Public Affairs

Influence Child Maintenance Policy

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Published: Friday, 12 April 2019 12:11

Respond to Government Consultation on Social Security and Separated Parents
Dealine for submissions is Tuesday 16th April 2019

The Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC). is a statutory government agency that advises on complex social security regulations. They are asking organisations and individuals to submit evicence that help them to understand how living standards and well-being are affected by:

• child maintenance
• child benefit
• the legacy benefit system (for example Child Tax Credit, Housing Benefit and Working Tax Credit)
• Universal Credit

This is a rare opportunity to help the government to understand what works and what does not with a focus particularly on parents who pay Child Maintenance.- most such investigation tend to look at the 'single parent'.

Whist the work will focus on the issues around benefits, including Universal Credit, it will consider other matters that affect paying parents.

Examples of issues that you may be able to assist with:

• Unaffordable assessments for Child Maintenance
• 20% ‘collect’ system surcharge
• Issues with variations of pay e.g. if self-employed
• Work that does not pay
• Shared parenting not taken into account fairly
• Housing cost issues
• Second family costs
• Travel cost issues
• Assessments that don’t reflect court orders or promote breaking them
• Overturned court agreed maintenance
• etc

Responses should be emailed by 16th April 2019 to ssac.consultation@ssac.gov.uk. See specific questions being asked and further details of the consultation. 

Focus Groups - Thank you to everyone who responded to our call for participants in focus groups on 22nd April 2019.. We will confirm details of those to take part shortly.

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World Health Organisation (WHO) Considers Formal Recognition of Parental Alienation

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Published: Tuesday, 16 April 2019 12:11

World Health Organisation (WHO) Considers Formal Recognition of Parental Alienation

The World Health Organisation is to decide in May whether Parental Alienation is to be added to its International Classification of Diseases. If it does, it will be a boost to raising awareness of this pernicious abuse of children and of one of their parents whom the child feels pressured to reject. Last month we heard from a dad who raised the possibility in court only to be told by the Cafcass Family Court Advisor and the judge that PA does not exist. Read the full article on this for more information.

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Think-tank Identifies the ‘Hidden Parent Poverty Trap’ of Child Maintenance

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Published: Friday, 29 March 2019 17:03

Think-tank Identifies the ‘Hidden Parent Poverty Trap’ of Child Maintenance

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) have completed their report into Child Maintenance (CM) under the title 'THE HIDDEN POVERTY TRAP: Child Maintenance and Universal Credit'.

The report identifies many of the issues that we have been campaigning on. Their findings are essentially same as ours - that some of the poorest people are being asked to pay money they do not have and for whom work does not pay.

Their recommendations are:
1. That Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) urgently review the number of people affected if Universal Credit (UC) is rolled out.
2. To avoid the politically sensitive issue of reducing CM to receiving parents, they suggest a complete reform of Child Maintenance on the Australian/Norwegian/US Income Shares Model that takes into account both parent's incomes and cost of living allowances.
3. That UC calculations should include Child Maintenance.

Whist the focus of this work was the interaction of UC and CM, the issues exist under the existing 'legacy' benefits.

The recommended Income Shares Model is at odds with the idea of simplicity of child support and we may wish to thinks further about better ways. If shared care was the norm then it would not matter so much.

Meanwhile, please bring this work to the attention of your MP and ask others to do the same, especially if affected by the 'poverty trap' of the current system. Please ask your MP to raise your experiences with the minister, perhaps suggesting some or all of the points we are calling on the government to do:

1. immediately stop surcharging the poorest and most vulnerable parents who are on state benefits
2. urgently update Chile Maintenance payment thresholds for cost-of-living increases since 1998
3. adjust Universal Credit to take into account Child Maintenance, in-line with CSJ recommendations
4. carry out a wholesale review of Child Maintenance to meet the needs of modern-day families with a particular emphasis on promoting and not undermining shared parenting.

Obviously, the formula is very flawed beyond that, in undermining shared parenting and promoting conflict. However, the affordability issue is the primary one addressed by this report.

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Make Parental Alienation Illegal

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Published: Tuesday, 16 April 2019 12:11

Sign a Petition to Make Parental Alienation a Criminal Offence

25th April is Internationl Parental Alienation Awareness Day

Each year thousands of children, who love both their parents, find themselves orphaned from one parent due to the poisonous behaviour of the other. Children are put under so much pressure to hate a parent that it becomes 'the real love that dare not speak its name' as Bob Geldof once said. It is devastating to target parents whose loving relationships end up slowly but surely being destroyed . It is simply child abuse and a form of coercive control, the effect of which is every bit as harmful as other forms of criminal abuse. This petition addresses this very comomn scourge and deserves everyone's support. Please SIGN THIS PETITION and share it.

Smash the 10,000 Signatures Target

10,000 signatures are needed for the government to have to take notice or at least acknowledge the petition. So please SIGN IT AND SHARE IT. If everyone who receives this email signs and then forwards it to other family members, friends and colleagues who then do so too, we will smash the 10,000 limit and make some progress.

To achieve our objective of ending this abuse we'll also need to keep up our future campaigns, so please encourage family and friends to REGISTER WITH US AT FNF AS WELL, FOR FREE.  They'll be able to receive our Newsletters, progress reports and other updates.

Further Action

Please ask to meet your MP or write to them. Tell them of your experience of parental alienation, tell them how many people have signed the petition to outlaw it and how ineffective family courts currently are at dealing with it. Tell them that the World Health Organisation (WHO) is considering formal recognition of PA and that the recent research by Colorado State University identifies it as both child abuse and a form of intimate partner violence. Suggest that your MP contacts the relevant ministers at the Ministries of Justice and Health to get their response. Please feel free to share any responses you get with us at admin@fnf.org.uk (we will not publish identifying details without your permission).

Thank you!

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