Child Maintenance Service 'puts domestic abuse survivors at risk'

Untrained staff and flawed systems failing parents, warn Gingerbread and Women’s Aid

Domestic abuse survivors are being put at risk by the Child Maintenance Service, finds new evidence from Gingerbread and Women's Aid.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) is replacing the Child Support Agency (CSA), requiring parents who were using the CSA, or new applicants, to apply to the CMS if they need help to sort out child maintenance.

Domestic abuse survivors are expected to make up 50% of parents applying to the CMS, but Gingerbread and Women's Aid have found that staff working there have no specialist training on how to work with survivors or how to recognise financial coercion.

The CMS insists that all parents initially pay child maintenance directly to each other, requiring the parent with care of the children to supply their bank details to the other parent. The CMS will only step in to collect maintenance if payments are consistently missed.

Gingerbread and Women's Aid are concerned that the lack of specialist training for staff, combined with the expectation that parents interact over payments is leaving survivors open to financial and emotional abuse. They warn that some parents are dropping out of the system entirely because they feel unprotected.

The charities have heard from parents who are too frightened to go ahead with direct payments in case their abuser gets hold of their personal details. While the CMS advises survivors to set up non-geographic bank accounts, there is little clarity over how this will work or help protect those at risk: one survivor told Gingerbread that this would still reveal her new name and another found that her bank couldn't set one up.

Gingerbread Chief Executive Fiona Weir said:

"Child maintenance matters. It helps single parents to provide the essentials for their children, yet less than half of single parent families get any child maintenance at all. This makes the role of the CMS crucial. But it's clear that for the many survivors of domestic abuse who will be turning for the service for help, the CMS is not fit for purpose.

"The service as a whole has to get a better understanding of the support that domestic abuse survivors need. As it stands, children aren't getting the financial support they should and survivors are being put in a vulnerable position."

Gingerbread and Women's Aid have also raised concerns over the impact of charges in the new system. The CMS charges a £20 application fee to open a case. While this is waived for domestic abuse survivors, they have to declare a history of abuse and are not directly asked. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) itself has acknowledged that this will mean many survivors end up paying the fee.

If the CMS does step in to collect unpaid maintenance it imposes charges on both parents. Not only do single parents lose out financially, but some have told Gingerbread that they won't move into the collection system for fear of upsetting the other parent. This leaves some trapped in arrangements where the paying parent gets away with paying what they decide, when they decide.

Polly Neate, Chief Executive of Women's Aid, said:

"Women's Aid calls for the Government to ensure women and children have safe child maintenance arrangements in place by fast-tracking domestic violence survivors to the statutory 'Collect & Pay' system, dropping charges for survivors to use the system and ensuring all staff receive specialist training on domestic abuse. The current system is simply not safe for survivors – change is urgently needed."

Gingerbread and Women's Aid are calling for the DWP to:

Roll out specialist training and clear guidance for CMS staff on how to recognise and work with domestic abuse survivors
Offer survivors the option to fast-track to using the CMS collection service
Drop the 4% collection charges for single parents in cases of domestic abuse and review the 20% charge for the paying parent.
Gingerbread is campaigning for significant improvements to the Child Maintenance Service
For more information click here

Wraparound childcare policy 'failing due to lack of funding'

A report in The Guardian this morning informs us extended school services are failing to meet
after-school and holiday childcare needs.
Government ambitions for schools to provide wraparound childcare before and after lessons,
as well as after-school clubs and holiday activities, are falling short due to inadequate
funding, according to new research seen exclusively by the Guardian.

A report by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and the Family and Childcare Trust says
extended school services are popular with schools and families and can improve children’s
outcomes, but current provision is failing to meet parents’ demands for after-school and holiday
childcare.

Almost two fifths (39%) of schools surveyed for the report said parents wanted holiday provision,
but only 29% of schools were able to offer it. For after-school childcare, provided by just over
half of schools, the shortfall was 11 percentage points and was particularly acute in primary
schools.

The report, published on Wednesday, calls on the government to provide a clear vision to
encourage schools to extend their services and provide dedicated funding to pay for it. “Without
this, existing services risk withering on the vine, becoming increasingly reliant on parental
contributions and therefore inaccessible to the most deprived children,” it warns.


Do we need more childcare in schools
The term extended schools refers to services offered through a school to pupils and the wider
community, including sports, arts and homework clubs, as well as wraparound and holiday childcare.

The aim is to enable children – particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds – to broaden
their interests through extra-curricular activities and simultaneously free up their parents to
work, reducing the risk of child poverty.

The research found that children from deprived families use the out-of-school services as much
as their better off peers in the vast majority of schools, but in a small but significant minority
, poorer families use them less – possibly because they cannot afford the parental contributions
most schools require.

