Single parents to pay for CSA help
There are government plans afoot to charge parents for using the services of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, the CMEC. It was reported in the Sunday Mirror of 9th January 2011, that the Work and Pensions Minister, Iain Duncan Smith, is promoting the idea to help families stay together.
It is believed that Maria Miller, a Junior Minister and Conservative Party spokesperson for families, will reveal the proposed changes at a public consultation. Apart from soliciting views on the proposal she will also want to know what fee the public feels is justified in cases of maintenance disputes.
The thinking behind it is that, if parents have to pay the CMEC to help them work out their maintenance disputes, then they will change their minds and stay together. This is part of the Coalition’s plans to strengthen the family unit. Views are being sought from various sectors of the community, but there is no evidence that a broken relationship can be mended by the prospect of having to pay a fee to settle a maintenance dispute.
In its reporting of this story on 8th January, the Daily Telegraph shows how unclear the situation is by re-iterating that CMEC is one of the Quangos that the Coalition has pledged to abolish. It also stated that the Child Support Agency says that £3.8 billion in child maintenance arrears is still unpaid. The mechanisms for ensuring payment of the new proposed fee are not clear, but presumably they would be more effective than those in existence.
12 thoughts on “Single parents to pay for CSA help”
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How absurd
The morons in the goverment have really lost all sense of morality if they are going to start to charge people to use a shambolic, corrupt, incompetent, maladministered, service as the CSA.
What a truly pathetic comment from this sensless woman…”if parents have to pay the CMEC to help them work out their maintenance disputes, then they will change their minds and stay together”. If a marriage or relationship has broken down then no amount of money paid to the goverment will help the couple stay together.
Just another shambolic thought of this moronic idiotic shambles of a coalition.
Somebody needs to take these idiots by the throat and shake common sense into them.
Rant over with. Blood boiled. Need coffee.
Graeme
Is this body not scraped ???
http://www.realfathersforjustice.org/news/index.php?itemid=427
Cash By Menace In Economic Cock Up.
Charge Me For Ever Child.
Child Mainitance And Endless Cock-up’s.
It just goes to show how out of touch they are. They may be in Euroland, but they are also in la-la land!
I am all in favour of mediation, as long as all the financial cards are on the table and that there are no vast hidden stashes of money like my ex has. £200,000 in inheritances, stashed in her (deceased mothers name-with my sons name also on the account). I have the roll number and have tols the CSA! They do nothing!
I am providon, I have provided and have no problem paying for my children!
What I do object to is a government created monster and money making machine, run by incompetent oafs, who make mistake after mistake, and keep coming back for more money, to earn themselves bonuses, when £3.5 billion pound remains uncollected.
This shambles has to end NOW!
My situatuion – my husband had a 1 month relationship before me where the mother tricked my husband into pregnancy my husband was 15 at the time she was 18 – her plan was to get a house and benifits and not to work once she was pregnant she binned my hubby saying she ot what she wanted a sperm doner and he was no longer needed, she had told him she was on the pill (she wasnt) and she had pierced al the comdoms. My husband is a wonderful, caring husband and has never met his son. me and my husband have a son and daughter of our own and we bothwork hard, full time and have nothing left at the end of every month we dont drink, smoke, buy new clothes, have holidays, no savings, our money goes towards our mortgage, food etc, our children survive on child beneifit we get no other type of beneifit and we are orderd to pay for a child he is not allowd to see my hubby wanted to stand by her but she said it was all a game and he is no longer needed.. so the csa is to stop child poverty – what about my two children…. just because we are together and work me and my children are treated like this. we are worse of. she has a new partner who her son thinks is dad and thats her family she says.. please help! i am not the only person where girls have lied toget what they want.. csa needs to look harder at situations this is not fair so upsetting and we dont get to see much of our children like shedoes because we have to work. there should be a male pill! none of ths would happen! the benefit bill would be half.. i look forward to any advice, help etc
What a great idea, try a keep brokendown relationships together, forget cancelling the contracts for new prisons your going to need them!
