About us

Remit

The Commission has three core functions:

  • to promote the financial responsibility that parents have for their children;
  • to provide information and support on the different child maintenance options available;
  • to provide an efficient statutory maintenance service, with effective enforcement.

It seeks to do this across all estimated 2.5 million separated families. This is a wider remit than the Child Support Agency (CSA) ever had, which was solely to provide the statutory maintenance service.

The Commission is currently refocusing its plans to support the government’s new vision for the future of child maintenance. In January 2011, the government published its Green Paper Strengthening families, promoting parental responsibility: the future of child maintenance. The government believes that:

  • the current child maintenance system is not working because around 50% of children in separated families do not benefit from an effective arrangement,
  • the Child Support Agency is often seen as the default option for parents, which in turn can lead to conflict that is not good for parents or their children.

The government’s vision is to rebalance the system so that there is more support and incentives to help parents make collaborative, family-based arrangements. A statutory service will remain for those parents who really need it because they cannot make family-based arrangements.

The government has also recognised that, despite improvements in the current statutory schemes, a number of problems remain, for example:

  • the schemes remain cost-inefficient
  • many children may miss out as a result of the way the schemes work

The government has committed to launching a new statutory child maintenance scheme. The new scheme will be underpinned by a new IT system and procedures which should overcome many of the problems associated with the current schemes. The Commission is currently working to deliver the new scheme from 2012.