The Child Support Agency (CSA) has been back in the spotlight, with reports that the figure of uncollected maintenance by the CSA is now exceeding Pounds 1.26bn. More than one million telephone calls to the agency during 2004/05 were abandoned as callers simply gave up. The total backlog of parents waiting for a maintenance assessment continues to rise, up by 20 per cent in the past six months alone.
The CSA was an idea that former prime minister Margaret Thatcher came up with in 1989 when she learned that 80 per cent of lone mothers on Income Support were receiving no money from the fathers of their children.
Determined to recoup at least some of this money for the Treasury, she decided to devise a system that would make absent parents pay.
Officials were sent to Australia to learn about the system there. The Australian equivalent of the CSA has received much praise and is hailed as an example of a system that works. British representatives took pages of notes, listened to what made the Australian system succeed and then went home and did the complete opposite.
Whereas the Australian formula for calculating payments was simple, the UK formula was complicated. While in Australia single parents on state benefits were allowed to keep more than half the money paid, in Britain the Treasury clawed it all back. And while in Australia if an agreement had been made between both parents the agency did not get involved, in Britain it did.
Complaints and protests
CSA operations went live in April 1993 and problems started almost immediately. By December it was forced to reassess around 150,000 cases following complaints, both from mothers who were still not receiving any money from their former partners, and from absent parents complaining that their maintenance payments were too high. In the first year alone the CSA received more than 1,000 complaints.
Within 18 months of its opening, fathers' groups had begun to protest and the first CSA chief executive, Ros Hepplewhite, resigned. In July the following year the National Audit Office found that fewer than half the maintenance orders made by the CSA were correct, and in November 1996 the second chief executive quit following criticisms in Parliament of the agency's inability to meet targets.
Criticisms kept coming. But everyone held out hope when in 2003 the CSA's new computer and telephone system was launched, despite it being 56m over budget and two years late.
In November 2003 the Department of Work and Pensions announced that only 4 per cent of the 150,000 new people applying for payments had received anything. By the following year the backlog of new cases was rising by 30,000 every three months, and the CSA admitted that over the past 20 months, payment had been made to only one in eight single parents. The year finished with another chief executive announcing his resignation.
Staff training
This year has not been any better. The agency received bad publicity when it emerged that CSA staff had deliberately entered false information on the agency's database, causing hundreds of parents to lose income.
The National Association for Child Support Action (NACSA) specialises in providing advice, support and information to anyone whose lives may have been affected by the CSA. Michelle Counley, chair of the organisation, believes that lack of staff training is often the trouble. She says, 'Problems are caused by front-line people dealing with sensitive issues after maybe only having one hour's training. Lots of problems are caused by misinformation being given out.'
It is her job to try to sort out some of the messes created in clients'
lives. For Anne Marie, for example, whose partner has a child from a previous relationship, the CSA call centre has given them nothing but grief over the past three years. They have now given up speaking to them, as they say they found the staff unhelpful and felt that people on the line were making up things if they didn't know the answers.
In 2002, 36 per cent of receipts called from non-resident parents were incorrect. Kim's husband is one parent who believes he has been paying correctly. The CSA says otherwise. He has been paying every month for 11 years but was informed that he was 4,500 in arrears. The CSA lost his direct debit payments and threatened to take 40 per cent of his wages before admitting that they had miscalculated.
Second families are often badly affected. Ms Counley says, 'We have had cases where couples have split up amicably, and due to problems with the CSA it has turned into a nightmare. It is not uncommon for second families to be put under such a strain that they break up also.'
The backlog of parents waiting for a maintenance assessment continues to rise, while the proportion of lone parents receiving a first payment where the maintenance assessment had been made has dropped from 72 per cent to 52 per cent.
Karen has parental responsibility for her late sister's daughter. She made a claim for child support in 2001 shortly after the death of her sister, and thought it would be straightforward to obtain maintenance from her niece's father. But four years later she is owed arrears of 14,000, and they are increasing by the month. The struggle ended up making her ill and, after taking time off work for depression, she eventually gave up her job.
Twofold system
Alan has experienced the CSA as both a parent with care and a non-resident parent. He feels failed by the agency on both counts. He says he has found the staff rude, arrogant, and at times abusive. When one of his two sons came to live with him, instead of solving his problems, things became much worse. Still paying the CSA for two sons, his claim for financial support for the son he was living with became stuck in the new system.
NACSA sees problems like this all the time. 'One of the biggest problems just now is chaos caused by having two systems,' says Ms Counley. 'Cases become stuck as they are being transferred between the two. In many of these cases dads are paying but mums are not receiving the money. People are being told they owe money, then later told they are not.'
One Parent Families has a similar story to tell. Janet Albeson, policy advisor for One Parent Families, explains, 'The two biggest problems we see are, first, people waiting ages for an assessment, never getting to speak to the same person twice on the telephone, then promises being broken, leading to enormous frustration. Second, once the calculations have been made, if the parent stops paying, the CSA is bad at enforcing compliance.'
Despite a new management team installed this year, and yet another new chief executive, things have not improved. Staff numbers have dropped and the amount of maintenance collected by the agency has fallen in real terms.
Frank Field MP says the situation is so bad that the CSA is 'in meltdown,' and that the 2003 reforms have only added to the chaos and declining performance. Mr Field had suggested earlier that the work of the CSA should be transferred to the Inland Revenue with staff being used to chase up non-payments, but his proposals fell on deaf ears.
Although the Government appears to be hanging on to the present set-up, more reforms have been promised. Work and Pensions secretary David Blunkett recently announced the introduction of a mediation stage before parents file formal claims to the CSA, and a full reform of the CSA is promised before the end of the year.
Opinions are divided as to whether these reforms will work. Janet Albeson at One Parent Families thinks that the best route is to try to fix the present system rather than install a new one. 'We are keen to come up with a system that works,' she says. 'If we get rid of the CSA, we are getting rid of a big system. We need an agency that is dedicated to collecting maintenance.'
At NACSA Michelle Counly is more sceptical. 'For 12 years we have tinkered with the system, added to it, and adjusted it, and it just isn't working.
We need to give up. For nine or ten years the National Audit Office have refused to sign off their accounts because they are in such a mess.
'We need to start from scratch,' she adds. 'Children, not the Treasury, need to be the focus. We need fairness.' NW Names of parents have been changed
