A fresh start for child maintenance
13/12/2006
The Government has published the Child Maintenance White Paper - A new
system of child maintenance. This White Paper sets out the Government's
proposals to establish a new and radically different organisation to
administer child maintenance.
This will be underpinned by an entirely new approach that encourages parents to take responsibility for supporting their children financially, but is backed up by a tough enforcement regime for cases where this does not happen. The reforms will help the child maintenance system to achieve the important objectives set for it - to help tackle child poverty, promote parental responsibility, provide a cost effective and professional service and be simple and transparent.
A new organisation called the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission will be set up to replace the Child Support Agency. It will have responsibility for all aspects of the new child maintenance system including providing parents with information and guidance to help them make their own arrangements and the calculation, collection and enforcement of maintenance.
There will be no immediate change for the existing Child Support Agency, which will continue to operate until late 2008. During the period where we are setting up the new organisation we will continue to increase our focus on compliance and enforcement as part of the improvements to our service we have already made, and are continuing to make, following the Operational Improvement Plan.
The Child Support Agency remains firmly open for business and we will intensify and increase our efforts to improve our client services and get more money flowing to more children.
You will find a copy of the White Paper on the DWP site.