By charging though it might work in favour for some people tough, how many PWC’s on benefits are going to want to spend there hard earned money on paying to set up an agreement?
Instead of wasting money on yet another unworkable system they should invest in mediation for NRP’s and PWC’s, get everything out in the open, paperwork on the table theiy might end up with alot of ‘happy campers’ for the first time in the CSA’s history
trouble is this is not going to work unless they scrap the whole lot entirely and start again! personally i think it may be a good idea to charge for using it as it would stop all the greedy pwcs that use it just to gain the extra money out of the nrp. However my concern is if the nrp wanted to pay the pwc direct but she refused and insisted going through the csa ,what would happen then? would it be solely the pwc choice as it is now? who will be charged in that case pwc ,nrp or both?
Where did the sweeping statement “The thinking behind it is that, if parents have to pay the CMEC to help them work out their maintenance disputes, then they will change their minds and stay together. ” come from? Is that an actual quote or just a stirring interpretation?
If you read the DWP consultation paper http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/strengthening-families.pdf then that statement is not actually true. The whole idea is to encourage parents to come to their own agreements on financial arrangements and discourage the statutory CMEC enforcement process which currently costs the taxpayer 40p for every £1 of child maintenance collected.
CMEC does not make the Gov money, it costs the Gov (or tax payers) £460 million each year to run. I doubt it will ever be shut down as someone linked Child Poverty to Child Maintenance which it is too big a political issue to scrap.
If you read the consultation paper then the whole idea is to encourage mediation between parents to create better relations and reach their own agreement. Failing that then parents can use a suggested maintenance calculation as a basis and pay maintenance direct. Failing that then there will be an application fee and a collection surcharge to use CMEC for collecting and processing payments.
It is a consultation paper so if you feel that strongly about it then you should send them your response.
A fthirty minute interview at DSS offices is all that it would take, to find reasonable common ground and set financial support and contact issues, involving a mediator.
I personally don’t want to be in the same room as my ex. She’s history, but so one sided is the current system, that she gets all her own way……and more, including breaking contact orders defying a high court judge. What happens to her naff all. If i fail to pay maintenance I would be thrown in jail!
This stupid hypocritical system has (as rach says) got to be scrapped and statred anew with involvemant from those who have experienced the current shambles!
This idea is priceless! But belss them it’s not really their fault when you consider every minister in the cabinet is, at the very least, a millionaire, it’s unsurprising that they are so out of touch with the little people!
I’ve read so many postings from people talking about the total incompetence of the CSA it’s just unbelievable, who can they make so many mistakes. The governemnet in 2008 even admitted that they were not fit for purpose so why are they still in existence?
When will they stop persecuting honest decent NRPs who rightfully pay and start chasing the scumbag NRPs who pay nothing and do everything they can to avoid paying for their children?
My ex told me he had the snip, 6 weeks later I was pregnant. After 10 years he had an affair and left me for his best friends wife. He decided not to pay maintenance for our son and that he would sign on the dole. He has set up four businesses in the last five years we have been seperated and I am sorry but I do not believe he lives on love alone in a four bedroom house on a new housing estate. He has been assessed that he should pay £5 per week and is at the moment £450 in arrears, the csa can’t even cope with recovering £5 from his benefit payments!!!!!!!!!!! I have constantly tried to prove he is working and often see him working on local private houses. But anyway I will shortly have to pay £100 and a percentage of the £5 back to the csa. DO YOU THINK THEY WILL ACTUALLY TRY HARDER TO COLLECT THIS MONEY????????????????
I’d happily pay a fee to the CSA if it meant that they would organise themselves properly, actually chase these men and get children their payments.
The system and staff are fustrating and the simplest thing seems to be impossible.
I’d be hacked off if I had to pay out money for the service I currently recieve!
Ive never heard anything so stupid in all my life, nrp all over the country now sat laughing, rubbing their hands together as they have a way out of being responsible for their children, if they paid towards their children in the first place then pwc wouldnt need to use the csa but they dont, thats why they have money deducted from their earnings because they do not respond to the csa. It should be the nrp who has to pay to use the csa!!!!!