Official Report 732KB pdf
Our next item of business is to continue taking oral evidence for our inquiry into financial considerations when leaving an abusive relationship. I welcome Lynne O’Brien, chief officer for children and families with Aberlour; Erica Young, senior policy officer for social justice with Citizens Advice Scotland; and Kirsty McKechnie, early warning system project manager with the Child Poverty Action Group Scotland. Thank you all for joining us. Given that time is rather tight, we will go straight to questions.
Good morning. The first area that is of interest to the committee is about issues around public debt when people are leaving an abusive relationship. We know from the written submissions that Aberlour has carried out a range of work in that area, not least a pilot in Tayside. We are particularly interested in what is good practice and how we ensure consistent good practice in the way in which economic and financial abuse is taken into account when we pursue public debt. I will start with our witness from Aberlour, to get a sense of what you are doing on that.
Good morning. I am chief officer for children and families, so I oversee all Aberlour’s children’s services across Scotland. I have many years of experience of working with women and children who face domestic abuse.
On public debt, we have experience of women and children who, often through no fault of their own, have accrued debt from ex-partners and are then liable for that debt. One thing that surprised me when I came to Aberlour was how we collect debt from families in Scotland. I know that the committee has heard evidence on that previously, but we have an inhumane system in Scotland for collecting public debt from families. At a time when families are really vulnerable—when they are leaving abusive relationships—our systems and processes should be wrapping around families. Instead, families face issues with council tax debt, school meal debt and rent arrears. The debt collection practices in Scotland are very aggressive and proactive and further entrench and trap families in debt.
The Tayside project, which has been operational for three years, has shown evidence of how systems and processes can take a much more compassionate approach to families. We can provide early support to families such as financial and welfare support, but there is also the systems change aspect. We do not have to collect debt in a punitive way; we can take a systems approach and wrap around families.
When I was up in Perth recently, I heard stories about a family who were facing £30,000-worth of debt, which was 100 per cent avoidable. If we had contacted that family early and provided support, rather than sending them to a debt collection agency, they would not have had deductions from their universal credit and the debt would not have spiralled out of control. We can definitely approach debt in different ways.
We have also submitted evidence on deductions that are made from the household income of low-income families in Scotland. On average, £1,000 per year is coming out of the income of those families—again, that is 100 per cent avoidable.
The work in Tayside is definitely interesting. The challenge is that there is a patchy approach across the country, with different local authorities doing different things. From looking at the work that Aberlour is doing, I picked up that there is perhaps a need for a code of practice to codify the approach so that all public bodies are doing similar things and are looking at these issues in the same way.
Have you identified other areas of good practice through your work?
Yes. As I said, we have examples in Tayside, where a systemic approach is being taken to working with families that are experiencing debt. Rather than being punitive, it is about being supportive.
Some local authorities are taking a different approach to families. In a recent scenario, a woman had overcome significant substance abuse issues and she came out of a mother-and-child recovery house. She was facing rent arrears and was unable to move back to her home because she was fleeing domestic abuse; the rent arrears were preventing the family from moving into suitable accommodation. We were able to work with the local authority to get it to change its practice.
That is not happening across Scotland—the Tayside example is probably the best example of systemic change, but some local authorities are taking a very different approach. Given that we are signed up to the principles of “Equally Safe: Scotland’s Strategy for Preventing and Eradicating Violence Against Women and Girls”, we want to ensure that public debt is considered as part of that strategy.
I will broaden the question out to other witnesses, too. In your experience, do councils consider writing off council tax debt for women in particular who are leaving a financially abusive relationship, or are we not seeing enough progress on that at a council level? In addition, in your view, do we need bigger legislative change in order to make that provision?
Erica Young, do you want to comment from a Citizens Advice Scotland point of view?
We see inconsistent practices. Some local authorities are prepared to write off arrears in response to evidence, whereas others will pursue diligence, potentially resulting in the victim/survivor having to seek bankruptcy, which is not necessarily a good outcome for that individual.
We think that the most effective way to ensure consistent good practice is through a code of conduct, as has been mentioned. We think that some lessons can be learned from the private sector. Surviving Economic Abuse and UK Finance have worked together on a code of conduct. That code will, as it is rolled out, support victims to engage in conversations with providers; raise awareness of the impact of economic abuse; and achieve greater consistency in the support and help that financial institutions provide to victims/survivors.
Another key thing that we would like to see is an economic abuse evidence form. That would be modelled on the debt and mental health evidence form, which involves an interactive process with an authorised money adviser that provides information about a person’s situation to local authorities. That would facilitate more consistent practice with regard to writing off joint and several liability specifically.
