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TMA 01

_____________________________________________________________________

Please read these instructions carefully. However, contact your tutor in case any difficulties with the instructions. You should submit your completed assignment to your tutor to arrive no later than the cut-off date : November 5, 2009 .

Students must submit the TMA through electronic submission i.e. LMS, and must protect their user ID and password.

Completing and sending your assignments

When you have completed each of your TMAs, fill in an electronic assignment form (PT3), taking care to enter correctly your personal identifier course and assignment numbers. Keep a copy of your TMA for security. The copy that is eventually returned to you after the assessment process will have comments written on it. All assignments are treated in strict confidence. It is very important that you ensure that your tutor receives each assignment by the cut-off date given. If you feel that you are unable to meet the cut-off date for any of the TMAs because of unusual circumstances, please contact your tutor as soon as possible to discuss a possible extension to the cut-off date.

Plagiarism

You can score full marks on this assignment using the materials provided as part of the course. However, if you have access to other source of information such as reference books or the Internet, you may find it interesting to look there for additional relevant information. Very short extracts from published sources may be included in context but you should avoid copying significant amounts of text from other authors. You should note that whilst the internet can provide lots of information much of it is not refereed and should be treated with caution.

If you take material from the course or elsewhere and incorporate it in your answer

word-for-word, you must indicate where you have taken it from. Not to do so it termed ‘plagiarism’ and is regarded as an infringement of copyright. To attempt to pass off such work as your own is cheating. You must therefore acknowledge all your sources of information.

Plagiarism will lead to a loss of marks and extensive plagiarism could mean that you fail a TMA. For more information about what constitutes plagiarism or cheating you should refer to the current Assessment Handbook.

General

There are five questions in this TMA. You should answer all of them. All questions can be answered by reading the material in Block One. Please note that questions two and three are based on reading Appendix B (The Case study) of Block one. You should notice the mark allocations for each question or part of the questions and allocate your effort accordingly.

Important Note:

Appropriate use of diagrams and examples are expected throughout the TMA.

It is very important to use your own words.

Question 1 (20 marks)

1. In what ways might studying and successfully finishing this T306 course may help you become a good systems practitioner? Explain your answer. Also, what does the term ‘managing complexity’ in the title of this course means to you so far. Support your answer with examples. (10 marks)

1. Discuss what you believe are the objectives and outcomes of using the following diagrams:

1. 1. 1. 1. Multi–Cause Diagram

         2. Control Model Diagram

(10 marks)

Question 2 20 marks

(Questions Two and Three are based on the CSA case)

1. Based on your reading of the Child Support Agency (CSA) case in Block one

(Appendix B), show your understanding and knowledge of the case by drawing

a rich picture depicting this complex situation. (15 points)

(b) What steps you may take to make sure your picture is meaningful and you are

not falling into the traps of drawing a less effective picture. (5 points)

Question 3 (15 points)

Play the role of a consultant or advisor who is asked to suggest actions or solutions to the CSA case situation by writing a report of no more than 500 words to explain your opinion about possible solutions or actions to take. Explain the basis for such suggestions.

Question 4 (20 points)

Focusing on the attributes of the effective practitioner juggling the B ball, explain the significance of being aware of the possibilities and constraints of a situation being observed and/or engaged with.

Question 5 (25 points)

1. 1. There are two forms of behaviour when it comes to purpose in systems thinking. By giving examples on each, explain the difference between purposeful behaviour and purposive behavior. (10 points)

1. 1. Show your understanding with suitable examples the difference between the following terms within the context of systems thinking and practice:

      1. Method

      2. Methodology

      3. Tool

      4. Technique (15 points)

Guidance notes

You are not given detailed notes on how to respond to these TMA questions. This is so you will have more flexibility to respond in ways that are appropriate to your answers. You should, however, avoid being verbose or rambling. Since this is a Systems course, you should try to reduce the number of words in favor of diagrams where these are appropriate. You may need to offer some interpretative notes to your diagrams so that your tutor is able to appreciate the points you are trying to make.

