Memorandum submitted by Professor Jonathan
Bradshaw and Ms Christine Skinner, University of York (CS 23)
SUMMARY
1. It is to be hoped that the Social Security
Committee will play a more independent role in evaluating the
White Paper proposals than it did between 1991 and 1997 when it
allowed itself to become an arbiter and advocate of the Government's
child support policy.
2. This memorandum is based on quantitative
and qualitative research to be published in a book in October
1999. Despite many improvements proposed in the new scheme we
are sceptical about whether it will succeed. The following are
the main points in our memorandum.
3. Capacity to pay is overestimated. Non resident
fathers, especially those with caring parents on Income Support
(the focus of the new scheme), are much more likely than fathers
in general to be poor. The proposal in the White Paper to make
non resident fathers pay £5, even if they have (new) children
and are on Income Support, is a regrettable undermining of the
safety net and effectively a state sponsored transfer from one
poor family to another. Effectively the maximum payment will be
the Income Support entitlement of the caring parent's benefit
unit. Non resident fathers will not be happy supporting the caring
parent and also possibly her new partner and their new children.
4. Non resident fathers do not accept that they
have an unconditional obligation to pay child support. They believe
it should be negotiated not imposed. It depends upon the fathers
ability to pay, the children's material need for maintenance and
the mother's and her partner's (if she has a partner) ability
to provide financially.
5. In particular financial obligations cannot
be separated from the issue of contact. In most European child
support regimes they are dealt with together. With the implementation
of the Family Law Act stalled and in disarray, the Government
have missed an ideal opportunity for joined up thinking. Instead
of seeking to reform the CSA they could have established a service
which enables these fathers and mothers to work out arrangements
for child support, contact and other matters that concern them.
This is what will happen to non Income Support cases—why
not everyone? Of course the state and the taxpayer have an interest,
and that interest can be represented by a framework of guidelines,
even a formula, but only if it is able to take account of exceptional
cases and individual circumstances in a reasonably flexible manner.
It ought to be possible for the adjudication elements of child
support to be returned to a reformed family court system with
the collection and enforcement remaining the responsibility of
a successor to the Child Support Agency.
6. We should not start from here. We should
be demanding that the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State
for Social Security develop a joint approach to the settlement
of issues following relationship breakdowns where children are
involved. No attempting to reform the unreformable.
INTRODUCTION
We welcome the opportunity to give evidence
to this hearing.
7. The Social Security Committee has played
a most extraordinary role in the sorry history of Child Support
since the 1991 Act was implemented. The Committee under its former
Chairman, Frank Field, effectively became the vehicle for the
Secretary of State for Social Security to negotiate and seek agreement
to the series of changes in the procedures, regulations and law
that sought to make the original scheme work. In the event the
Committee became part of the problem, providing support for some
of the worst elements of the original scheme, not being sufficiently
critical of the operational failures, agreeing to proposals for
reform which did not go far enough, and generally allowing itself
to be incorporated into the thinking of the Executive. It was
not until the outspoken reports of the Committee of Public Accounts
(HC 31, 1995; HC 313, 1998) and in the end a change of Government
(and membership of your Committee) that the Social Security Committee
eventually recognised that the Act had to be abandoned and the
scheme redesigned from scratch. It is to be hoped that the Social
Security Committee will play a more independent role in evaluating
the White Paper proposals than it did between 1991 and 1997 when
it allowed itself to become an arbiter and advocate of the Government's
child support policy.
8. The original scheme was enacted with the
support of hardly any research evidence. We have been studying
Child Support policy since the Child Support Act was implemented—and
before. A study of lone parents (Bradshaw and Millar 1991) provided
some of the little research evidence that was available when the
Department of Social Security was designing the scheme. In 1993
we began to plan the first ever study of non resident fathers
in Britain[16].
