Guidance

Background information and methodology: Separated Families statistics

Updated 21 March 2024

Introduction

This note accompanies the main Separated Families Statistics report.

The purpose of this note is to provide further contextual information to aid understanding of the statistics presented in the main report and detailed tables. It outlines terminology in the statistics, describes source data as well as limitations of the information presented and changes to the survey this year compared to last year.

1. Context of the statistics

This release contains annual data to March 2023 from the Family Resources Survey (FRS) and the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data.

In this period,

• FRS sample sizes improved both compared to the period of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the financial year ending 2020, pre-pandemic
• survey fieldwork operations gradually returned to levels of face-to-face interviewing more comparable to the pre-pandemic period

Analysis of the achieved sample has shown it compares well with that from the financial year ending 2020, and representativeness has improved compared with what was observed during the pandemic. Users will still need to be aware of the potential effects of COVID-19 on both the survey and individual circumstances and should interpret results, particularly across the financial years ending 2021 and 2022, with care. More details on the effects of COVID-19 on the FRS as a whole are included in this document and the FRS background information and methodology note. The effects of COVID-19 on HBAI data and statistics are available in the HBAI methodology report.

These statistics provide estimates of the following:

• the number of separated families in Great Britain and the number of children in those families
• the proportion of separated families with a child maintenance arrangement and whether this arrangement is statutory or non-statutory
• the total amount of child maintenance received by parents with care, by arrangement type
• the net impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children in low-income households
• characteristics of separated parents and the impacts of child maintenance payments on where their households are represented in the income distribution

This release includes the following additional estimates on households in low income and incomes, by child maintenance arrangement type:

• the net impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children living in low income
• the percentage of children in parent with care households who remain in low income after child maintenance
• the position of separated parent households in the Great Britain income distribution

This release includes the following methodological changes:

• an improvement to the way we calculate the net impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children living in absolute low income
• an improvement to the representation of non-resident parents in the existing table breakdowns

Further detail on these methodological changes can be found in section 7 of this report.

How separated families might select a child maintenance arrangement

It should be noted that there is no requirement for all separated families to have an arrangement and some families may not want an arrangement. If parents do want an arrangement they may be able to agree this themselves without the involvement of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS). Arrangements made in this way are called non-statutory arrangements or ‘family-based arrangements’.

Where parents want an arrangement but need help with this, they can use online support via Get Help Arranging Child Maintenance. This is a new digital service for child maintenance applications and information about the choices available to parents to either make their own arrangement or use the CMS.

If further support is required, parents can ask the CMS to calculate the amount of maintenance to be paid and/or to manage and collect payments. Arrangements made in this way are called statutory arrangements and the CMS can take enforcement action to ensure payments are made.  

During the period covered by these statistics, financial years ending 2015 to 2023, statutory child maintenance moved from the Child Support Agency (CSA) to the CMS. CSA cases began closing in June 2014 and under the CMS more freedom and support was provided to enable parents to choose the arrangement that works best for them. This could be a statutory arrangement or a non-statutory arrangement, and there was no requirement for parents to have an arrangement. Not all CSA cases were expected to transfer to the CMS.

CSA cases were closed in groups and those closed first were the simpler cases, such as those with no liability in place. The last cases to close were more complex, such as those where enforcement action was on-going. By December 2018, all the CSA cases with on-going liabilities were closed. Parents who still wanted an arrangement could use on-line support or contact Child Maintenance Options for further information on how to set up a non-statutory, family-based arrangement or a statutory arrangement with the CMS.

2. Purpose of the statistics

These statistics are used by various stakeholders within the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to measure progress against policy intent. They may also be used to answer Parliamentary Questions and requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

The statistics included in this publication are also intended for use by other interested parties in the public, private and voluntary sectors, and by interested members of the public.

3. Definitions and terminology within the statistics

The key definitions and terminology used within these statistics are explained below.

Separated family

A separated family is defined as one parent with care, one non-resident parent and any biological or adopted children they have between them who are either under 16 or under 20 and in full-time non-tertiary education.

Parent with care

A Parent with care is the parent who has sole or main day-to-day care of any relevant children and who may potentially be eligible to receive child maintenance.

Non-resident parent

A non-resident parent is the parent who does not have sole or main day-to-day care of any relevant children and who may be required to pay child maintenance.