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Appendix B
Case study Financial support
for the children of lone parents
by Joyce Fortune
Introduction
The following case study looks at the background to child support and the first
four years of the UK’s Child Support Agency (CSA). When I was asked to write a
case study that would enable you to develop and practise your skills in systems
thinking, the CSA came readily into my mind as a possible topic.
As someone with a long-standing interest in the use of systems thinking to
investigate failures, I have watched the story of the CSA unfold with a growing sense
of wonder. Failures come in all shapes and sizes. They range from the catastrophic,
such as the air crash killing all on board that leaves everyone dismayed, to others
that are matters for debate, such as the decision to build a by-pass that is hailed as a
transport triumph by some and an environmental disaster by others. But it is rare for
something to disappoint so many people for so long in the way the CSA has.
The story you are about to read is, in one sense, a partial one. It does not, and
could not, tell the whole story of the first four years of the CSA. I have, however,
tried to tell the story in an impartial, dispassionate way. I have deliberately
restricted my sources of information to material from newspapers, press releases
on the Internet, official publications and text books.
Before you start to read the case study, I want to introduce some of the
terminology within it. Under the terms used in the UK’s Child Support Act 1991,
a qualifying child is one for whom child maintenance is payable under the
legislation. This is usually a boy or girl under sixteen years, or between sixteen
and eighteen if in full-time education, and who has one or both parents who do
not live in the same household. In most official documents, the parent with whom
the qualifying child lives is called the ‘parent with care’ and the other parent is
called the ‘absent parent’. However, the latter is now often referred to as the
‘non-resident parent’. On the grounds that over 90% of parents with care are
mothers, most publications refer to a parent with care as ‘she’ and a non-resident
parent as ‘he’ but all the rules governing maintenance payments apply equally
regardless of whether the lone parent is a man or woman. I have tried to avoid he
and she unless the gender of the person to which reference is made is known.
Before the CSA
Act of Parliament and administrative procedures for paying benefit to parents for
child support had been in place for many years. However, an increase in the
number of lone-parent families brought increased attention to parent responsibility
and child maintenance in the late 1980s.
Before writing about the Child Support Agency, I will look at some of the social
changes that led to a government White Paper called Children Come First, and
then look at the 1991 Child Support Act and plans for its implementation.
Child support in the 1980s
Between 1971 and 1991 the proportion of UK households headed by lone
parents grew and grew, reaching the point where they accounted for almost a
fifth of all families with dependent children. In addition, by 1991 unmarried
mothers had overtaken divorced mothers as the largest category of one-parent
156 Block 1 Appendixes
families in Great Britain. (See Table B1.) Largely because of these demographic
changes, benefits expenditure on lone parents increased from £2.4 billion in
1978/79 to £6.6 billion in 1992/93. Between 1980 and 1990 the proportion
of lone parent families receiving payments from non-resident parents fell from
around 50% to 23%. (In this case study, a billion is 1000 million.)
Under the ‘liable relative’ provisions of the National Assistance Act 1948, the
state had the right to recover benefit paid in respect of children from the parents,
irrespective of whether those parents were married to each other. But by 1990,
the amount the Department of Social Security (DSS) was recouping had fallen to
roughly 7% of the cost of providing benefits to lone parent families. This was due
in part to high levels of unemployment but it had also come about because
recovering the benefit was not regarded as a priority.
For parents with care who were receiving maintenance from non-resident parents
the amounts were often small. A survey conducted in 1987 (Edwards and
Halpern, 1988) showed the average payment was just under £27 a week, but the
most common payment was only £10. The authors of a 1989 survey of the lone
parent population (Bradshaw and Millar, 1991) made the following observations:
Only 30% [of lone parents] received anything and [maintenance]
payments typically met only a fraction of the cost of providing a basic
standard of living for their children. The least advantaged lone parents,
those on income support, were least likely to receive maintenance
payments. These findings suggested that the existing procedures for
recovering contributions from ‘liable relatives’ were ineffective in the
majority of cases. Among better-placed lone parents, court orders were
more common, but tended to wither in value under the joint effects of
inflation and indifference. Whatever compulsion was applied (and men did
sometimes go to prison for non-payment) its wider impact was weak.
Table B1 Family type, and marital status of lone mothers in
Great Britain: 1971 to 1991
Family type 1971 1975 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1990 1991
% % % % % % % % % %
married or
co-habiting
couple
92 90 88 87 86 86 85 83 80 81
lone mother 7 9 10 11 12 12 12 15 18 18
single 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 5 6 6
widowed 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1
divorced 2 3 4 4 5 5 5 6 7 6
separated 2 2 3 2 2 3 2 3 4 4
lone father 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 1
all lone parents 8 10 12 13 14 14 14 17 20 19
(Government Statistical Service, 1991)
Only families with dependent children are included. Dependent children are persons under
16 or aged-16–18 and in full-time education, in the family unit, and living in the household.
Figures collected by the Department of Social Security for the year 1990/91
(DSS, 1993) showed that after housing costs had been deducted, 60% of lone
parent families had incomes that were less than half the national average and only
9% were above the national average. (The figures for couples with children were
60% and 31% respectively.) Another study (Kiernan, 1992) found fewer than half
of all single mothers had access to a telephone and only 15% had access to a car.
It was clear to the government the issue had to be tackled.
Case study 157
New legislation
In a speech to the children’s charity, National Children’s Homes, on 17 January
1990 the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, raised the issue in public for
the first time:
Nearly four out of five mothers claiming income support receive no
maintenance from the fathers. No father should be able to escape from
his responsibility and that is why the government is looking at ways of
strengthening the system for tracing an absent father and making the
arrangements for recovering maintenance more effective.
Six months later, the government’s intention was clear. On 18 July, the prime
minister announced to the House of Commons the government would:
… set up a new Child Support Agency which will have access to the
information necessary to trace absent parents and make them accept
their financial obligations … [Maintenance will be assessed] through a
standard administrative formula which will take account of the parents’
ability to pay, of the cost of bringing up a child – and the right of that
child to share in their parents’ rising living standards. Complicated cases
may still have to be referred to the courts but the existence of the formula
will help in these cases too.
Children Come First
Proposals to set up an administrative agency to assess, collect and enforce child
maintenance were set out in the White Paper Children Come First, which was
published in October 1990. It gave the same message as that contained in
Thatcher’s speech to the National Children’s Homes:
Every child has a right to care from his or her parents. Parents generally
have a legal obligation to care for their children until the children are old
enough to look after themselves. The parents of a child may separate. In
some instances, the parents may not have lived together as a family at all.
Although events may change the relationship between the parents – for
example, when they divorce – those events cannot in any way change
their responsibilities towards their children …
It is right that other taxpayers should help maintain children when the
children’s own parents, despite their own best efforts, do not have
enough resources to do so themselves. That will continue to be the case.
But it is not right that taxpayers, who include other families, should
shoulder that responsibility instead of parents who are able to do it
themselves.
The White Paper was in two parts. The first part proposed the setting up of the
Child Support Agency under the authority of the secretary of state for Social
Security. Its role would be to trace absent parents, investigate parents’ means,
assess the amounts of maintenance to be paid by application of a standard
formula, and collect and enforce payments. Parents with care who were in receipt
of income support or family credit would be obliged to apply for maintenance and
to provide the information required unless they had ‘good cause’ to withhold
information. (The examples of good cause that were cited were rape and incest.)
Those who refused to co-operate without good cause would suffer a benefit
penalty. The second part of the White Paper contained the statistical data on
which the assertions made in the first part were based.
There were critical responses to the White Paper from interested parties such as
the Child Poverty Action Group who described it as ‘narrowly conceived and overdominated
by Treasury considerations’ (Bennett and Chapman, 1990), but the
proposals it contained were embodied almost unchanged in the Child Support bill.
158 Block 1 Appendixes
The Child Support Act 1991
The Child Support bill was published on 15 February 1991 as ‘An Act to make
provision for the assessment, collection and enforcement of periodical
maintenance payable by certain parents with respect to children of theirs who are
not in their care; for the collection and enforcement of certain other kinds of
maintenance; and for connected purposes.’
It was broadly welcomed by the National Council for One Parent Families though