The findings of the resulting research are being published as
a book in October (Bradshaw et al 1999). Meanwhile we have presented
evidence relevant to Child Support derived from that research
inter alia to the All Party Committee on Child Support
(Bradshaw 1996), as comments on the Labour Party proposals for
the reform of Child Support, to policy/research seminars (Bradshaw
1997, Bradshaw et al 1998), to the Department of Social
Security on the Green Paper (Bradshaw et al 1998, Corden
1999) and now to this Committee.
9. In the light of our research and despite
many improvements proposed in the new scheme we are sceptical
about whether it will succeed. There are in particular three findings
of our research which present a challenge to the Government's
proposals and to child support policy generally.
There is a tendency to exaggerate the capacity
to pay of non resident fathers
10. It was the intention of the Child Support
Act 1991 to increase the level of Child Support paid and the proportion
of non resident fathers paying child support. It has arguably
failed to achieve either objective. Taking into account inflation
the average level of child support actually paid is little higher
than was found by Bradshaw and Millar (1991) and the proportion
of non resident fathers paying formal child support has not increased.
It is again a primary objective of the new scheme to increase
the level of payments and the proportion of non resident fathers
paying.
11. One of the important findings from our research
is that even if the new scheme results in increased compliance
(or succeeds in enforcing it) there is rather limited paying potential
among non resident fathers.
12. The socio-economic circumstances of
non resident fathers differs from those of resident fathers. They
are less likely to have stayed at school after 16, and are much
less likely to be in employment: only two-thirds were in employment
compared with over 80 per cent of resident fathers. Only about
half the unemployed are looking for work, and there is a high
rate of sickness and disability. The actual unemployment rate
was 17 per cent compared with 9 per cent among resident fathers.
Non resident fathers in employment were more likely to be low
paid. Compared with fathers in general non resident fathers were
much more likely to be dependant on Income Support and other benefits
and to be living in poverty. This has implications for their capacity
to pay Child Support.
13. Fifty-seven per cent of the fathers we interviewed
reported that they were currently paying maintenance. The odds
of a father paying child support were much lower if he is not
in employment, if he was young when he became a father, if there
was no formal arrangement in place for paying child support, if
the mother was in receipt of Income Support and if the father
had no contact with the mother (and thereby probably also with
children).
14. What scope is there for increasing the proportion
of fathers who are paying maintenance? If there was to be an effective
child support regime what would be its target? What evidence is
there that non payers are financially able to pay but nevertheless
deliberately avoid their obligation? In an attempt to tackle these
questions non payers in our sample were divided into one of four
groups.
15. Group 1: No paying potential. These
included the unemployed, non active, those on Income Support or
with equivalent net disposable income in the bottom quintile of
the income distribution and those with shared care[17]
of their children. This group consisted of 63 per cent of non
payers.
16. Group 2: Possible paying potential.
These included those not in Group 1 but who had new family commitments
involving children and equivalent net disposable income in the
second and third quintile range, which means that there would
be competition for whatever resources were available in the household.
They constituted of 13 per cent of the non payers.
17. Group 3: Probable paying potential.
These had income is the second and third quintile of the income
distribution, but no new family commitments, which meant that
there was no competition for household resources. They consisted
of 15 per cent of the non payers.
18. Group 4: Certain paying potential.
They were not in the previous three groups and had income in the
top two quintiles. They consisted of 9 per cent of the non payers.
19. We concluded from this analysis that there
is rather little scope for increasing the proportion of non resident
fathers who pay maintenance. It is important to emphasise that
this analysis covers all non payers while the new scheme (and
effectively the existing scheme) is aimed only at the former partners
of lone parents on Income Support. Lone parents on Income Support
are much less likely to be receiving child support and their non
resident parents are also less likely than average to have any
paying potential.
