Press Release

 

The CSA should be scrapped and a whole new start made

 

‘The announcement of yet another review, whilst welcome, means that parents can look forward to several more years of chaos while nothing much happens’, commented John Baker, Chair of UK charity Families Need Fathers.

Legislation may as well be passed to abolish the CSA and all its operations immediately. If this were a private industry, the CSA would have been passed into the hands of the receivers by now to see what could be recovered.

The new short-term operational plan is unlikely to help mothers, fathers or children. It will fall foul of the same problems as the existing service. It will prove impossible to use coercion on the scale required.

John Hutton said at Westminster today that in 50% of cases dealt with by the CSA, the children of the families involved do not see their fathers.

The majority of parents who refuse to meet their maintenance payments do so because they are prevented from having contact with their children. Most fathers, and mothers, DO want to maintain their responsibilities, both financially and as parents. But their path is blocked by Contact Orders not worth the paper they are written on. Many give up before they even bother with the courts. Just the court fee alone to get a valid Contact Order enforced, before you pay for lawyers, has recently gone up to £175.

Change that culture by adopting a presumption of shared parenting (except where there is good cause not to, such as violence or drug/alcohol addiction). Governments of right and left in Australia, Spain, Italy and Holland have recently done this. Our Government has explicitly rejected a Shared Parenting Presumption in the Children Bill, currently going through Parliament. We are mystified as to why Labour, the party of equality, has done this. We’re not talking about a 50:50 split, though that works well for some families, but equality of parenting.

We believe that if shared parenting were the norm not the exception, much of the non-compliance problem would cease to exist and the CSA could concentrate on the minority of fathers who really are "dead-beat" or "feckless".

It’s wishful thinking for policy makers to imagine that Child Support and Contact are unrelated. This misconception is at the root of the CSA’s failure since its start. The Government often talks of “joined up thinking”. With family policy sprawled across the DWP, the DfES and the DCA, we have the opportunity to put this empty rhetoric into practice, by making both the CSA and Contact work.

ENDS

Families Need Fathers (FNF) is a registered charity providing information and support on shared parenting issues arising from family breakdown, and support to divorced and separated parents, irrespective of gender or marital status. Our primary concern is the maintenance of the child's relationship with both parents. Founded in 1974, FNF helps thousands of parents every year.

Please see Families Need Fathers ‘programme for change’ Father’s Day Manifesto