its director was reported as saying: ‘We are very disappointed that government
has not reconsidered its intention to remove benefit payments from families in
which mothers do not wish to name fathers as we believe this will cause great
hardship to vulnerable children’ (The Times, 16 February 1991).
Other groups and organizations were much less sanguine. Those expressing
stronger opposition included the Law Society and various voluntary and charitable
bodies such as the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux, the Child
Poverty Action Group, Barnado’s, Church Action on Poverty, the Legal Action
Group, MENCAP, the National Children’s Bureaux, the NSPCC, the Save the
Children Fund and the Children’s Society.
In addition to concern about the requirement to name the father, the main
criticism from organizations was the failure to address the underlying problem of
lone parent poverty. Because income support would be reduced pound-for-pound
by the amount of maintenance received, many lone parents would receive no
financial benefit from the maintenance payments. Many of the organizations
argued that parents on income support should be allowed to keep a proportion of
the maintenance over and above their benefits in the same way as those receiving
family credit or disability working allowance were able to have the first £15 of
maintenance disregarded when their entitlement was calculated.
Within Parliament, opposition to the passage of the bill was strongest in the
House of Lords. By a majority of 110 votes to 106, the Lords rejected the
proposal to exact a benefit penalty for non-co-operation. But this penalty was
restored, albeit with a broadening of the grounds for not co-operating, in the
House of Commons during the committee stage of the legislative process. Some
MPs in the Commons did voice dissent, and the cross-party Social Security
Committee called for amendments including one that would prevent the
retrospective investigation of people who had reached divorce settlements prior to
the legislation. However, the opposition parties did not vote against the Act.
Perhaps surprisingly, media coverage was limited, with the issue of runaway
fathers being the only one to attract much interest and five months after its
publication the bill received royal assent on 25 July 1991.
Concern has been expressed at the speed at which the legislative process moved.
For instance, one district judge wrote:
The Child Support Act 1991 has radically changed the law and
procedure as to the determination and recovery of child maintenance
throughout the United Kingdom. A remarkable feature of these changes
has been the speed with which they have been introduced. The Children
Act 1989 was a major piece of legislation which was intended to
encompass all necessary provisions relating to children, and, as part of
these provisions, contained a lengthy and elaborate schedule dealing with
child maintenance. That Act completed its legislative passage in 1989
and was brought into force on 14 October 1991; however, even before it
had come into force, the Child Support Act had been introduced,
completed all its legislative stages and received Royal Assent. The result is
that, even before it came into force, that part of the Children Act which
deals with child maintenance was reduced to the status of transitional
provision as it related to most children.
(Bird, 1993, p.17)
Case study 159
A Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) publication (Garnham and Knights, 1994)
claimed:
Not only did the haste of the legislative process detract from the quality of
scrutiny, but the heavy use of secondary legislation compounded the
problem further since there is no possibility of amending the regulations
during debate … CPAG believes … all the problems [about the working of
the Act] could be – and were – predicted from the legislation. The
government’s response was simply to keep restating the need for change
and the underlying principle at each stage of the debate, without giving
much evidence of having seriously reflected on possible consequences.
(Garnham and Knights, 1994, pp.50–51)
Bird (1993, p.27) explains this point about secondary legislation: ‘One of the
distinctive features of the Act was the large amount of detail which was left to be
determined by regulation. Until these regulations were published it was not
possible to predict accurately the overall effect of the provisions of the Act.’ He
then goes on to list the nine sets of regulations from the Department of Social
Security that were laid before Parliament and eventually made during the second
half of 1992. Bird also refers to the various orders dealing with matters such as
consent orders and applications for declaration as to parentage that emanated
from the Lord Chancellor’s Department.
The provisions of the Act
As its long title states, the Act provides for ‘the assessment, collection and
enforcement of periodical maintenance payable by certain parents with respect to
children of theirs who are not in their care; for the collection and enforcement of
certain other kinds of maintenance; and for connected purposes.’
One of its main cornerstones is the maintenance formula. This prescribes the
method of calculating the maintenance payable and was designed to be set in
stone. It has four elements:
1 The maintenance requirement defined as ‘the minimum amount necessary for
the maintenance of the qualifying child(ren)’;
2 Both parents’ assessable income;
3 The deduction rate that sets the proportion of assessable income to be used
for maintenance; a deduction rate of 50% is applied to the combined
assessable income of both parents until the maintenance requirement is met;
4 The protected income that is the disposable income the parent must be left
with after paying maintenance.
Pages and pages of mathematical formulae and illustrative examples covering all
aspects of the calculations were published and the latest revised versions
continued to be freely available from the CSA up until this case study was written.
Suffice to say, it was estimated the average maintenance payment calculated by
applying the formula would be £50 per week; a sum roughly double the amount
the courts had usually set when they were responsible for determining
maintenance.
Fees were to be charged for using the CSA though the regulations did not specify
which parent should pay the fee. An assessment fee of £44 was to be payable on
assessment and then annually thereafter and if the collection service was used
(payments may be made direct from one parent to the other or the CSA
organizes collection and enforcement if requested by at least one of the parents),
a further annual charge of £34 would be made. Some categories of person were
exempted from these charges, including anyone receiving income support, family
credit or disability living allowance.
160 Block 1 Appendixes
Five methods of enforcement were provided:
1 Deduction from earnings orders;
2 Liability orders (only available when a liable person was in default);
3 Seizure and sale of goods, subject to certain exceptions such as clothing and
household furniture;
4 County court enforcements using the same procedures as for a county court
judgement;
5 Imprisonment.
The fifth of these was only to be available after the first has been considered and
rejected as inappropriate or ineffective and after a liability order has been made in
a magistrate’s court.
Plans for implementation
It was announced that the provisions of the Child Support Act 1991 would be
phased in over a four-year period starting 5 April 1993. The plan, as set out in
the Child Support Act 1991 (Commencement No 3 and Transitional Provisions)
Order 1992, was that applications from people who were not receiving income
support, family credit or disability working allowance, and who had no existing
court orders or written child maintenance agreements, would be taken on right
from the start. The cases of those who were receiving benefit, and who were thus
required by the secretary of state to authourize an application, would be phased in
over the period between April 93 and April 96. Those with existing court orders
or written child maintenance agreements would be considered after April 1996.
It was estimated by the time the Child Support Agency was fully operational it
would be dealing with about two million families and the number of lone parents
being paid regular maintenance would increase by about 200 000, which would
in turn lead to a fall of 50 000 in the number receiving income support.
The Child Support Unit was set up in 1992 as a forerunner to the CSA. It took
over administration of the liable-relatives work from the Benefits Agency and
planned the start up of the CSA.
Child Support Agency (CSA)
As planned, the CSA started work on 5 April 1993. It operates from six regional
centres in Belfast, Falkirk, Birkenhead, Dudley, Plymouth and Hastings. These
centres are responsible for the assessment process and their contact with their
clients is by post and telephone. Face-to-face contact is made by network of field
officers; they are based in Benefits Agency offices.
The first chief executive was Ros Hepplewhite, former director of MIND, a mental
health charity. She was appointed in January 1992. Press reports of her
expectations were not entirely consistent:
I think we will have very high levels of co-operation. It will be seen as
inescapable and to people’s advantage to co-operate with us.
(Sunday Times, 18 October 1992)
We expect some hostility and resistance. Acceptance will require a big
cultural change … No one wants to pay up but there will be no choice.
(The Times, 10 February 1993)
The CSA was the first of the Next Steps agencies to be set up from scratch. Next
Steps was a programme begun in 1988 to slim down the civil service by
transferring the executive functions of government to people working for semiautonomous
agencies. The consequences of ‘agencyification’ for the staffing
Case study 161
arrangements of the DSS are shown in Table B2. As Greer and Carter (1995)
say, because the CSA was set up from scratch it ‘inherited an Act of Parliament
but few extant organizational structures’.
Table B2 Proportions of DSS staff employed in Next Steps
agencies
Agency Date established Percentage DSS
staff (planned
totals 1993/94)
Percentage admin
costs (planned
totals 1993/94)
Resettlement Agency 1989 0.6 1
ITSA 1990 5.0 14
Benefits Agency 1991 78.1 53
Contributions Agency 1991 10.7 5
Child Support Agency 1993 2.7 3
core department 1.6 3
corporate expenditure 19
(Bellamy, 1995; derived from DSS and HM Treasury, 1993)
Next Steps agencies are supposed to carry out functions that are