20. This analysis of paying potential was based
on the rules under the existing scheme, in particular that non
resident fathers on Income Support with new families should not
be expected to pay Child Support. There is a proposal in the White
Paper to charge all fathers, regardless of their incomes and family
commitments, a minimum child support of £5 per week. The
justification for this is that personal circumstances cannot negate
responsibilty for one's children. But this "principle"
competes with the principle that Income Support is supposed to
be a floor, a safety net. Although that principle has already
been breached by direct deductions for utility debts and Social
Fund loans, it is a further unfortunate undermining of the safety
net. It is also effectively a transfer from one poor family to
another poor family. Indeed what it does for lone mothers on Income
Support is just about compensate them for the abolition of the
lone parent premium in Income Support—by cutting the Income
Support of their former partners. There is a balance to be struck
between parents and the tax payer. The tax payer takes primary
responsibility for supporting the children of those parents who
are not in the labour market, and has, and will continue to have
responsibility for supporting the children of lone mothers on
Income Support. This has been the collective arrangement considered
reasonable since 1948. It is an understandable aspiration to get
fathers to contribute what they can, where they can, but not where
they cannot and there is a risk that other children will suffer.
21. Connected to this is the fact that there
is no limit to the maximum maintenance that non resident fathers
will be expected to pay. The rationale for this in the White Paper
is that "children have a right to share in the income of
their parents". However they are clearly not going to do
so because when the maintenance is not high enough to lift them
off IS, the amount they receive is fixed at £10 maximum.
Effectively the maximum will be enough to lift the caring parent
(and her new partner if she has one) above Income Support. Judging
from our results there will be serious opposition from better
off fathers if the scheme expects them to pay more than the costs
of a child and anything more than necessary to lift their children
(but not the mothers let alone the new partners) beyond the scope
of Income Support. Why should the state determine how much fathers
should pay for their non resident child when it does not involve
the tax payer? It would be considered an intolerable assault on
personal liberty if it happened in a couple family.
22. When the Green Paper was published we undertook
an analysis ( Bradshaw et al 1998)of the impact of the proposed
child support scheme using data from the survey of non resident
fathers in Britain to illustrate the possible impact of the Child
Support scheme outlined in the Green Paper. We compared what fathers
said that they were paying at the time they were interviewed,
with what they would be expected to pay under the new scheme.
What they were paying is not the same as what they should have
been paying under the Child Support Act—in fact by the time
they were interviewed only 23 per cent had been assessed by the
CSA. Also if the scheme was introduced tomorrow none of these
fathers would experience the actual changes in their Child Support
outlined above, immediately.
— Under the new scheme most non resident
parents will be expected to pay more than they are paying and
this is true even for those already paying some child support.
— The largest group who will be expected
to pay more are the least well off—those dependant on benefits
and especially those dependent upon benefits with resident children,
who under the existing scheme are not expected to pay any Child
Support.
— The new scheme fails to take into
account resident children (either their presence or how many there
are) if the fathers' net earnings are below £100 or if they
are dependent on benefits. Children in second families are therefore
being treated inequitably across different groups of non resident
parents.
Non resident fathers do not share the principle
that they have an absolute financial obligation to support their
biological children. It has to be negotiated, not imposed.
23. The Child Support Act 1991 was based on
the principle that biological fathers have an absolute and unreserved
responsibility to provide financial support for their children
throughout their lives. The most important general finding of
our research was that not all the fathers accepted this principle.
The maintenance obligation is one that was negotiated both implicitly
and explicitly. Fathers arrived at a commitment to pay maintenance
by implicitly weighing up the strength of the financial obligation
in the context of their own personal, financial and family circumstances
and those of the mother and children. In practice the obligation
to pay was never unconditional, it always depended on circumstances.
It was therefore an error to seek to establish a child support
regime based on a rigid (and yet complicated formula) administered
by the Department of Social Security. This area of policy calls
for a degree of flexible, individualised justice that probably
cannot be handled within the disciplines and culture of social
security. When the CSA was being planned it might have been wiser
and more effective to have reformed the existing court arrangements
to increase consistency of adjudication and establish mechanisms
for better review and enforcement. The existing scheme lost the
support of both fathers and mothers because it was seen as unfair
(and incompetent). The proposed new scheme is too like the old
scheme. Child support is to be imposed without regard to other
matters. We are unusual in Europe in seeking to do this. Corden
(1999) found that the most usual arrangements for child support
regime in European countries was for issues of property, finance,
contact and child support to be dealt with together, through negotiation
at the time of formal separation.
