Despite the Prime Minister recently having apologised for muddling up his own coronavirus rules, he somehow managed to get the messge on children visiting parents wrong last week. There has been no change in that respect. The rules, set out in a recent Parliamentary Briefing state that restrictions of meetings do not apply “for the purposes of arrangements for access to, and contact between, parents and children where the children do not live in the same household as their parents or one of their parents”.

 

The briefing is provided to MPs by the House of Commons Library on key questions regarding the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on separated families, maintenance arrangements and access to children, the House of Commons published a Parliamentary Briefing titled "Coronavirus: Separated Families and Contact with Children in Care FAQs". The briefing includes guidance on: 

• Can children move between the homes of separated parents?
• Rules regarding children required to self-isolate 
• How should parents comply with a court-orders for contact?
• How are child maintenance payments impacted?
• Can I visit my child in care/residential home?
• My child contact centre is closed: What alternatives are being made?
• Where can I go for help and advice? - the guidance now provides Families Need Fathers contact details in this section.

We would like to remind you to keep looking at our guidance "Navigating child arrangements amid COVID-19 concerns" and the official Government guidelines.

In relation to Child Maintenance and Universal Credit, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) have informed us that they are catching up on their backlog of cases. However, since we published our guidance earlier this year little has happened in relation to policy decisions e.g. a decision about rules of variation of income by over 25%, despite the old furlough scheme being at 80% of pay, remain under review. We will ask CMS what the situation will be now that this scheme is ending and the new one will result in lower incomes, including whether they will reconsider their historic requirement to a 12-week delay to such reviews which are not then retrospective.

We are also pleased to announce that we have increased capacity on our Helpline 0300 0330 363.and now believe we have more Helpline volunteers than ever before in our history. We also continue to encourage use or our online Forum - if you are able to provide guidance to others in need, you can do so there. Many branch meetings are taking place online (check for details, which can change from day to day. Branches will need to continue to assess the risks in relation to physical meetings according to the Guidelines, taking into account their venue and general circumstances, and they will decide whether and how meetings can take place.  We expect all national and local rules to be followed and precautions to be taken as appropriate. Irrespective of that, we respect that some Branch volunteers are themselves vulnerable to Covid-19 or simply wish to exercise a greater level of caution than official guidelines for their area or venue type.