Child maintenance arrangement

There are two main types of child maintenance arrangement: statutory arrangements and non-statutory arrangements (see below). Separated families may have more than one type of arrangement.

Statutory arrangement

Statutory child maintenance arrangements are those which have been arranged with the help of the CMS or its predecessor, the CSA.

Non-statutory arrangement

Non-statutory arrangements do not involve the CMS and include:

• voluntary financial arrangements involving direct monetary payments between parents where the CMS have not been involved
• voluntary non-financial arrangements involving payments in kind
• other types of arrangement including shared care arrangements
• court orders requiring parents to make financial payments

Collect and Pay arrangement

An arrangement where the CMS collects and manages maintenance payments from the non-resident parent (or “paying parent”) to the parent with care (or “receiving parent”). If required, the CMS will take enforcement action.

Direct Pay arrangement

An arrangement where the CMS calculates the amount of maintenance to be paid, and parents arrange the payments between themselves.

Child Maintenance Options

Child Maintenance Options was a free service providing impartial information and support to help separated parents make decisions about their child maintenance arrangements. From 1 April 2022, Get Help Arranging Child Maintenance replaced the Child Maintenance Option Service.

Get Help Arranging Child Maintenance

Get Help Arranging Child Maintenance is a new digital service for child maintenance applications and information about the choices available to parents to either make their own (non-statutory) arrangement or use the CMS.

Child Maintenance Service (CMS)

The CMS was introduced in December 2012. It replaced the CSA and is for separated parents who cannot arrange child maintenance between themselves. Parents can ask the CMS to calculate the amount of maintenance to be paid and, if necessary, to help manage and collect payments. Since the end of 2018, all CSA cases with on-going liabilities closed. Parents now have the option of setting up a statutory arrangement with the CMS, a non-statutory, family-based arrangement, or choosing not to have an arrangement at all.

Equivalised household income

If a household’s income is equivalised, it means that it has been adjusted for household size and composition to make it comparable with other households’ incomes.

Low income

A household is said to be in relative low income if their equivalised income is below 60% of median household income, while they are said to be in absolute low income if their equivalised income is below 60% of the median household income adjusted for inflation for the financial year ending 2011. For comparative purposes, both relative and absolute low income are estimated before and after taking housing costs into account.

Deciles and Quintiles

Deciles divide the population, when ranked by equivalised household income, into ten equal sized groups, and are indicated by 1 to 10, while quintiles divide the population into five groups.

Income Distribution

This shows how equivalised household income is shared through a population. Comparisons to the equivalised household income percentiles of a reference population allow the income distributions of different groups to be compared. In this publication we show the distribution of equivalised household incomes of individuals in parent with care and non-resident parent households relative to the equivalised household income deciles of all individuals in Great Britain.

Financial years

The financial year begins on 1 April and ends on 31 March.

4. Source of the statistics

These statistics are estimates derived from survey data and combined with administrative data where appropriate.

Estimates are based primarily on data from the Family Resources Survey.

The FRS is a continuous survey based on a representative sample historically comprising around 20,000 United Kingdom (UK) households. The sample for the financial year ending 2023 was around 25,000 private households, as a planned boost to the sample was partially achieved. The samples for the financial years ending 2021 and 2022 were smaller at around 10,000 and16,000 private households respectively due to the impacts of COVID-19.

In addition to the sample size reductions, the composition of the FRS achieved sample changed between the financial year ending 2020 and the financial years ending 2021 and 2022. Some of the observed changes reflected genuine societal and economic change but other changes reflected a change in the mode of interviewing from face-to face to telephone interviewing and both reduced and differential response rates between groups during the pandemic. The grossing regime was adjusted to improve the representativeness of the sample in both of these years, but some unknown biases remained.

While FRS fieldwork operations during the financial year ending 2023 were not identical to those before COVID-19, the use of face-to-face interviewing gradually returned throughout the year to levels more comparable to those seen pre-pandemic. The achieved sample compares well with the sample from the financial year ending 2020, and representativeness has improved compared with what was observed during the pandemic. Consequently, we have enhanced confidence in data quality, but we continue to advise users to be aware of the potential effects of COVID-19 on both the survey and individual circumstances and to interpret results with care. In particular, assessments of observed changes in the data should be made compared with both the financial year ending 2022 and with pre-pandemic trends and estimates from the financial year ending 2020.

