Memorandum submitted by Families Need
Fathers
1. SUMMARY
The proposed rejig of Government policy on child
maintenance will fail again. It is based on the same assumptions
as before. Namely that when parents separate the responsibility
for the care of the children falls to one parent. These assumptions
are unacceptable to non-resident parents.
The economic problems of families which have
divided will increasingly "lie where they fall", firstly
because most arrangements will be voluntary and secondly because
C-MEC will not be able to deliver.
A positive way forward should be based on modern,
egalitarian and child welfare considerations. To promote the sharing
of the care and thus the cost of children in divided families.
C-MEC will need to deal only with a residue. It should face up
to social reality, where there are many different parenting arrangements,
not one crude model, as in the White Paper, of one parent "caring"
and the other "paying".
The main effects of this policy will be felt
in the reduction of social problems among children, young people
and adults that are created or aggravated by insufficient or unbalanced
parental attention as well as in the CSA.
This is a long-term policy, but each step will
bring benefits.
The policies require joined up thinking largely
outside CSA/C-MEC itself.
Child support arrangements should serve the
best parenting of the children, instead of being imposed irrespective
of the damage they do.
2. ABOUT FNF
AND ITS
STANCE
Families Need Fathers exists to promote the
need of children whose parents live apart to have the full involvement
of both their parents. Our first task is social care work.
It is the duty of all parents to provide for
them in direct care—the more important matter—and
economically.
The majority of parents who come to us about
the CSA are victims of maladministration or making protests at
the parenting arrangements imposed on their children and themselves.
It has become acceptable to lead the CSA a dance.
To report this is not to approve of it. The ingenuity and determination
of people to frustrate it—and any similar agency—should
not be underestimated.
Compulsion yields only minimal and resentful
compliance.
3. HISTORY
Both traditional and modern fathers seek to
be "providers". Current provisions for separation needlessly
destroy this motivation. Parents share their income, voluntarily
and with pride and pleasure, with children with whom they share
a life.
Our warnings that were would be massive problems
of resistance were ignored at the start. We have repeated this
warning with each attempt to relaunch the CSA.
4. SHARED PARENTING
AS A
SOLUTION TO
THE PROBLEMS
OF CHILD
SUPPORT (AND
MANY OTHERS)
Prevention is better than cure. The need for
a child maintenance policy lies in inequality in income between
the parents, and inequality of costs and responsibilities between
them. Social policy should remove these.
An example—Maternity and paternity leave.
The current proposals are to extend maternity leave finally up
to a year. Maternity' rights should be divided into two. The first
phase is for the physical needs of the mother. The second, and
much longer phase, is to provide a carer for the baby. That should
be available equally to both parents. Currently, only the mother
will have rights. If the parents break up, the mother will be
able to claim the baby's almost exclusive bonding. The father
will become excluded. He will get on with his life. He is likely
to become a CSA defaulter. The mother's position, both as carer
and employee, will become problematic. The situation to which
the CSA is supposedly "the solution" would in fact have
been created. Consider the alternative. The consequences for the
mother, child and society of the baby and father bonding permanently.
Child support provisions might not be needed at all. If they were,
it would be a light touch.
In a full paper, FNF would develop other examples.
Changes in the law
The law needs amending to give explicit recognition
to the rights of children to both their parents. The current law
is too vague to be a guide to social behaviour. A presumption
of proper recognition of the rights of children, which is what
we propose, would be rebuttable. It would be no more incompatible
with the "welfare principle" that other presumptions
concerning children.
5. THE SHORT
TERM FATE
OF THE
CSA
A totally clean slate so that the wretched experience
of the CSA can be put aside. This involves the complete and final
abolition of the CSA and the cessation of its activities. A partial
amnesty for debts and the making up to lone parents of money due.
The next stage would be evolving the strategy
for the parenting of children of family division along the lines
suggested.
There would need to be some interim arrangements.
We have suggestions. They would involve the following: the sharing,
pro rata care, of state payments to parents; this to include a
restored lone parent benefit often shared between the parents;
the exemption from the need to transfer money between households
of those with shared care; generous disregards of CM for tax,
income support and tax credits; quite high rates of transfer between
parents one of whom was genuinely not contributing in cash or
kind to child care; a requirement to be available for work for
parents who had child care from the other parent available to
them.
John Baker
30 December 2006
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