non-controversial, and many expected the work of the CSA to be
just that. But despite the appearance of consensus, there were
always tensions underlying the job it was asked to do. Bedingfield
points to one of them:
The Conservative government’s decision to place maintenance
payments from absent parents on a statutory basis, subject to strict
formulae as to the amounts payable, had more to do with the fiscal
priorities of the state than helping children in first families. It was
felt by the framers of the Act that the time had come for the state
to stop subsidizing divorce and remarriage. Henceforth, according
to the Act, absent fathers would all pay – and fathers who did not
pay would have to answer to the state.
(Bedingfield, 1998, p.85)
Another important aspect of the underlying conflicts in the political agenda was
voiced in a report on a study of lone mothers on income support or family credit
that was carried out immediately before the legislation was implemented.
The growth of lone parenthood is in danger of becoming one of the
central ‘moral panics’ of the 1990s, particularly as a result of ungrounded
and judgmental political comment and media coverage. The reality of
lone parenthood is far removed from much of this comment. The debates
about ‘family values’ and ‘family policy’ now being joined from all parts of
the political spectrum, continue to be driven by the assumption that twoparent
families are the desired form against which all other family types
should be judged (and usually found wanting); and that they are the norm
in present-day Britain. Whether or not the first is true is actually a matter
of conflicting values and a subject of debate about the implications of
different family forms.
The second assumption is, however, not a matter of belief but a matter of
fact. It is increasingly the case that two-parent families are not the norm
within the UK. Family policy should be constructed as much on the basis
of how things are just as much (sic) as how we want them to be. Seen
through the eyes of the lone mothers in this study the Child Support Act
appears implicitly and explicitly to denigrate the status of lone parents still
further beyond that established by existing social security and other
162 Block 1 Appendixes
arrangements for their ‘support’. It is difficult to argue that any of the
lone mothers in the study in any way come close to media and political
stereotypes of feckless women having babies in order to ‘jump the
housing queue’ and settle back into a life of contentment on benefit
(perhaps subsidized by undeclared earnings). Most mothers had become
mothers in the context of what they had anticipated would be stable and
loving relationships. These relationships had ended for a variety of
reasons – often extremely difficult and painful ones – but the treatment
they now anticipated as a result of that relationship breakdown suggested
that they and their children could expect little emotional or financial
support in the process of rebuilding their lives. As it stands, the fears (and
expectations) of lone parents interviewed in this study are that the Act will
take from their lives much more than it will give back.
(Clarke, Craig and Glendinning, 1993, pp.81–2)
CSA year one, 1993/94
The targets of the CSA for its first year of operation were to:
^ Arrange maintenance for 60% of the parents with care making eligible
applications
^ Make benefit savings of £530 million
^ Deliver its business plan within a spending budget of £115 million
^ Satisfy 65% of clients
The assessment process required information from two forms: the maintenance
application form (MAF) sent to the parent with care; and the maintenance enquiry
form (MEF) sent to the non-resident parent. The assessment process for parents
with care who are receiving benefit is shown in Figure B1 (overleaf).
It was expected over a million MAFs would be issued during the first year, which,
given the 60% target referred to above, would translate into about 600 000
completed assessments. These targets were missed by a wide margin. The actual
figures at the end of the second and third quarters of 1993/94 are shown in
Table B3.
Table B3 Assessment performance at the end of the second and
third quarters of 1993/94
As percentage of
MAFs issued (by 30
September 1993)
As percentage of
MAFs issued (by
31 December 1993)
MAFs issued 527 000 719 900
MAFs returned 326 700 61 515 700 73
MEFs issued 166 200 32 344 000 48
MEFs returned 79 700 15 208 200 29
assessments made 36 600 7 121 600 17
other completed
cases
20 000 4 79 800 11
One reason for the poor response rate was that parents with care who refused to
supply the information required by the CSA without a satisfactory reason risked
losing 20% of their income support (£8.80 per week) for six months and then 10%
for a further twelve months. Guidelines issued to the CSA by the DSS in January
1993 were said to promise ‘sensitive treatment’ to those with genuine reasons,
such as a history of violence, for not naming the other parent. But there was a
significant level of suspicion and mistrust, and the mechanism for claiming that
‘harm or undue distress’ would result if the CSA pursued a case was not clear.
Case study 163
MAF sent to parent with care by CSA
MAF completed
and returned
refusal to complete
and return MAF
exemption claimed
on grounds of harm
and undue distress
MEF sent to absent
parent by CSA
imposition of
benefit penalty rejected accepted: no
further action
MEF completed
and returned MEF not returned
child support
assessed by CSA
interim maintenance
assessment (IMA) made
notification of
assessment
sent to both parties
possible appeal
parent with care chooses to receive maintenance
direct from non-resident parent or via CSA collection service
FC claimants
receive benefit
net of maintenance
IS claimants receive
benefit in full. CSA retains
maintenance collected
Figure B1 Outline of the assessment process for parents with care who are
receiving benefit (Clarke, Craig and Glendinning, 1996)
In response to lobbying on behalf of parents with care who wished to make such
a claim, alterations were made to the paperwork. From October 1993, MAFs
were sent out with covering letters that allowed parents with care to sign a
declaration relating to ‘harm or undue distress’ and return it without completing
the MAF. By March 1994, over 65 000 people had made such a declaration,
46 000 of which had been considered and the declaration accepted in 32 000
cases.
Although there had been a high level of support for the legislation, criticism of the
practical consequences of the Act and of the way the CSA carried out its
responsibilities began to mount almost as soon as the CSA had officially started in
April 1993.
This dissatisfaction covered a number of aspects. One concern was that the CSA
was not directing its efforts at the cases it was designed to target. CSA documents
that were leaked to the press gave support to this allegation:
In order to drive down social security costs, the agency is concentrating
upon better-off men and those who are easy to locate because they see
their children regularly, rather than truly neglectful fathers who leave their
former wives with nothing.
An enquiry into paternal support is now triggered automatically when a
single mother makes a fresh claim for income support. But the agency’s
staff have been instructed to give priority to ‘good-quality’ cases where
164 Block 1 Appendixes
the father is rich enough to pay up quickly or is already making
maintenance payments. ‘The name of the game is maximizing the
maintenance yield’, one [leaked] memorandum [dated 25 August 1993
and sent by a divisional manager to his area managers] advised. ‘Don’t
waste a lot of time on non-profitable stuff.’
(The Times, 30 September 1993)
It was also revealed that of the more than 200 000 assessments made during the
first year only 28 000 concerned parents who were not in touch with their
children and whose whereabouts were, or were said to be, unknown to their
former partners.
Others denied that the CSA was targeting the wrong people. For example, one
MP spoke of ‘extraordinary hypocrisy’ on the part of divorced fathers and
described their complaints as the ‘squealing’ of fathers who had been paying too
little.
Another allegation accused the CSA of causing widespread financial hardship, and
many illustrations of increases in maintenance payments and their consequences
appeared in the press. For example:
Father of twins who had been paying £123 was ordered to pay £473 per
month;
(The Times, 30 September 1993)
Father of seven-year old who had been paying £65 was ordered to pay
£187 per month;
(The Times, 21 October 1993)
Father of two who had been paying £80 was ordered to pay £500 per
month.
(The Times, 16 November 1993)
However, the facts are not always as straightforward as they might have appeared
at first sight. The second of these cases was also featured on television in the
World in Action programme. There, it was stated the father had been told to
increase his payment of £65 per month to £258. But, subsequent to the
programme, his ex-wife produced paperwork showing the assessment was
£193.96 per month, and that he was only required to pay £258 until he had
caught up with arrears accrued earlier in the year. Two months later the case was
being used again, but with a different slant; it was illustrating a positive story
about the workings of the Act.
After intervention from the Child Support Agency, X has received more
money from her estranged husband in the past two months than he paid
during the whole of the previous year.
X, who has two teenage daughters by a previous marriage, received no
money for the first 18 months after the separation, but eventually
obtained an interim court order for maintenance of £65 a month. The
Child Support Agency took on her case in April last year, just after its
launch, and told Y he should pay £190 a month, increased to £260 for
the first few months to make up for arrears.
(The Times, 31 January 1994)
The CSA was also blamed for driving people to commit suicide. One such death
was reported as follows:
One family yesterday blamed the agency for driving a stately home
curator to suicide … last Saturday a 31-year-old curator killed himself at
Lord Byron’s ancestral home after having his maintenance payments
trebled … [to] nearly £300 of his £500 monthly take-home pay. His body
was surrounded by documents and letters from the agency with
calculations scribbled all over them.
(The Times, 7 December 1993)
Case study 165
However, the inquest on the man’s death painted a more complex picture; the
suicide note did not mention the agency, and his ex-wife said he had often talked