24. The results of our study show that commitments
to pay maintenance are made through a process of negotiation where
fathers had to decide "the proper thing to do" in their
particular circumstances. Making a commitment partly depended
upon the fathers ability to pay, the children's material need
for maintenance and the mother's and her partner's (if she had
a partner) ability to provide financially. Most importantly however,
it also depended upon the ability of fathers to negotiate explicate
contact arrangements with the mother.
26. In making a commitment to pay maintenance
fathers felt that the mother's right to claim maintenance (albeit
on behalf of children) had to be legitimised before they
would pay. Primarily the mother's right to claim maintenance was
accepted if she at least recognised, if not actively supported,
the father's independent relationship with his child(ren). If
the mothers failed to accept the father-child relationship, or
failed to sustain it through granting contact, then the fathers
found this extremely difficult to comprehend and this induced
an overwhelming sense of victimisation and powerlessness. In the
face of no contact, the fathers attitude tended to be that there
was no point in paying maintenance as they would be "paying
for a child they were not seeing". Thus fathers would get
"nothing back" in return for maintenance (contact with
their children). In some cases where maintenance was enforced,
the fathers would use withdrawal of payment to send messages to
the mother of the father's disquiet and anger over loss of contact.
From the fathers' perspectives it was right and proper to fulfill
their maintenance obligation in the context of meaningful relationships
with their children. In the absence of such a relationship (where
there was no contact), they were generally reluctant to accept
the maintenance obligation on its own. Yet it is difficult for
any external authority to ensure contact, or at least not without
risk of damage to all involved (Walker, 1996).
27. The White Paper actually recognises the
interrelationship between contact and higher maintenance levels
and the importance of contact to fathers' and children's well-being
(DSS, 1999:45). The White Paper states that "It is clearly
important for effective child support arrangements that contact
is settled to the satisfaction of both parents.", but it
does not say how that is to be achieved. There is only some vague
notion of an "active family policy", whereby child support
staff are to become part of a "wider family support network"
(ibid.:27). In practice this translates into CSA staff
providing parents with names and addresses of other agencies that
deal with contact difficulties and family welfare problems. Whilst
this may be helpful, it merely pays lip service to the problems
facing some men in gaining contact with their children and to
the interconnectedness of financial and social obligations. Ultimately,
there is only the hope that a more effective system for child
support will enable parents "to put financial issues to one
side when sorting out the more difficult questions of caring for
their children". It seems then, that in regard to contact
issues, little has changed for child support policy.
28. The results of this research show that the
child support scheme has a very limited prospect of success unless
it is based on negotiation between the parents, which is recognised
as fair and the perception of fairness on the fathers part depends
more than anything on their ability (and the former partners'
willingness) to have shared parental responsibility of their children.
What is needed is a service which enables these fathers and mothers
to work out arrangements for child support, contact and other
matters that concern them.
29. What we are going to have is a split system
for child support—the DSS, dealing almost exclusively with
Income Support cases and other cases making private arrangements
between themselves or with the support of solicitors. At the same
time the Lord Chancellor's Department under the 1996 Family Law
Act is experimenting with an information service and a mediation
service following marital breakdown (but not cohabitation breakdown)
covering the arrangements for children, the distribution of property
and other assets—in fact everything except child support.
The Family Law Act has not yet been fully implemented and is indeed,
with the failure of the information service and mediation experiments,
stalled. Thus there is an opportunity for thrashing out a common
strategy and more coherent set of arrangements for negotiating
contact, child support and other matters consequent on the breakdown
of relationships when children are involved. The difficulty is
that we are not starting from scratch—the Child Support
Agency exists; the Family Law Act exists, after a torrid passage
through Parliament. The Lord Chancellor does not want to go back
to the drawing board and certainly is reluctant to take on the
poisoned chalice of child support and so we will be left after
the reforms with a set of incoherent arrangements. In which private
agreements for child support are acceptable, but only where Income
Support is not paid to the children.
