Recommendation 2

The Department has displayed insufficient curiosity around the needs of some of the most vulnerable separated families and their children. Take-up of the Department’s CMS scheme is substantially lower than it expected. An estimated 18% of separated families used the CMS scheme in 2019–20, compared to an expected 33%. As a result, there may be around 350,000 parents with caring responsibilities who do not have a child maintenance arrangement but would like one. The Department’s research shows that the lowest-income households are most likely to have no form of child maintenance arrangement. Some 39% of surveyed separated parents who were either not working or were economically inactive had no child maintenance arrangements in place, compared with only 21% of those who were working. Some ethnic groups, including Black parents, also appear less likely to use the statutory scheme but the Department has no plans to look into why this 6 Child Maintenance is the case. The Department’s customer satisfaction survey for the scheme excludes non-English speakers, meaning the views and experiences of this group are not represented. We welcome the Department’s commitment to raising awareness of its CMS scheme and other services, but we are disappointed that this had not happened sooner and are not convinced that its current approach focuses enough on why take- up is lower amongst specific groups. Recommendation: The Department should: • within one year, develop a clear action plan to assess, tackle and monitor the ‘take-up gap’ between the number of separated parents that would benefit from using its statutory CMS scheme (and other relevant support services) and those that actually use them; and • to support this, undertake more inclusive research to understand its customers and users of its service. It should ensure people who do not communicate in English are included in its research and establish why under-represented groups, such as some minority ethnic groups, seem less like