about suicide. The coroner was quoted as saying:
It is not for me to apportion blame. From the evidence which I have
heard he had worries, and one of the main worries he had was about
money. It is clear that the amount of money he was going to have to pay
had a tremendous effect upon his mind but whether he thought he
couldn’t afford it or couldn’t cope any more, I don’t know.
(The Times, 22 December 1993)
Other men, and their families, were distressed by being wrongly accused of
fathering children:
… a bus driver, had to woo his distraught wife back after the agency
admitted it had made a mistake about the four-year-old boy for whom it
wanted maintenance… The CSA… said someone had keyed in the wrong
national insurance number. ‘But why was it not double or triple checked?
This sort of thing could ruin people’s lives.’
(The Times, 3 November 1993)
Some were unhappy about the rules to which the CSA was working. In particular,
calls were also made for so-called clean-break divorce settlements to be allowed
for in the maintenance formula. Alistair Burt, the minister with responsibility for
the CSA, was stout in his defence of the current arrangements:
The principle of the clean break applies only to spousal maintenance, not
to child maintenance, which can always be reviewed in the interest of the
child. The agency’s carefully designed formula, which allows the great
majority of absent fathers to keep 70–85 per cent of net income after
deduction of child maintenance, provides for the practical results of a
settlement by recognizing the likely increase in housing costs to the
absent parent.
(Burt, writing in The Times, 1993)
This stance was supported in the High Court in December 1993 when the judge
presiding over a test case ruled: ‘While the parties [to a divorce] were free to
achieve a clean break as between themselves, it was outside their powers to do so
in respect of their child.’
Two underlying causes of the Agency’s shortcomings were identified. One was the
lack of flexibility it had in dealing with cases:
The CSA has a formula for absolutely everything. [...] one can’t help
feeling that this new agency is the ultimate statist dream: a world where
bureaucrats substitute their judgements for that of everyone concerned.
(Amiel, 1993)
The second was administrative incompetence. This was fuelled by stories of the
CSA’s ‘blunders’, some of which were written up in dramatic style:
The Child Support Agency was accused last night of hounding a father by
threatening court action over an unpaid debt of 1p. The full might of the
agency was brought to bear [on X] when he sent a cheque to his former
wife for £232.82 rather than £232.83. A two-page letter, posted firstclass,
was sent by the agency [to X] chastizing him for the error. It stated
that interest was being charged on the unpaid debt at 1 per cent higher
than the bank base rate. The agency said it was also considering ‘an
order taking the debt from his salary’… Alf Morris, the Labour MP for
Wythenshawe, has taken up the case and is sending the file to John
Major.
(The Times, 22 December 1993)
166 Block 1 Appendixes
Other critics were unhappy with the terminology used by the CSA. For instance,
Families Need Fathers, a group founded in 1974 to campaign for the interests of
fathers denied access to their children by mothers, took great exception to the
CSA’s use of the term absent parent, describing it as ‘gratuitously offensive’.
Against this background of fierce criticism, staff working for the CSA were
receiving hate mail and many of them were feeling the strain:
A DSS official told The Times: ‘It is fair to say that the work of the CSA
is far more stressful than was ever envisaged. In some cases it can have a
traumatic effect. Staff are under relentless pressure from two sides: from
the families, who say they cannot and should not have to pay, and from
their bosses, who are under enormous pressure from MPs to get things
right.
(The Times, 31 January 1994)
Reviews and changes during year one
Changes began to be made. At the beginning of November 1993 the CSA was
given more flexibility to take on some of the cases concerning mothers on benefit
who were not receiving maintenance and who, under the original plans, were not
due to be considered until after April 1996.
The House of Commons Social Security Select Committee announced in October
1993 it would bring forward its plans to look at the operation of the Act. After
taking evidence from the minister responsible and the CSA, it issued its first
report in December 1993. It recommended that the agency should:
^ Increase protected income from £8 to between £20 and £40 per week
^ Phase in new payments over two years
^ Take account of the cost of caring for stepchildren
^ Reduce payments for children over eleven
^ Subject clean-break settlements to judicial review
^ Require payments to be made from the day the assessment was completed
instead of from the day the MEF was issued
^ Deal with appeals within 28 days
^ Reimburse overpayments within five days.
Some of these recommendations were accepted. The government announced that
from February 1994 the maintenance formula would be revised in a way that
would increase the minimum income retained by non-resident parents. Also new
maintenance payments would be phased in over an eighteen-month period and
payments for children over eleven would be reduced by a quarter and by a further
quarter for children over fourteen. In addition, the £34 annual collection fee
would be waived in many cases.
The annual report of the chief child support officer for the year 1993/4 was
published in October 1994. It examined 1380 assessments made by the CSA and
found 345 (25%) were correct, 548 (39%) were incorrect, and there was
insufficient evidence to tell whether the rest were right or wrong. The report
recommended better staff training, greater emphasis on collecting evidence and
improvements in the calculations on earnings, effective dates, and housing costs.
The CSA’s own first annual report showed it had kept well within its £115 million
budget, but it had failed to reach its performance targets. It had been expected to
arrange maintenance for 60% of the parents with care making eligible
applications but the figure achieved was only 31.5%. At £418 million, benefit
savings were well short of the £530 million target. The requirements relating to
Case study 167
level of service, such as the time taken to process applications and to respond to
enquiries, had not been met though an overall client satisfaction score of 61% had
been achieved.
The client-satisfaction score is computed from the results of an independent
national client satisfaction survey conducted annually and published in full. The
basic factors that are thought to influence client-satisfaction-with-service are shown
in Figure B2. It is interesting to note the overall result for 1993, based on a
sample of 1996 parents with care and 1180 absent parents, comprised a
satisfaction score of 66% for parents with care and only 39% for absent parents.
staff
attitude towards
basic principle CSA facilities
client
satisfaction
attitude towards
policy
communication
non-service-related factors
service-related factors
demographics
access to CSA timescales
Figure B2 Factors influencing satisfaction with service (Speed, Crane and Rudat,
1994, p.5)
CSA year two, 1994/95
For the second year of operation, the agency’s budget was increased by £70
million to £184 million. The number of staff was to be increased by 700 and the
number of cases it was expected to handle was reduced. A new telephone service
with direct computer access was also established to deal with enquiries.
In the summer of 1994, Andersen Consulting was called in to advise the agency
on its management structures and procedures. Then, at the beginning of
September, Ros Hepplewhite resigned and was replaced by Ann Chant, a career
civil servant who moved across from the Contributions Agency.
Further critical reports were published in the autumn of 1994. The National Audit
Office reported that over half the assessments it had studied were wrong. In the
report of its second inquiry into the operation of the Act and the performance of
the CSA, the Social Security Select Committee called for a raft of changes to the
way maintenance was assessed and to the way the agency operated.
The government responded by reducing the agency’s workload through the
controversial measure of allowing it to ‘clear’ its backlog by postponing, for an
unspecified period, 350 000 cases involving parents who had failed to supply the
required information despite being sent maintenance enquiry forms more than six
168 Block 1 Appendixes
months previously and parents with care who were receiving income support
before April 1993. It was also announced that the next phase of implementation
due in April 1996 would be delayed.
According to an article in the Independent, this announcement effectively
heralded ‘a two-tier system for child support’ because ‘a key principle of the
original Child Support Act – that all parents should eventually have recourse to
the Child Support Agency to assess fair child maintenance – was ditched.’ The
article went on to say:
The decision was condemned as proof that the real driving force behind
the child-support legislation is the Treasury, whose only concern is
moving parents with care of the children off income support. For the
Treasury would reap no benefit from the estimated 50 000 parents with
care who are not on income support and who had written or court
agreements before April 1993 who were expected to ask the CSA to
assess maintenance in the first year after 1966.
(Waterhouse, writing in the Independent, 1995)
Reaction to these changes varied:
The people who will pay the price are the lone parents who looked to the
agency to get the maintenance they so badly need to escape the benefits
trap.
Speaker on behalf of The National Council for One Parent Families
[This decision is] the best Christmas present for hundreds of thousands of
families.
Speaker on behalf of The Campaign Against The Child Support Act
By the start of 1995, there was some evidence the CSA’s performance against
target was improving. Between April 1994 and January 1995, 223 552
maintenance assessments had been completed (this compares with 205 500 for
the whole of 1993/94) and £62.8 million new maintenance was raised (£15
million for 1993/94). However, a report by William Reid, the parliamentary
commissioner for administration (ombudsman), published in January 1995 was
highly critical. It pointed to:
^ Wrong identifications of missing parents
^ Inadequate staff training
^ Poor procedures