The moral power of children's entitlement to encourage
compliance may be overestimated
30. Making a commitment to pay maintenance is
not based upon a straightforward economic calculation, it also
constitutes a moral obligation as it reflects normative expectations
for specific family practices—fathers should pay maintenance
(it is argued) because children are entitled to financial support
from their parents. It is this moral argument of entitlement that
has underpinned the legitimacy of the Child Support Acts, although
the 1991 and 1995 Acts were flawed as none, or only a small amount
of maintenance, was handed over to the poorest children who were
dependent upon means tested benefits. The new proposals for maintenance
premium and disregards intend to correct this and re-establish
the legitimacy of the principle of children's entitlement.
31. Certainly fathers in our research have tended
not to dispute this principle of entitlement, at least in the
abstract, and whilst premiums and disregards will benefit mothers
and children and are to be applauded, their incentive effect on
fathers may be more limited; because children's entitlement must
be turned into reality not by fathers, but by mothers. It is mothers,
as the recipients of maintenance, that have the power to guarantee
that children will benefit from their entitlement to maintenance
both materially, be spending it appropriately, and emotionally
by letting children know their fathers are supporting them. Where
relations with mothers were mistrustful —which often went
hand in hand with no contact—the fathers questioned the
legitimacy of the obligation because;
— the mother was not entitled to it
as she did not facilitate contact,
— there was no guarantee that the children
would benefit from their entitlement because the money might be
spent for the benefit of others, and
— the children would not necessarily
know, in the absence of contact with their fathers, that maintenance
was being paid and therefore the meanings of care attached to
payment were rendered invisible to the children themselves.
32. In such circumstances the moral power of
children's entitlement to encourage compliance is diminished.
In effect mothers were acting as trustees; trustees of the fathers'
"active" role as a parent and trustees of the expression
of care attached to the giving of maintenance money. Fathers wanted
to use maintenance money as a means to express their feelings
for their children. This is exactly what everyone expects of maintenance
payment—that it acts as an expression of care. But it also
demonstrates how the utility of maintenance—as money—is
not only important to children's material needs, but also plays
a vital part in the sustenance of the father-child relationship.
Because through its transparency, maintenance money can act as
an implicit means of communication between father and child. Therefore
where fathers had no faith in the mother as a trustee, the obligation
to pay maintenance was not accepted as legitimate because there
was no way of knowing that payment would increase the emotional
or material well-being of children. Thus the moral obligation
of children's entitlement could not be fulfilled as there was
no gain to the children involved. Fathers therefore preferred
to give informal support in the form of gifts, or savings which
would go directly to the children without the need to depend upon
the mother. Children's entitlement to financial support was therefore
preserved, though not their entitlement to formal cash maintenance.
33. Thus non-payment of maintenance does not
necessarily mean that fathers' behaviour is amoral, or inconsistent
with the principle of children's entitlement. Rather it shows
how the moral power of children's entitlement to financial support
can also work to discourage payment of maintenance. Because in
the context of social relationships which vary in quality, fathers
do not always believe that by simply paying maintenance the assumed
benefits of entitlement can be turned into reality. Therefore
the assumption in the White Paper, that the maintenance premium
will encourage compliance because the "fathers will know
that they are contributing directly to the support of their children"
(DSS, 1999:18) completely misses the point. Fathers will not necessarily
know, or see, that their contributions will successfully increase
the welfare of their children at all.
34. This does not mean to say that children's
entitlement is not a reason for payment, but rather this was only
one way in which the obligation to pay was accepted as legitimate.
