Parents Say Child Maintenance Service Errors Push Families to Crisis
Parents featured on Panorama allege the Child Maintenance Service is causing severe financial hardship and mental stress, with arrears and administrative mistakes forcing some to rely on food banks.
Panorama spoke with several parents who claim the Child Maintenance Service is failing to secure regular child support, leaving mothers with arrears close to £10,000, dependence on food banks, and the inability to fund extracurricular activities for their children. One mother said her abusive ex-partner stopped paying, forcing her to skip meals, while a father reported the CMS mistakenly added an extra child to his account, inflating his monthly liability to £981 and causing severe anxiety.
The Department for Work and Pensions maintains that the majority of cases result in vital payments, yet data show a rise of about 300,000 cases over the past five years and more than 1,400 complaints in the first quarter of the year. Collect and Pay arrangements now cover roughly 350,000 cases, but nearly 61,000 had no payments, affecting 86,000 children. Enforcement delays, such as a 26-week wait for liability orders, have left families in limbo. CMS director Simon Hunter acknowledged isolated failures and promised reforms, while MPs have raised individual cases in Parliament.
Why it matters
Faulty child support enforcement can jeopardize children’s wellbeing and strain families across the UK.
In this story
