FNF – BPM is the leading non-gendered shared parenting charity in England. We are a child welfare charity. We work to ensure that all children have a safe, continuing, and happy relationship with both their parents and wider families, following separation or divorce.
We welcome the attempts by Government to reduce child poverty but are concerned that the proposals in this report, while to some extent helping both parents amount to a zero-sum investment in the future of our children. We do not believe a key solution to child poverty in the UK today is for one parent to pay more money to another parent. There are many, more effective, social investments that can be made to this end. However, we have no remit to assist parents who fail or refuse to pay child maintenance. For many years we have argued that the both the Family Courts and the Child Maintenance Service are failing our children. Many parents, particularly those who make use of our help line and receive advice at our branch meetings, are financially impoverished by both services. Worse, the CMS and courts, provides numerous financial incentives not to progress parenting opportunities, such as maximising income by reducing contact time, long term contact centre payments to accommodate court delays, court fees, and unaffordable CM payments.
For these reasons, we are very concerned that already financially constrained ‘paying parents’ will find themselves more financially restricted by a 20% increase impayments for Collect and Pay, at a time they are trying to rebuild a second home fit for their children to live in. Our members often tell us this arrangement is imposed on them without warning and inappropriately leaving the paying parent the task of proving the arrangement is not justified. This often takes a long time when the caseworkers change so frequently.
We welcome the recommendation for the adoption of named case workers for customers, an arrangement that has been adopted in large measure across many family and social work scenarios with great success.
We are also concerned that the report makes no recommendations regarding the divisive use of language. The ’paying parent’ and ‘receiving parent’, the ‘parent with care’, and the ‘non-resident parent’, used throughout the report reflects and reinforces the combative nature of family arrangements following separation, that our charity is determined to end. These descriptions also reinforce the misapprehension that only one parent has a financial commitment to their children.
Our experience with separated mothers and fathers tells us that they are happy to contribute to the financial welfare of their children even when long court delays, extended court processes, inflexible CAFCASS recommendations and the interventions of external agencies slow matters to a near halt. What prevents their cooperation is the fear, that despite the obstacles, and in many cases, supportive court orders, they may still never see their children again. This is because the Family Court is so reluctant to enforce its orders and requires them to reapply to court for enforcement orders with the additional costs of legal representation and application fees. This is what moves contributing parents to withdraw their support for child maintenance payments, not financial coercion.
For this reason, we welcome the recommendation that the Government should look at the whole question of affordability. There is an urgent need for the government to remove maintenance thresholds from primary legislation so changes in child maintenance payments more rapidly reflect societies changing financial landscape.
One financial incentive inherent in the current legal aid arrangements in the family court is that allegations of domestic abuse, be they true or false, can ensure the granting of legal aid to the accuser. This is a frequent concern of our service users. Particularly when the courts impose no sanction on the accuser for making false allegations. The definition of domestic abuse is now so wide that courts are finding some minor events in the distance past, insignificant situational incidents at the end of a rocky relationships or even false allegations, to be abusive.
Our intuition is that these decisions are an attempt to provide some level of satisfaction for the accuser to ensure a more successful outcome for the parent seeking contact at the end of the hearing. Although made with the best of intentions they lead to a significant financial burden on the paying parent many of whom see the collect and pay burden as an unjustified fine rather than an incentive to move to direct pay.
There is no reason to believe that even paying parents who have had decisions of domestic abuse found in family courts, should not be contrite, particularly after completing appropriate court-imposed courses and therapy, and be willing to make direct pay arrangements. It is our belief that the 20% burden imposed on these parents would set yet another obstacle to rebuilding of parent/child relationships resulting in the burdened parents becoming more embittered with a system they feel does not support children.
We welcome the recommendation for a waiver of the 20% and 4% collect and pay burdens for victims of domestic abuse.
The report suggests that the government consider a future arrangement that both parent’s income is considered when making calculations for child maintenance payments. We welcome this but have little conviction it will be a priority for this government.
Our members, who are predominantly paying parents, frequently find themselves impoverished and with limited contact with their children, while their children’s other parent lives with a new partner who contributes extensively to the new family leaving them financially very comfortably. The other parent may well work part time or not at all while claiming benefits. This situation, in our experience, leads to paying parents feeling estranged from a system apparently designed to support children of separated parents.
The model we propose is this. That care and cost of children should be shared between the parents. The indirect costs, particularly reduced earning capacity, would also be shared as it is with parents who remain together. Full equality might be unrealistic but a negotiated agreement with support from the courts would improve things for all particularly the children.
In fact, the primary advantage would be for the children – having the full participation of both parents in their lives. The second main advantage would be relief for mothers, who traditionally take more than their fair share of child-care. It would also benefit their children as they set a great example to them for their future, themselves as they remain in contact with their fellow workmates and the jobs market, the taxpayer, and the economy.
Fathers will also benefit from access to the emotionally richest part of their life. And from the reduction of the unrelieved living grief of exclusion from the lives of their children. This is one of the main factors in the horrific male suicide rate.
Recent and continuing changes in the organisation of paid work make these arrangements easier. In the days when much of work required physical strength, it was men that tended to toil, and women provided child-care. Those days are long gone with the end of the industrial revolution.
In the past, when paid work required one parent to be ‘out’ for work and the other home based has now largely ended. The situation has changed beyond recognition. Out of 368 hours in a week it has become much easier for a parent of either sex/gender to be in paid employment for 35 and still be available their children when needed.
It is time the attitudes of the legal profession, law makers, social services and family courts, and with respect, politicians, caught up.
The need is to put the welfare of the children first, and then to sort out the best way of funding it. This will be some combination of parental earnings, transfers between the parents and, where necessary, support through the benefits system.
Shared parenting will reduce the inequality of direct and indirect costs. It will reduce the inter-parental financial transfers needed and the amount of taxpayer subsidy required. The evidence of other countries is that shared involvement fosters parental co-operation and therefore resistance to paying. It may even, if the Spanish experience is anything to go by – quite dramatically reduce domestic violence and abuse.
Ian Findlay and John Baker
03-05-23
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