As argued already the obligation was regarded as legitimate where
the mother facilitated contact, but other ways included;
— Where the mother was viewed as being
entitled on the basis of her role as the primary carer,
— where the fathers' felt a need to
compensate mothers and/or children for past misdemeanours on the
part of the father (guilt about adultery for example),
— where the fathers wanted to pay maintenance
as a token gesture to maintain their reputation as caring fathers
in the eyes of mothers and others, and
— where fathers earmarked part or all
of the maintenance to be spent only upon the children directly
for clothes, shoes etc. and thus it could act as a kind of gift.
35. Thus there were four types of payments which
reflected different ways in which the obligation was legitimised;
entitled maintenance (for mothers as well as children), token
maintenance, compensatory maintenance and gift maintenance. The
roots of this legitimacy, reflected the history of the relationships
with mothers and children and also the current quality of these
relationships.
36. The key point is that, maintenance is
seen as a moral obligation that is based on children's
entitlement, but children's entitlement is but one way in which
the obligation is legitimised. Moreover, children's entitlement
was intimately interwoven with mothers' entitlement. Ultimately
the legitimacy of the obligation, based upon children's entitlement,
was dependent upon a trusting relationship between the parents.
37. Our research shows that fathers do want
to fulfill all their parental obligations; social, emotional and
financial, but it seems that one is unsatisfactory without the
others. There is therefore in some sense no need to "reinforce"
parental obligations—they exist and are accepted already.
But there is a need to facilitate them through an increased understanding
of the emotional and moral turmoil that follows in the wake of
family separation, or in the wake of cohabitation breakdown or
non-marital births.
CONCLUSIONS
38. The mistake that the Child Support Act
made was that the state took a robust moral stance in the interests
of the tax payer and imposed a law on people who, it has been
demonstrated, were not prepared to consent to it. In general Ministers,
have been much more open in this episode of Child Support policy
making than those that have gone before. The discourse of vilification
has been muted, the language changed, many more people, including
notably non resident fathers groups, have been given an opportunity
to have their say, and some attention has been paid to research
evidence.
39. However, little has changed between
the Green and White Papers. Discussion of reform has been most
heavily influenced by DSS and the Child Support Agency's experience
of the 1991 Act and its successors. The proposals fall short of
providing a truly integrated system. Policy makers in the DSS
have been unwilling to ask themselves the question—do we
really want to start from here (or perhaps when they have approached
other Departments to attempt more joined up thinking they have
been rebuffed—no one else wanted to pick up or be associated
with this poisoned chalice). It is particularly significant that
one of the few (and most welcome) changes between the Green and
White Papers was forced on the DSS by the Treasury and Inland
Revenue who insisted on Child Support being completely disregarded
for Family Tax Credit.
40. The Government have accepted the legitimacy
of private negotiations in those circumstances (despite the involvement
of the tax payer) but not for lone mothers receiving Income Support.
Here a formula will still be rigidly enforced and very strict
conditions for departures from the formula will still be applied.
The prospects for the legitimacy of child support policy do not
look hopeful—even with a maintenance premium. The state
is earmarking a proportion of fathers' earned income (and benefit
income in the case of IS claimants) for maintenance purposes where
the non-resident children are dependent upon IS. In that sense
the obligation to pay maintenance is still effectively a tax,
as this financial debt is to come first before fathers' other
"day-to-day expenses" (DSS, 1999:57) and before fathers'
other obligations to their non-resident children, including the
provision of informal support—except for some exceptional
expenses such as mortgages payments for the child's home (ibid.
p40).
41. Fundamental confusions over the aims
of child support policy remain. Does it aim to seek some recompense
for the state's costs in supporting children or is it about getting
more money to children to increase their well-being? If it is
the latter then more care should be exercised in the assessment
and the provision of informal support should be recognised—impossible
in a formula driven system. It is clear then, that despite the
maintenance premium, the new proposals run the same risk of unpopularity
as the state is still stepping in to decide the level of obligation
based on its desire to represent the tax payers interest.
