Child Support Agency case closure outcomes survey
This research measures the short and longer-term child maintenance outcomes of separated parents whose cases have been closed by the Child Support Agency (CSA).
Documents
Details
This research aims to understand:
- if new maintenance arrangements have been established
- the types of arrangements set up
- the parents’ decision-making processes
We commissioned this research because there was no existing evidence on child maintenance outcomes following case closure. It will form part of the 30 month review of the impact of charging due to be completed by 31 December 2016. As such it has been published alongside 3 other research reports which are part of the review and inform the review report summary due to be published in early 2017.
The 3 other research reports are:
- Survey of Child Maintenance Service Direct Pay clients
- Evaluating Child Support Agency case closure communications in nil-assessed and non-compliant cases (ad hoc report 39)
- Child Maintenance service exit survey (ad hoc report 42)
Authors: Rakhee Patel, Julia Griggs, Allison Dunatchik, Meg Callanan, Hannah Jones and Ruth Hudson, National Centre for Social Research (NatCen).
Completion of the 30 month review
A key recommendation from Sir David Henshaw’s 2006 report on the future of Britain’s child maintenance system was to introduce fees and charging to the statutory child maintenance system. The intention behind this recommendation was to prevent parents from defaulting to the statutory service if they could make a family-based arrangement instead, which can reduce conflict and tends to lead to better outcomes for the children involved.
Application fees and collection charges were introduced to the new Child Maintenance Service in June 2014. Section 141 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 required the Department for Work and Pensions to review the impact of charging no later than 30 months after it was introduced, meaning by the end of December 2016.
The 4 reports published in December 2016 complete the 30 month review. These reports are the last documents in a series of publications which together form the 30 month review.
As stated in our published evaluation strategy, in order to complete the 30 month review within the statutory deadline, the fieldwork ran to mid-2016 to include as much information as possible about the impact of charging.
As we have taken a staged approach to giving existing CSA clients the opportunity to consider applying to the new scheme and some cases are still in the old scheme, the review will only give a partial picture of the impact of the reforms.
Despite this, the findings will help identify areas where improvements can be made, and provide an opportunity for early learning. We will continue our evaluation throughout the process of case closure.
The department is considering these findings and a review report will be published in early 2017.
List of DWP publications comprising the 30 month review
Research publications
- this report: Survey of Child Support Agency case closure outcomes – published December 2016
- Evaluating Child Support Agency case closure communications (ad hoc report 39) – published December 2016
- Survey of Child Maintenance Service Direct Pay clients – published December 2016
- Child Maintenance Service exit survey (ad hoc report 42) – published December 2016
- Help and support for separated families innovation fund evaluation – published September 2016
- Attitudes and behaviours of self-employed child maintenance clients and barriers to paying child maintenance – published October 2015
- Long-term separated parents: developing support to encourage child maintenance arrangements – published August 2015
Statistical publications
- Child Maintenance Options service client satisfaction: April 2014 to September 2016 – published December 2016
- Child Maintenance Service client satisfaction: up to August 2016 – published December 2016
- Effective family-based child maintenance arrangements following contact with CM Options data for June 2016 – published November 2016
- 2012 statutory child maintenance: August 2013 to August 2016 (experimental) – published October 2016
- Estimates of the separated family population to December 2014 (experimental statistics) – published October 2016
- Sorting out separation website statistics: December 2012 – 2015 – published October 2016
- Effective family-based child maintenance arrangements: preliminary estimates, data up to March 2016 – published August 2016
- Child Support Agency case closures: June 2014 to December 2015 –published May 2016
- Child Support Agency Quarterly Summary of Statistics for Great Britain December 2014 – published February 2015