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Keeping Children and Parents in Contact since 1974
Child Support & Benefits
Child Support
Families Need Fathers believes that all parents have a duty to provide financial support for their children. We are, however, concerned that the Child Support Agency, despite proposals for reform, remains gender-biased and continues to promote the prevailing social prejudice that fathers are irresponsible, feckless, and only relevant to the lives of their children in financial terms.
All parents are legally liable to provide financial support for their children. This includes unmarried fathers who have not acquired Parental Responsibility and who otherwise have no legal status.
Many fathers suffer severe or total restrictions on contact with their children. Figures cited by the Government indicate that 40 per cent of divorced and separated mothers admit to thwarting contact between father and child. Government figures also indicate that 40 per cent of separated fathers lose all contact with their children within two years. Contact and Child Support are not linked in law. The legal obligation to pay Child Support carries with it no corresponding right to see one's own child.
The Child Support Agency has been recognised as a failure by all parties in Parliament and has now been reformed. The new child support system was due to come into force in April 2002 but has been delayed.
Other Child Support Information
Find out the details of the new child support system.
Brief Analysis of the new system (first published in McKenzie 42, August 1999).
FNF Evidence to the Social Security Select Committee (15 September 1999).
Full transcripts of the Social Security Select Committee hearings (September 1999 and January 2000). See also FNF Press Release 10 November 1999.
Read the official summary of A Complete Parent by Adrienne Burgess, Research Associate at the Institute for Public Policy Research (April 1998). See also IPPR Press Release (6 April 1998).
See also the briefing paper What is wrong with the Child Support Act? by Jonathan Bradshaw, Professor of Social Policy at the University of York (February 1994).
For further information and assessment calculators contact NACSA (National Association for Child Support Action). See also the FAQ for the newsgroup uk.gov.agency.csa (via DejaNews).
See also the Child Support Agency.
Updated 08-05-2002