Of those surveyed, 84% of head teachers said their extended services were used by a mix of more
and less advantaged families, but 10% said their services were used disproportionately by
better-off families even though the services are usually part-funded by the pupil premium, which
is additional money for schools to raise attainment among disadvantaged pupils.

Three quarters of schools that took part in the survey said they would like to expand the numbers
using their extended services and the range of services offered and a third wanted to expand
their hours.

Two thirds of schools, however, said they could not expand because of a lack of funding,
47% were constrained by limited space and 54% had problems with staffing.
For more information click here

Why we need to talk to our children about sexting

An article by Judith Woods in The Telegraph yesterday reminds us of the
importance of talking to our children. She tells us

“Are you talking about sex offenders? I know a sex offender.”

The adults gathered at last weekend’s barbecue slowed up on their own conversations to listen
in to my friend’s 15-year-old daughter.

“You shouldn’t be eavesdropping,” chided her mother, waving a wine glass.

“If this is about your uncle Desmond, nothing was ever proved,” quipped her dad. “Just because a
man chooses to live in a caravan up a dirt track and reuses his teabags doesn’t make him a
pervert.”

“No, I mean an actual sex offender. On the register and everything. She’s in my class at school.”

Cue slack-jawed disbelief and spluttering all round as the chipolatas
cindered on the BBQ. How could it be? Who could it be?
All you parents out there, if you were taken aback by new revelations from the NSPCC that,
in the last three years, more than 2,000 children have been reported to the police over indecent
images, then I suggest you feel alarmed and outraged instead that children as young as 12 are
risking criminalisation.

My friends live in a commuter town, and their children attend the sort of mixed but robustly
successful state school where pupils are photographed in the local papers leaping into the air
on results day.

Their girl’s friends are the daughters of civil servants and dentists and graphic designers.
And yet one of her classmates – let’s call her Jade – has, at the age of 15, apparently been
questioned by police for the sharing of indecent images.

Jade’s “crime” was to circulate the topless photographs that her friend Lara had taken and sent
to her boyfriend.

Sending “topless nudes”, as they are known by teenagers, is regarded among girls as nasty and
cheap and an offence punishable by social exclusion.

Usually a girl will lose her friends immediately for “being a dirty ho”. On this occasion,
it went much further; Lara received the ultimate in “slut-shaming” when Jade forwarded the
photographs.
What she did was mean and vindictive and cruel. But was it a sex offence? Of course, if you
were Lara’s parents you would probably think it was, and I have every sympathy for them.

But could justice ever be served by branding stupid or malicious or hormonal teenage girls, or
indeed boys, sex offenders? Alongside rapists and abusers and manipulative monsters who groom –
poison – little children with their toxic brew of treats and terror?

To be honest, I’m not at all convinced Jade is on any sex offender’s register. Barbecue gossip
is just that and, curious though they are, I don’t think my friends will be bringing up the
subject with her parents at the proverbial school gates.

But her name is now mired in scandal (as indeed is Lara’s).

Now, from a pragmatic and terribly non-PC perspective, I suppose fears of police raids and
registers might give kids pause before making and
distributing intimate and explicit selfies.

But the real issue is young people’s exposure to violent hardcore on free internet sites,
and “personalised” porn on their handsets.

“Boys send intimate pictures all the time and nobody really cares, because you can’t identify
the person,” sighed my friend’s 15-year-old with a peculiarly disturbing world-weariness. Her
mates all nodded.

We looked at them, a naive bunch of 40+ innocents, with wide eyes and appalled expressions,
wanting to ask the obvious but afraid of the answer.

“Yes, of course, erect. Otherwise what’s the point?” she added with an air of impatience at
our complete hopelessness. “I think it’s revolting, but boys think it’s like porn only more…
personal.”

So there we have it: “personalised porn” for kids who aren’t old enough to have legal sex.

It’s nothing short of tragic that a generation of kids, inured to the selfie culture, is being
seduced or duped or egged on to take pictures of themselves that may well haunt them forever.

Child crime

• One in six people reported for indecent imagery are now aged under 18.
• There were 4,530 cases of indecent imagery in 2013, more than doubling in two years to 10,818 in 2015.
• During that period, 2,000 children were among those reported to police for indecent image offences.
• Police believe sexting has played a significant factor in the rise of child-related investigations.

Solutions?

• The NSPCC has suggested that urgent action needs to be taken, including:
• Internet companies developing technological solutions, including data sharing with the authorities and faster 
• response time to remove indecent images of children when they are found in the public domain.
• The process for removing nude images from internet sites should be streamlined.
• Greater access to support for children and teenagers who have fallen victim to indecent 
• images being shared online.
• Offenders who have been convicted should be offered treatment to reduce their future risk to children.

For more information click here