During 2022 to 2023 the government announced and implemented additional support to families with several cost-of-living support schemes, depending on peoples’ circumstances. These payments will be included in the estimates of separated families’ incomes.

More information can be found in the FRS background information and methodology note and Households Below Average Income report.

The FRS collects information on the income, characteristics and circumstances of respondents, including the relationships within their households and any child maintenance arrangements they may have. FRS respondents are assumed to be parents with care in a separated family if their responses indicate that they are the biological or adoptive parent of a child who lives in their household and that child has no other biological or adoptive parents in the household. Parents who are widowed or part of an intact couple where the partner lives away, for example due to work, are excluded.

The appropriate survey weights are applied to the survey responses to obtain population-level estimates of the number of parents with care and children in separated families. Parents with care may be either lone parents or may have formed new partnerships. Labour Force Survey (LFS) estimates of lone parent numbers are used as control totals in the process of applying weights to FRS sample data so that they yield estimates for the overall population. Further details on the methodology are provided in the FRS background information and methodology note.

FRS responses regarding child maintenance arrangements are checked for accuracy against CMS administrative databases, in line with FRS linking protocols 

If a parent with care respondent indicates that they have no statutory arrangement but this is contradicted by the administrative data, then it is assumed that they have a statutory arrangement and their FRS response is adjusted accordingly. This helps to correct for the under-reporting of statutory arrangements. Non-statutory arrangements are also under-reported, but a new question added to the FRS in the financial year ending 2020 is used to help address this under-reporting. The new question allows the identification of further family-based arrangements such as those involving payments in kind or shared care.

FRS estimates relating to parents with care are converted into estimates relating to the number of separated families

This is done based on estimates of the average number of child maintenance arrangements per parent with care obtained from CMS administrative data.

Estimates of the total amount of child maintenance payments received by parents with care are based on a combination of administrative data and adjusted FRS data

Estimates of the total amount of maintenance received by parents with care with a statutory arrangement are obtained via Collect and Pay and Direct Pay arrangement information from CMS administrative data. For all statutory arrangements partial compliance is assumed. From the publication of data for the financial year ending 2021, estimates of the total amount of maintenance received by parents with care with a non-statutory arrangement are obtained from adjusted FRS data. Parents with care who report a statutory arrangement in the FRS and that they are receiving payment, but who are not found on administrative data, are re-categorised as having a non-statutory arrangement. The amount they report receiving is attributed to that arrangement category.  Previously we only counted money received through non-statutory arrangements that were reported as such on the FRS, while statutory amounts of money received were and continue to be taken from administrative data.

Parents with care and non-resident parent age and gender estimates

Estimates of age and gender proportions for separated parents are produced using FRS data that has been adjusted for misreporting of arrangements. The release covering the financial year ending 2023 is the first that has included these adjustments for non-resident parents in addition to the existing adjustments for parents with care.

Estimates of the impact of child maintenance payments on household income

HBAI data and methodology are used to derive estimates of FRS respondents’ equivalised household income, which takes into account household size and composition to make these income estimates comparable. This means it is possible to estimate whether or not the respondents and their children live in a low-income household. FRS data is used to work out income before child maintenance payments. It is then possible to observe the impact that such payments have on the number of children kept out of or put into low income, and the movement of separated parent households in the income distribution. The impacts on both parent with care and non-resident parent households are accounted for. COVID-19 also affected HBAI data in the financial years ending 2021 and 2022 as it is derived from the FRS. More information can be found in the HBAI methodology report

5. Limitations of the statistics

These statistics are estimates and are subject to limitations. The main issues are described separately below.

The FRS is subject to sampling error

All survey estimates have a sampling error associated with them, calculated from the variability of the observations in the survey sample. In general terms, the smaller the sample size, the greater the uncertainty of the estimates. Results in this report are subject to a margin of error which can affect how changes should be interpreted, especially between groups and in the short term. The sample in Great Britain for the FRS is selected using a stratified multi-stage design, based on addresses clustered within postcode sectors. As a result, FRS sampling error is not just dependent on the variability among units in the sample (whether households or individuals), but is also a function of variability within and between postcode sectors. Therefore, the complex (actual) sampling error is normally greater than the standard error calculated under the assumption of simple random sampling.  

A margin of error (confidence interval) is usually calculated to determine whether the changes observed in survey estimates are statistically significant and are unlikely to result from measurement error. This is currently not done for the Separated Families Statistics but is being explored for future publications.