^ Failure to answer letters
^ Incorrect or poor advice
^ Long delays
But as well as criticizing the CSA directly the report made it clear that the
government was also at fault:
We are in no doubt that the maladministration of the CSA cannot be
divorced from the responsibility of ministers for the framework within
which it operated. Ministers should have reacted more quickly to the
situation as the problems became apparent …
Maladministration leading to injustice is likely to arise when a new
administrative task is not tested first by a pilot project; when new staff,
perhaps inadequately trained, form a substantial fraction of the
workforce; where procedures and technology supporting them are
untried; and where quality of service is subordinated to sheer throughput.
(Parliamentary commissioner for administration, 1995)
Case study 169
It also said:
In view of the special report I made in 1993 into the Benefits Agency
handling of the introduction of disability living allowance (DLA), I have
found it extremely disappointing that the Child Support Agency, another
Agency of the Department of Social Security, had not been able to avoid
some of the systemic failures disclosed in the DLA report.
(Parliamentary commissioner for administration, 1995)
Ann Chant, chief executive of the CSA, in evidence before the Commons Select
Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration, identified a
different set of culprits.
She said: ‘I have never in 30 years in social security seen such an
orchestrated and organized attempt to avoid legal liability. That was
unprecedented and I don’t think it could reasonably have been foreseen.’
Miss Chant claimed that Agency staff were subjected to time-wasting
telephone calls and said that meetings to organize opposition to the
scheme were organized by people with no direct interest.
(The Times, 2 February 1995)
However, when the committee reported its findings the following month it laid at
least some of the blame at the doors of the Secretary of State for Social Security
and his junior minister:
We consider that ministers were too easily satisfied with the assurances
given by officials … Ministers should have reacted more quickly to the
situation as problems became apparent. They should have sought
assurances that, were pressures to arise from other sources, lessons had
been learned in relation to backlog, volume of complaints, dealing with
correspondence, training of staff. We expect the questioning of officials
by ministers to be searching and robust and for ministers to be briefed
accordingly. We are in no doubt that maladministration in the CSA
cannot be divorced from the responsibility of ministers for the framework
within which it operated.
(Parliamentary Ombudsman Select Committee, 1995)
The CSA’s second annual report for the year to April 1995, published in July
1995, showed it had again kept within its budget and had exceeded its £460
million savings in benefits target by £19.05 million.
But it had again failed to reach other important targets. Arrangements should
have been made for 50% of parents with care making eligible applications but the
percentage achieved was 40.71. By the end of March 1995 no more than 40%
of outstanding maintenance applications should have been over 13 weeks old, no
more than 15% over 26 weeks old and no more than 1% over 52 weeks old.
These targets were missed by a wide margin. Of the outstanding cases, 82% were
over 13 weeks old, 70% were over 26 weeks old, and 50% were over 52 weeks
old. Customer satisfaction scores also fell far short – 44.2% against a target of 65%.
A report by the Audit Office, published the same day as the CSA’s report,
showed only 47% of the assessments it had looked at that had been carried out
during 1994/95 were correct. A report by the chief child support officer found
even more errors. According to his investigation, the proportion of correct
assessments was 44%, though the appropriate guidelines had not been used to
reach the final figures in 15% of these cases.
A different perspective on the impact of the CSA’s work during the year to April
1995 was revealed in the answer to a written parliamentary question. This reported
that of the 267 500 assessments in place by March, 67 100 were paying nothing,
125 600 were paying £2.30 per week or less, and only 1200 were paying over
£100 per week. The average payment for non-resident parents on income support
was £0.93 per week and the average for those in work was £37.22.
170 Block 1 Appendixes
CSA year three, 1995/96
Some of the criticisms levelled at the legislation and the CSA were taken on
board. From 18 April 1995, the maintenance formula set a ceiling on
assessments of current maintenance of 30% of net income, enabled broad brush
allowances to be made for pre-April 1993 property or capital transfers, made
allowances for travel-to-work costs for those travelling more than 150 miles per
week (measured as the crow flies), and removed the requirement for new partners
of non-resident parents to contribute to their share of housing costs or those of
any step-children.
Other modifications formed the basis of a White Paper, called Improving Child
Support, and The Child Support Act 1995 that followed it. The main provisions
of this Act, which received royal assent on 19 July 1995, were as follows:
1 To allow assessors to depart from the standard formulae in certain cases
when determining the level of payments.
2 With effect from April 1997, to pay a lump-sum child maintenance bonus to
parents with care who had been receiving income support or jobseeker’s
allowance if they return to work.
3 To compensate parents with care who were getting family credit or Disability
Working Allowance if their maintenance fell because of changes in child
support legislation.
4 To defer indefinitely the CSA’s involvement in cases where the parent with
care was not in receipt of benefit and where a written maintenance
agreement or court order was in force before April 1993. For a fee, such
parents would be able to use the CSA’s collection service.
5 To enable the CSA to recover DNA testing fees in cases where an alleged
absent parent accepts he is the father after taking a test.
6 To reimburse overpaid maintenance if it isn’t possible to adjust current
maintenance and, in certain circumstances, to recover the money from the
parent with care.
7 To give the CSA discretion to enter a magistrates’ court liability order for
arrears of maintenance on the register of county court judgements.
8 To improve review and appeal procedures.
For 1995/96, the CSA’s targets were also changed. Targets for benefit-saving,
and for the number of people making eligible applications who should have
maintenance arranged, were dropped entirely. New targets relating to speed of
payment of maintenance, accuracy, maintenance collection, and reviews were
introduced. The targets on clearance times were softened considerably. The new
target was 60% of new applications should be cleared within 26 weeks, and no
more than 10% of applications should be more than 52 weeks old by 31 March
1996.
The Social Security Select Committee looked once again at the CSA, and in its
report published in January 1996, made a total of 20 recommendations for
detailed administrative and procedural changes. However, it also gave a qualified
welcome to improvements in the performance of the CSA:
The Agency is now on a surer footing and a whole range of indicators
suggest that improvements are being made in an attempt to provide an
acceptable service. The Agency has been helped by changes to policy and
by the growing acceptance that the CSA will be a permanent feature of
British life.
(Social Security Committee, 1996, p.xiii)
Case study 171
Though this was followed by a sting in the tail:
It should be clearly recognized that the service initially provided by the
Agency plumbed such depths that even modest improvements in service
might seem impressive.
(Social Security Committee, 1996, p.xiii)
One group of people who were singled out for special mention in the report were
self-employed absent parents. The concern was that accounting techniques and
methods to determine profits and income might be reducing child support liability
artificially or even extinguishing it. One member of the committee, the
Conservative MP, David Shaw, was quoted in the press as saying:
The bottom line is that there are still a lot of men around who don’t want
to pay a penny towards their first family, and they are becoming
increasingly sophisticated at beating the system by passing their money to
their companies or their new wives.
(Sunday Times, 28 January 1996)
In March 1996 a further raft of changes were announced. The first was the
introduction of interest payments in cases where the CSA had collected
maintenance but not passed it on to the parent with care within 28 days.
The second was a reduction in the period before compensation could be
considered in cases where there had been delays in the issuing of maintenance
forms. The time was reduced from three months to one month in situations
where no extra enquiries were needed, and two months where further enquiries
were necessary. Consolatory payments were also introduced for those who were
incorrectly accused of being the parent of a child or children. The annual amounts
paid in compensation before and after these changes are shown in Table B4.
The third was a pilot exercise begun on 9 April 1996 at a number of centres in
the southeast to test new provisions designed to make the maintenance formula
more flexible. Under the scheme, either parent could apply for a departure from
the formula on any of the following grounds:
^ High travel to work costs
^ High travel costs for maintaining contact with children
^ Costs arising from disability of the applicant or a dependent of the applicant
^ Debts incurred when the family was together
^ Pre-April 1993 financial commitments from which it is impossible or
unreasonable to withdraw
^ Costs of supporting step-children where responsibility for them pre-dated
April 1993
^ Pre-April 1993 clean-break property or capital settlements
^ Diversion of income by the non-resident parent
^ Lifestyle inconsistent with income declared to the CSA
^ Possession of assets capable of producing an income or a higher income
Following the pilot exercise the departures scheme was phased in from 2
December 1996 onwards.
172 Block 1 Appendixes
Table B4 Compensatory payments
1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97
amount paid £100 £10 200 £115 000 £656 000
number of payments made 1 77 186 983
average amount £100 £133 £779 £667
percentage proportion of
compensatory payments to
total clearances
