As the UK Government considers upcoming changes to the CMS, the report has laid out a series of recommendations to improve the service.
The IPPR has suggested that enforcement procedures should be reviewed, and case handlers should be better trained on the CMS’s powers.
It has also recommended making named caseworkers available to parents who request them, to ensure consistency and minimise the need for parents like Kira to recount their situation.
They also want the CMS to provide an easily accessible online toolkit, clearly set out the principles that underpin the specific parameters of the child maintenance formula, and update the formula annually, among other things.
A department for work and pensions spokesperson said: “The Child Maintenance Service provides an important safety net for separated families and has collected or arranged £9bn of vital payments for children.
“To improve the service further we are reforming and streamlining it to introduce a single service type where the CMS monitors and transfers all payments.
“This could see around 20,000 fewer children in relative poverty after housing costs.”