This publication includes a three-year average for some statistics to minimise the sample error and control for volatility in the sample from one period to the next. Due to the sample size being around half its usual size in the financial year ending 2021 and reduced by around a fifth in the financial year ending 2022, following the effects of COVID-19, estimates for those periods are expected to be more uncertain than usual. Users should interpret results with care, particularly across those years.

There are some limitations regarding the way FRS questions are asked

In the year 2016 to 2017 changes were made to the routing and wording of the questions relating to child maintenance. Prior to this year there was no routing between the detailed relationship questions and the reporting of children for child maintenance purposes. This meant that some respondents who were potentially eligible for a child maintenance arrangement were subsequently recorded as having no eligible child rather than no arrangement and not routed to the more detailed questions. This may have introduced some inaccuracy in our reporting of the number and types of arrangements prior to the financial year ending 2017.

There are some issues regarding FRS response accuracy

The general approach taken is to assume that survey responses relating to family circumstances and child maintenance arrangements are accurate, unless they are contradicted by the existence of a relevant statutory arrangement in the CMS administrative databases (see above).

Linking relevant CMS administrative records to FRS respondents

In the published years before the financial year ending 2019, not all respondents consented to linking and it was not possible to link all responses of those who did consent. However, due to changes in the legal basis for linking since 2018, as well as improvements in linking methodology it is now possible to link a large majority of relevant FRS cases to CMS administrative data.

Parents with care can be associated with more than one separated family. However, there is limited data on the number of separated families associated with the parents with care identified

To convert estimates relating to parents with care into estimates relating to separated families, a scaling factor is applied. This scaling factor is based on the average number of live statutory arrangements associated with all of the parents with care in the CMS administrative database who had a statutory arrangement. Due to a lack of data on non-statutory arrangements, the scaling factor is only based on statutory cases. It is assumed that the scaling factor can be applied to all of the parents with care identified using the FRS data, regardless of the type(s) of child maintenance arrangement(s) they have (if any). It is also assumed that all separated families associated with a given parent with care are covered by the same type(s) of child maintenance arrangement(s).

There is limited information regarding the amount of child maintenance payments received via CMS Direct Pay arrangements

Estimates of the total amount of maintenance received by parents with care with a Direct Pay arrangement are derived from CMS administrative data. However, these published data only show the total amount of maintenance that has been arranged via Direct Pay and not the total amount that has been paid. An assumption is therefore made regarding the proportion of arranged Direct Pay payments that are actually received based on surveys of Child Maintenance Options customers that were conducted in 2018.

Estimates of the impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children in low-income households do not take any potential behavioural impacts into account

The estimates are based on a basic analysis of the impact of reported maintenance payments on household incomes, all other things being equal.

HBAI methodology has been improved to take into account the impact of all child maintenance payments on the number of children in low-income households

This small enhancement means in the Separated Families publication all estimates from the financial year ending in 2019 will represent all components of child maintenance income reported to the FRS.

Non-resident parent under-representation

The number of non-resident parents that we find on the FRS is lower than expected when comparing to the number of parents with care. Potential biases in the non-resident parent characteristics and income distribution reported in the statistics depend on the differences between the non-resident parents who do not identify themselves and those that either do not identify themselves or are not included in the sample. A methodological change as of the release covering the financial year ending 2023, will slightly improve the representation of non-resident parents in the existing table breakdowns, although substantial under-representation will remain. Further detail is provided in section 7.

6. Comparisons between the statistics

The contents of this publication are not comparable with any estimates in the previous Estimates of the separated family population to December 2014 publication which was withdrawn in December 2018. The withdrawal of this publication was explained in a separate statistical notice.

Estimates of the number of separated families with a statutory child maintenance arrangement derived from these statistics should not be compared against caseload estimates in the Child Maintenance Service statistics and Child Support Agency Quarterly Summary Statistics publications. The estimates in those publications are based on administrative data, whilst these statistics are estimates based on survey data which excludes some household types and is subject to sampling error (see above). Also the publications mentioned above provide quarterly caseload figures, whilst these estimates are based on survey responses at a point in time.

7. Revisions to the statistics

Estimates are based primarily on data from the FRS, which is not routinely revised. However, we currently expect that the grossing factors used in the FRS and HBAI will be reviewed in line with the latest censuses for England and Wales and Scotland ahead of the next publication in March 2025. This will also affect Separated Families Statistics. Further details are available in the HBAI Quality and Methodology Information Report.  