0.0003 0.01 0.06 0.28
number of maintenance
assessments
205 000 251 000 128 000 129 000
(Hansard Written Answers for 22 July 1977)
When the parliamentary commissioner for administration (ombudsman) second
report on the CSA was published it was seen that once again he was critical. It
pointed out that one in six of all the cases investigated during 1995/96 were
complaints about the CSA. Not only had the same mistakes criticized in 1995
been perpetuated but also there were new mistakes.
Further criticisms came from Sir John Bourn, the comptroller and auditor-general.
He refused to accept the CSA’s accounts for its third year were accurate (in the
official language of the National Audit Office he ‘qualified his audit opinion on the
accounts’). He reported that although the proportion of maintenance assessments
that were accurate had increased, a third were still being calculated wrongly for
reasons such as: insufficient or out-of-date information; arithmetical errors; use of
incorrect mortgage rates; or making too much allowance for self-employed
parents’ expenses. The amount by which the figures were out varied between
under-assessments of £30 per week and over-assessments of £20 per week.
Similar findings by the chief child support officer were published in November
1996. Examination of a random sample of 610 maintenance assessments
showed: 205 (34%) were correct in all respects; 115 (19%) contained
irregularities even though the final figure was correct; and 179 (29%) were wrong.
CSA year four, 1996/97
As the fourth year unfolded, combating benefit fraud was high on the
government’s agenda. The number of spurious claims for good-cause exemption
was said to be rising fast: in 1995/96 112 000 claims had been made of which
38 000 were accepted; in 1996/97 the number of claims was going to be even
higher. So in June 1996 the Social Security minister announced harsher penalties
for parents with care who failed to co-operate with the agency without good
cause. From October, their income support allowance would be cut by 40% for
three years, with the reduction being repeated at the end of each three-year
period if the non-co-operation continued. Prior to this change, the reduction was
20% for 26 weeks followed by 10% for a further year.
In August, the post of independent case examiner was advertised. The remit for
this job, which was due to begin on 1 April 1997, was to bring an independent
element to the way complaints against the CSA were handled. In the words of a
Department of Social Security spokesperson:
From April [1997] the independent case examiner will exercise discretion
on how complaints about maladministration are dealt with against the
need to provide a speedy, impartial, accessible and cost effective
complaints service for both absent parents and parents with care.
November 1996 was also the month the CSA lost its second chief executive. Ann
Chant resigned. Her successor was announced in March 1997 when it was
revealed that Faith Boardman was moving over from the Contributions Agency
where she had been chief executive for the last two years.
Case study 173
Within a week of Boardman’s appointment, the latest report from the Social
Security Select Committee was released. This pointed to significant improvements
in performance and said that ‘whereas the agency was heading for disaster in
1993/94, there is now no danger that this could occur’. There were, however,
causes for concern. Only about a third of lone parents on income support and
family credit had received an assessment. And at the end of December 1996, the
number of applications being processed was 441 784 instead of the 200 000 to
250 000 that was estimated as representing the steady-state level.
When reports of the CSA’s performance during its fourth year appeared it
became clearer and clearer that it was still experiencing difficulties. The report
from Sir John Bourn at the National Audit Office was particularly damning. He
again ‘qualified his opinion on the account’, pointing to the following:
(a) Errors in 85% of the cases examined, with the maintenance assessment being
over £1000 per year out in one in every six cases;
(b) No attempt to eliminate errors in existing cases;
(c) 39% of receipts from non-resident parents were for the wrong amount,
largely due to mistakes in the underlying assessments;
(d) In aggregate, it was estimated that overpayments amounted to £3.8 million
and underpayments amounted to £9.4 million, that is 4.4% and 9.4% of the
£215 million collected;
(e) ‘A material level of error’ in the amounts said to be owed by non-resident
parents – it was estimated that overstatements amounted to £48 million and
understatements amounted to £91 million, that is 9.14% and 17.7% of the
£513 million outstanding. (The Agency itself suggested that some £276
million of the £513 million outstanding may be uncollectable.)
Targets in other areas were also missed. For example, Table B5 shows
performance against the assessment clearance targets of 60% of new
maintenance applications to be cleared within 26 weeks; and no more than 10%
of all maintenance applications received to be over 52 weeks old by the end of
1996/97.
Table B5 Performance against maintenance assessment
clearance targets
Number of cases
being actioned
Assessments
cleared within 26
weeks (per cent)
Assessments over
52 weeks old
(per cent)
April 1996 422 454 53 15
May 1996 428 244 52 15
June 1996 435 603 51 16
July 1996 440 741 51 15
August 1996 449 852 51 15
September 1996 456 810 51 15
October 1996 456 590 51 15
November 1996 451 608 51 14
December 1996 441 784 51 14
January 1997 432 150 52 13
February 1997 418 369 53 13
(Hansard Written Answers for 21 March 1997)
174 Block 1 Appendixes
On 6 April 1997, just one day after the CSA’s fourth birthday a new piece of bad
news hit the headlines in the Sunday Times: ‘CSA to write off computer worth
£600 million’ (Leake and Pope, 1997). The story went as follows:
The Child Support Agency has decided to scrap the £600 million
computer system at the heart of its operation just four years after it was
built. The system, which cost the equivalent of £24 for each UK incometax
payer, has been blamed for bringing misery to thousands of parents.
… The computer system was one of the government’s most expensive
and was commissioned through EDS, an American firm, which also
provided the software and has a 10-year contract to manage the system.
Last week, however, the CSA confirmed it would be introducing a new
system within the next two years.
The news coincides with figures released last week which show that the
agency has recovered only £500 million since its launch – compared with
its running costs of £514 million.
The agency says it has also saved £1.4 billion in social security spending.
This saving, however, could be largely wiped out by the cost of the new
computer system, which independent experts estimate is likely to exceed
£1.1 billion.
Appendix B references
Amiel, B. (8 April 1993) ‘Nanny’s security blanket’, London, The Times.
Bedingfield, D. (1998) The Child in Need, Bristol, Family Law.
Bellamy, C. (1995) ‘Managing strategic resources in a Next Steps
department: information agenda and information systems in the DSS’ in
O’Toole, B.J. and Jordan, G. (eds) Next Steps Improving Management in
Government?, Aldershot, Dartmouth.
Bennett, F. and Chapman, V. (1990) The Poverty of Maintenance, CPAG.
Bird, R. (1993) Child Maintenance, 2nd edition, Bristol, Family Law.
Bradshaw, J. and Millar, J. (1991) Lone Parent Families in the UK,
London, HMSO.
Burt, A. (16 October 1993) ‘Families need fathers – who pay up’, London,
The Times.
Clarke, K. Craig, G. and Glendinning, C. (1993) Children Come First?,
Barnardo’s, Children’s Society/NCH/NSPCC/SCF.
Clarke, K. Craig, G. and Glendinning, C. (1996) Small Change: the Impact
of the Child Support Act on Lone Mothers and Children, Family Policy
Studies Centre.
DSS (1993) Households Below Average Income: A Statistical Analysis 1979
– 1990/91, Government Statistical Service, HMSO.
Edwards, S. and Halpern, A. (1988) ‘Maintenance in 1987: fact or fantasy’,
Family Law Journal, pp.117–21.
Garnham, A. and Knights, E. (1994) Putting the Treasury First, London,
CPAG.
Greer, P. and Carter, N. (1995) ‘Next Steps and performance
measurement’ in O’Toole, B.J. and Jordan, G. (eds) Next Steps Improving
Management in Government?, Aldershot, Dartmouth.
Case study 175
Kiernan, K. (1992) ‘Men and women at work and at home’ in Jowell, R.
(ed) British Social Attitudes Ninth Report, London, SCPR.
Leake, J. and Pope, N. (6 April 1997) ‘CSA to write of computer worth
£600 million’, London, Sunday Times.
Parliamentary commissioner for administration (1995) Investigation of
Complaints Against the Child Support Agency, London, HMSO.
Social Security Committee (1996) The Performance and Operation of the
Child Support Agency Second Report, London, HMSO.
Speed, M. Crane, J. and Rudat, K. (1994) Child Support Agency National
Client Satisfaction Survey 1993, Department of Social Security Research
Report No. 29, London, HMSO.
Waterhouse, R. (24 January 1995) ‘Child agency ditches single parents in
work: change of focus aims to cut income support bill’, London, The
Independent.
The following update is provided for information only. You do not
have to make reference to it in order to answer any of the SAQs or
activities based on the CSA case study.
The CSA case study: an update
by Joyce Fortune
In 2002 I was asked to provide a short update on what has happened to the
Child support Agency since 1997. The first thing I did was to log on to
LexisNexis, an on-line repository of national and international newspaper articles,
and conduct searches for UK articles on the CSA over the five year period since I
wrote the original account. These are the results I obtained
Keywords for search Number of hits
Child Support Agency AND problems 851
Child Support Agency AND failure 307
Child Support Agency AND fiasco 92
Child Support Agency AND crisis 149
Did this mean that the CSA was still experiencing problems? Unfortunately, it did.
Although some of them were irrelevant juxtapositions of the keywords the
following are typical of many of the hits achieved by the searches:
Financial Times (London), July 2, 1998, Thursday, LONDON EDITION 3,
NATIONAL NEWS; Pg. 11, 402 words, CSA under fire for repeating
basic mistakes, By Liam Halligan, Political Correspondent The Child
Support Agency often repeats basic …
The Guardian (London), September 14, 1999, Guardian Leader Pages;
Pg. 15, 1210 words, To hell in a handbag; David Brindle
The child support agency is more than a fiasco – it has turned into a
national tragedy …