42. The weakness of the proposed scheme
for child support is that the assessment is still formula driven
and still imposed and enforced completely independently of negotiations
between the parents about their arrangements for financial support,
contact and other related matters. What policy makers have not
faced up to is the fact that "active" parenthood, or
more correctly "active" non-resident fatherhood, is
not for life, not at least without a private agreement
being reached between the parents themselves. That an external
Agency should define how this parental obligation to children
is not only to be expressed—merely in cash terms—but
also prioritised is anathema in the context of the private meanings
of parenthood. Fathers' social, financial and moral obligations
to their children are intimately interwoven, they exist and operate
in different social realities and are effectively negotiated within
a framework of parenthood, or fatherhood and not within a framework
of DSS regulations.
43. We should not start from here. We should
be demanding that the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State
for Social Security develop a joint approach to the settlement
of issues following relationship breakdowns where children are
involved. Policy makers should grasp the nettle and set in place
a series of experimental pilot schemes to explore a co-ordinated
Family Court System for dealing with all matters relating to divorce
and cohabitation breakdown. The time has come to attempt to discover
real "joined up" solutions to "joined up"
problems.
September 1999
REFERENCES
Bradshaw, J. and Millar, J. (1991) Lone Parent
Families in the UK, London, HMSO
Bradshaw, J., Skinner, C. and Williams, J. (1998)
Impact of the proposed child support scheme on non resident parents,
unpublished paper.
Bradshaw, J. (1998) Will fathers pay child support,.
Can fathers pay child support, Family Policy Studies Centre Seminar,
Nuffield Foundation, 11 May 1998.
Bradshaw, J., Stimson, C., Skinner, C. and Williams,
J. (1999) Absent Fathers?, London: Routledge.
Bradshaw, J., Stimson, C., Skinner, C. and Williams,
J. (1999) Non resident fathers in Britain, in Mcrae, S. (ed) Household
and family change, Oxford University Press.
Bradshaw, J. (1996) The Child Support Act: talk
to the All Party Committee on Child Support, subsequently published
in NACSA News, March/April, 19-22.
Bradshaw, J. (1997) Think again Labour: Comments
on the Labour Party proposals for the reform of Child Support,
subsequently published in NACSA News.
Clarke, K., Glendinning, C. and Craig, G. (1994)
Losing Support: Children and the Child Support Act, London:
The Children's Society.
Cm 4349 (1999) A new contract for welfare:
Children's rights and parents responsibilities, London: HMSO.
Corden A.(1999) Making child maintenance
regimes work, Family Policy Studies Centre and JRF.
Davis, G., Wikeley, N., and Young, R. (1998)
Child Support in Action, Oxford: Hart Publishing.
House of Commons, HC.31 (1995) First Report
on the Child Support Agency Committee of Public Accounts Session
95-96, London: HMSO.
House of Commons, HC 313 (February 1998) Child
Support Agency: Client Funds Account 1996-1997, Committee
of Public Accounts, Twenty First Report, Session 1997-1998. London:
TSO.
Hutton, S., Carlisle, J. and Corden, A. (1997)
`Depth Follow-Up to the CSA National Client Survey, Working Paper
DSS 1501, Social Policy Research Unit, University of York.
Walker, J. (1996) Staying in Touch, Family
Policy Studies Centre Bulletin, November.
16 The research was funded by the ESRC (with supplementary
funding from DSS) as part of the programme of research on Population
and Household Change. It consisted of a sample survey of about
600 non resident fathers in Britain, identified by a screening
questionnaire in an omnibus survey, plus two follow-up qualitative
studies, one of which was devoted to financial obligations. While
we were able to adjust from non response bias among those fathers
indentified in the screening survey, only about 5 per cent of
men identified themselves as non resident fathers. We expect the
actual proportion to be up to three times this. So the sample
is unlikely to be representative of all non resident fathers. Back
17
i.e. children spend roughly equal amounts of time living in their
mother's and father's households. Back
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