Where feasible and appropriate, the FRS data has been checked for accuracy against administrative data and adjusted accordingly (see above). The CMS caseload databases used are not routinely revised.

The closure of CSA.

Estimates from and following the financial year ending 2019 should not be compared with earlier estimates. All live CSA cases were closed by the end of December 2018 and no CSA cases have been linked to FRS data from the financial year ending 2019. Data from the financial year ending 2019 onwards is only linked to CMS data, a more robust administrative data source. Due to improvements in the quality of administrative data used, more robust assumptions became possible after linking to survey data allowing for greater accuracy. This change created a break in the time series on the number of separated families, the numbers of children in those families and the proportions of separated families with child maintenance arrangements before the financial year ending 2019.

Proportion of separated families with a non-statutory child maintenance arrangement and number of separated families

For data from the financial year ending 2020, there has been a change to how we calculate the proportion of separated families that have a non-statutory child maintenance arrangement, which in turn affects the overall proportion of separated families with a child maintenance arrangement. The change used a new question that was added to the FRS in the financial year ending 2020, which allows the identification of further family-based arrangements. This simplifies the methodology for capturing under-reported family-based arrangements, which previously used assumptions drawn from under-reported compliant statutory arrangements.

Improvements to data linking between the FRS and administrative data allowed us to simultaneously simplify our adjustment for under-reporting of statutory arrangements in the FRS from an aggregate level adjustment to individual case level adjustments.

The proportion of separated families with a child maintenance arrangement and the number of separated families from and following the financial year ending 2020 should not be compared with the earlier estimates. These changes created a second break in the time series on proportions of separated families with child maintenance arrangements and numbers of separated families before the financial year ending 2020. However, these changes lead to improvements in accuracy and facilitate further developments to the statistics.

The total amount of maintenance received by parents with care

The adjustment for under-reporting of statutory arrangements in the FRS changed from an aggregate level adjustment to adjustments on individual cases for data from the financial year ending 2020. This is described above. It allows an improvement to the estimate of the total amount of maintenance received. Parents with care who report a statutory arrangement in the FRS and that they are receiving payment, but who are not found on administrative data, are now categorised as having a non-statutory arrangement. The amount they reported receiving can be attributed to that arrangement category.  Previously we only counted money received through non-statutory arrangements that were reported as such on the FRS, while statutory amounts of money received were and continue to be taken from administrative data.

Position of separated parent households in the income distribution

In the tables that showed the position of parents with care and non-resident parents in the income distribution before and after child maintenance for data up to and including the financial year ending 2020, there has been a change that now also includes the children in the same household as each parent. It is now an income distribution of all the individuals in parent with care and non-resident parent households rather than just the parents themselves. This has been done by using a dataset of all individuals in separated parent households, instead of a dataset of adults only, and incorporating an individual grossing factor. This allows for a better understanding about the impact child maintenance has on whole households, rather than just the parents. This caused minor changes to the statistic, with a slightly lower representation of individuals in non-resident parent households in the first decile, compared to how the previous statistic was calculated. These income distributions are not produced as part of a time series and revised figures were not published for earlier years. Thus, the income distributions averaged over the financial years ending 2019 to 2021 and future years will not be directly comparable to previously published income distributions. 

Revisions to the methodology for estimates from the financial year ending 2023 

Two methodological changes have been made for the latest publication. These are discussed below: 

1. the net impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children in low-income households

Changes have been made to the way we calculate the net impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children living in absolute low income. We now compare both the before and after child maintenance household incomes with the absolute low-income threshold, 60% of 2010/11 median household income (after child maintenance), to determine whether that household is in low income before and after maintenance. Previously, we compared the before child maintenance household income with a hypothetical 2010/11 median, from which we had removed child maintenance payments and receipts. This meant that children in separated families with no child maintenance arrangement or children in non-separated families could be put into absolute low income following child maintenance payments, despite not paying or receiving child maintenance themselves. This is no longer the case on the absolute measure. The change brings the interpretation of this headline measure in line with the expectation of users that it measures the number of children, at an individual level, who are kept out of poverty because their household receives maintenance offset by the number that are moved into poverty because their household pays maintenance. It also reflects the fact that any changes to current and future child maintenance payments would not affect their inclusion in 2010/11 incomes which underpin the absolute poverty line.