The Scotsman, August 3, 2000, Thursday, Pg. 5, 532 words, FRIENDS
BLAME CSA FOR SUICIDE OF POLICEMAN, John Woodcock
… cope with crippling payments to the Child Support Agency, an inquest
heard …
… never listened to his financial problems – they just took a …
The Sentinel (Stoke), November 4, 2001, NEWS; PEOPLE; Clubs/
Groups; Pg. 17-NEWS, 152 words, New support group for single parents
176 Block 1 Appendixes
facing CSA formed, Nick Coligan … A new support group for parents
affected by the Child Support Agency has been formed. CANCSA …
aims to help separated or divorced parents and their families who are
having problems with the CSA
Independent on Sunday (London), October 13, 2002, Sunday, NEWS;
Pg. 7, 449 words, MOTHERS LOSE POUNDS 500 IN NEW CSA
FIASCO, Andy Mcsmith Political Editor … fiasco in the beleaguered Child
Support Agency (CSA).
So what has happened to the Child Support Agency and its clients between 1997
and 2002? Let’s take a very brief look at the key events during that period.
CSA Year 5 1997/98
The CSA’s performance continued to attract strong criticisms in the media and in
Parliament. In June the Social Security Secretary spoke of the need for
‘substantial and sustained improvements’ in performance and announced new
targets which would mean an extra 500,000 maintenance assessments needing to
be completed by the end of the year. The following month the Social Security
minister responsible for child support also spoke of the need for ‘substantial and
sustained operational improvements’, particularly in relation to ‘getting more
maintenance paid, reducing the backlog and improving customer service’.
By the end of the year the agency had outstanding debts of more than £1.1
billion, £869 million of which was considered ‘uncollectable’. Furthermore,
looking back at the year after her first full year in office the Independent Case
Examiner, appointed to investigate complaints against the CSA, described CSA
staff as ‘largely unresponsive’ to grievances.
CSA Year 6 1998/99
July 1998 saw the publication of a Green Paper, Children First: a new approach
to child support. This acknowledged the failings of the current arrangements,
highlighting a number of problems such as:
^ lack of trust by parents that they will be treated fairly;
^ inaccuracies and long delays in making assessments to the point where a third
of child support assessments take more than six months to complete;
^ more than 1.8 million children receiving no support from their non-resident
parents;
^ little incentive for parents on income support to co-operate with the scheme.
It summarized the situation thus: ‘The effect is a system that is failing: it is failing
children, failing parents and failing the taxpayer.’
The Green Paper made a number of proposals for reform but perhaps the most
major was to ‘replace the complications of the current formula with a simpler
system aimed at providing an excellent service for all parents who use it.’ The
basis for calculating the level of contribution was to be a simple slice of net
income such that non-resident parents would pay 15 per cent of their net income
for one child, 20 per cent for two, and 25 per cent for three or more children
with reductions for those on low earnings and those with a second family. In
addition, parents with care on income support were to be allowed to retain up to
£10 a week of any maintenance paid.
Meanwhile, the problems with the current arrangements continued. For example,
over the 12 month period compensation payments to parents for serious mistakes
increased fourfold from £1.1 million to £4.4 million.
Case study 177
CSA Year 7 1999/2000
The White Paper A new contract for welfare: children’s rights and parents’
responsibilities was published in July 1999. This set out a package of measures
including new legislation, improved computer systems and changes in the CSA’s
working practices. One proposal that had not been part of the Green Paper
attracted much criticism: failure to pay maintenance would be made a criminal
offence with penalties such as the removal of passports and driving licences and
imprisonment for more severe cases.
However, the proposed reforms were not due to come into force until the end of
2001 and even then would only apply to new cases in the first instance. By
January 2000 even this timescale was looking optimistic; a Social Security
minister admitted that the CSA’s new computer system for handling the simplified
formula for calculating maintenance payments would not be completed fully until
2003.
CSA Year 8 2000/01
The new act governing child support received royal assent in August 2000.
Although some reservations were expressed, the new arrangements were widely
welcomed.
And in some areas at least, the performance of the CSA was improving. For
example, it collected 85% more maintenance payments in 2000/01 than in
1997/98. However, the CSA’s own Standards Committee calculated that only
71.6% of the maintenance assessments made during the year were accurate.
CSA Year 9 2001/02
Most of the press stories concerning the CSA in its ninth year can be described as
‘human interest’. By and large they set out a litany of disputed paternity, the
effects of unreasonable demands for payment on non-resident parents and the
consequences of non-payment for parents with care and their children.
However, just as the year was ending a major story that had been bubbling away
in the background broke. On Wednesday 20th March 2002 the Secretary of
State, Mr. Alistair Darling, made a statement to the House of Commons about a
delay to the introduction of the changes. I shall end this update by reproducing it
in full:
As the House will know, the Government are reforming the system of
child support and the Child Support Agency itself to ensure that more
children see the benefit of regular maintenance.
We consulted widely in 1998 and I announced our proposals in July
1999. I undertook to keep the House informed on progress towards the
implementation of these important reforms. I have made it clear on many
occasions that we would not implement the reforms until I was confident
that the new system would work effectively.
On 1 July 1999, I reminded the House that the present system had
collapsed under its own weight in 1993 because the reforms were
introduced too quickly and with too little thought. That approach has
been endorsed by Members on both sides of the House and by the then
departmental Select Committee. Its report of November 1999
recommended ‘that the new child support scheme should not be
implemented until the new computer system is fully operational’.
I said then – and it remains the position – that we would not repeat the
mistakes made in 1993 when the Child Support Agency was introduced.
The timetable then was rushed: the organization was not ready and some
key aspects of the information technology system were not finally
178 Block 1 Appendixes
delivered until two months after the start date. So the IT, critical to the
system, was simply not there. We know the consequences-the system
descended into chaos within weeks.
Let me tell the House what progress has been made since 1999 to
reform the existing system. First, we have put in place the necessary
legislation. The primary legislation received royal assent in July 2000 and
the regulations are in place, with some minor provisions currently before
the House.
Secondly, the Child Support Agency has been substantially reorganized to
give a far better customer focus. As hon. Members will know, this has
already made a difference. Levels of compliance have increased and
complaints have fallen considerably.
The third issue, which is fundamental to the delivery of these reforms, is
getting the IT right. We face a major task in building a new IT system that
can handle upwards of 13 million payments each year. It also needs to
link up with other IT systems in the Department, which are based on
1980s technology.
The new child support computer system being built by EDS is near
completion. Testing has been under way for some weeks, in advance of
the planned start date at the end of April. Those tests are continuing, but
they are not yet complete.
I want to see the new system in place as soon as possible. We know that
any new IT system will inevitably have teething problems on introduction,
but we will proceed only when I am satisfied that it is working to the
standards that we expect.
In my view, until the testing process is complete, I will not have the
assurance that I need to authorize the start of the new system. I have
therefore decided for that reason to defer the planned start date. The new
system will be implemented only when the supporting IT is operating
effectively.
I have a clear responsibility to Members of this House and the staff who
have to operate the new system. Above all, I have a clear duty to parents
and children to make sure that the system works effectively.
The delay is frustrating and regrettable. There was a choice: I could have
taken a chance, but that would have meant taking a chance on support
for children, and for parents. In my judgment, it is better to take the time
needed to get it right, rather than repeat the mistakes of 1993.
The new system will continue to be thoroughly tested. I will keep the
House updated on progress. I undertake to give the House sufficient
notice of the date the new system will start and to confirm how we intend
to bring on new and existing cases.
The House will want to know the cost implications of the delay.
Inevitably, there are some, but the contract with EDS specified that the
Department will not pay for the computer system until it meets the
standard required, and that remains the position.
We know about the problems of the past. They arose in part because the
rules were too complicated, but also because the decision was taken in
the early days to press ahead when there was real doubt about whether
all the necessary systems were in place. I will not let that happen again.
This was a difficult decision. I know that many Members and parents are
anxious to see the changes introduced as soon as possible, but I judged
that the risk of proceeding before testing was complete was unacceptable.
Case study 179
I therefore took the view that it was right to tell the House the current
position as soon as possible, and I will continue to report to the House on
progress towards implementation of these much needed reforms.
So there we leave it for now. Some improvements compared with five years ago
but much less success where more radical changes are concerned. A case,
perhaps, of plus c¸a change, plus c’est la meme chose.
180 Block 1 Appendixes

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