We will continue to calculate the relative low-income measure by comparing household incomes to separate before and after child maintenance income thresholds to enable us to consider the impacts of child maintenance payments both on separated parent households and the wider income distribution.

Estimates affected by this change are the net impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children in absolute low income shown in Tables 5a and 5b of the accompanying statistical tables. These estimates are not produced as part of a time series and revised figures will not be published for earlier years. The change has the effect of increasing the net number of children kept out of absolute low income. The change did not affect the rounded impacts of child maintenance on the absolute after housing costs measure although it did affect the rounded before housing costs measure, increasing the rounded estimate of children kept out of low income by 40,000, when tested on data for the financial year ending 2022.  Thus, the net impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children in absolute low income averaged over the financial years ending 2021 to 2023 and future years will not be directly comparable to previously estimated impacts.

2. Under-representation of non-resident parents

Further linking of CMS administrative data to FRS respondents increases the number of non-resident parents identified in the sample. While this slightly improves the representation of non-resident parents, in particular those with statutory arrangements, non-resident parents remain under-represented when compared to parents with care. This suggests that the FRS sample is not picking up as many non-resident parents with statutory arrangements in the sample as it does their parent with care counterparts.

Estimates affected by this change are:

• age and gender breakdowns of non-resident parents (Tables 3a and 3b);
• the net impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children in low-income households (Tables 5a and 5b); and
• the position of non-resident parent households in the Great Britain income distribution (Tables 6a, 6b, 7a, 7b, 8a, 8b, 9a, 9b and 10).

The impacts are, however, small. These estimates are not produced as part of a time series and revised figures will not be published for earlier years.

8. Data confidentiality and rounding

There is no risk of inferring a person’s identity from these statistics. Figures are rounded to the nearest 100,000, except those relating to the impact of child maintenance payments on the number of children in low-income households which are rounded to the nearest 20,000. Monetary amounts are rounded to the nearest hundred million pounds. Percentages are calculated using figures prior to rounding and are rounded to the nearest integer. Totals may not sum due to rounding.

9. Status of the statistics

In Spring 2023, the Chief Statistician for DWP led an internal review of all experimental official statistics produced by DWP. This is in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics. The review found that it was appropriate to remove the experimental label from this publication because it was concluded that the statistics are suitable and of public value. As of the publication covering the financial year ending 2023, these statistics are now classed as ‘official statistics’.

Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. 

We publish these statistics on an annual basis and will continue to explore expanding their scope to help to meet user needs where reliable estimates can be obtained.

10. Quality statement

These statistics are estimates. The methodology used to produce them and its limitations have been explained above. While developing the methodology, findings were compared against other data sources including the Understanding Society survey and CMS and CSA administrative databases to confirm their credibility.

The estimates are based primarily on data from the FRS. Information about the reliability of the FRS is provided in the FRS background information and methodology note. HBAI data is also used to create income-related estimates. Information about the reliability of the HBAI is provided in the HBAI quality and methodology report.

As discussed above, the FRS and HBAI data for the financial years ending 2021 and 2022 was affected by data collection challenges due to COVID-19. This has led to greater uncertainty in estimates and possible biases, which could not be fully addressed through changes to sample weighting. For this reason, we advise users to bear the potential impacts of COVID-19 in mind when interpreting and using the data, particularly when comparing data across years.

Where appropriate, the FRS data has been checked for accuracy against the DWP CMS and CSA administrative databases and adjusted accordingly (see above). Information about the reliability of CMS administrative data is provided in the Child Maintenance Service statistics Background information and methodology note. Information about the reliability of CSA administrative data is provided in the Child Support Agency Quarterly Summary Statistics Background Quality Report.

11. Feedback

We welcome feedback.

You can provide feedback on these statistics by emailing cm.analysis.research@dwp.gov.uk

12. Useful links

Statistical releases and data tables for these statistics.

Official statistics on the statutory child maintenance arrangements administered by the Child Maintenance Service.

Experimental statistics on the Child Support Agency’s 1993 and 2003 statutory child maintenance schemes and on Child Support Agency case closure.

More information about the Child Maintenance Service and Child Support Agency.

Experimental statistics on the child maintenance arrangements made by parents who contact Child Maintenance Options.

More information about the Family Resources Survey.

More information about the Households Below Average Income methodology.