Kirsty McKechnie, do you want to add anything?
No, I am quite happy to leave that with the experts.
Of course.
That has been a really helpful start to the session, and there is plenty for the committee to consider.
I now invite Jeremy Balfour in.
Good morning, and thank you all for coming along.
I understand that, in some circumstances, victims/survivors can be exempt from sanctions. How well do those exemptions work in practice? Can they be improved?
Erica, you look as though you want to come in.
I can start. Yes, there is clear guidance on when a break from conditionality requirements should be implemented, for a total of 26 weeks, where children are involved. However, that can be applied only once in every 12 months, so it does not account for the risk, which we know exists, of someone returning to the abuser multiple times. It also does not account for the amount of time that it takes to get back on your feet, stabilise your life and start rebuilding, which varies widely among individuals, so there should be a lot more flexibility around that. We also find that, particularly in the early stages, quite simply, the system is not designing in the needs of victims/survivors and it is not picking up problems at an early stage.
I will talk you through an example. This is a particularly egregious example, but it is not an uncommon one. I will call the victim/survivor Adele. Adele missed an appointment while she was being relocated on an emergency basis by Women’s Aid. She had evidence from Women’s Aid of the situation, but, nonetheless, the Department for Work and Pensions disagreed that she had a sufficiently good reason for missing the appointment—while she was being emergency relocated. She was also refused a request to attend another appointment at a job centre in her new local authority area, which prevented her from taking the required action to end the sanction. She felt humiliated and retraumatised and, of course, she was left destitute and reliant on crisis support. It took the citizens advice bureau 42 days to resolve the matter and to get the sanction lifted. Again, that sort of timeframe is not uncommon. The DWP really needs to bed in the process of taking the accounts of victims/survivors on trust by default and to embed more trauma-informed practice with regard to how conditionality operates on the ground.
Do the other two witnesses want to come in on that?
Yes, please. As Erica Young mentioned, there is guidance on when exemptions from sanctions or conditionality can be applied. In addition to that not being allowed more than once within a 12-month period, you must also not be living at the same address as the abuser and you must provide evidence from a person acting in an official capacity. These rules are really quite stringent. We know that work coaches have discretion and we hear anecdotally about some work coaches exercising that discretion and working with care. However, we also hear stories about where that is not the case. As Erica says, the DWP needs to move to a much more trauma-informed approach in relation to the exemptions from conditionality.
I will move on to split payments, which have been talked about since universal credit came into existence. I think that we are getting closer to the point where everyone will be transferred to UC. How high up your list of priorities for changes to UC are split payments? I appreciate that there is a lot about UC that you want to see changed, but do split payments make the top 10 or the top five, for example?
With universal credit, the principle of individual entitlement is so important. The thing that changed with universal credit was that all the benefits were rolled into one. Whereas families might have been able to split entitlements in the past, universal credit completely removed that. The effect of that became much more apparent during Covid, when people’s partners lost their jobs or were unable to work and realised that they had no access to an independent income. We agree that that is really, really important for people, particularly in cases of domestic abuse. At the moment, the system enables financial abuse. The difficulty is that, when you try to split universal credit, it is not actually as easy as it sounds in principle, so we appreciate that lots of questions need to be addressed before the payments can be split adequately.
I echo that. We recognise the fact that there are challenges to achieving this, but there is a precedent with Scottish choices concerning direct payments to landlords and fortnightly payments. If it is properly implemented, the policy can and will save lives. It will enable financial planning to leave a relationship in a way that simply is not possible at present. It will also enable financial independence. Although we can all appreciate that it is typical for households to pool income and resources, that ought to be done by choice for the particular household, to suit its needs. Universal credit does not allow for that sort of autonomy; it is simply a household payment and the household has no real control over how it manages that. At the moment, the system is putting women and victims/survivors in danger, so splitting payments is a high priority.
09:15
In the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, we included a statutory provision for split payments for benefits that are delivered in Scotland. As the committee has said previously, and as you just said, Kirsty, that is not as easy as it sounds. The Scottish Government is struggling to work out how to do that. Should we be concentrating on particular benefits that are delivered in Scotland that could be split? Do you know how much progress has been made on split payments?
I do not know anything about progress. I am aware that, for instance, the Scottish child payment can be particularly problematic where parents have shared custody of children and it is paid to only one parent.
I echo that. We also see problems with delays. There is a very good process in place for managing a transfer, but there can still be delays. Sometimes, those delays come at a very early stage that is not related to Social Security Scotland; they can result from people having to try to qualify for benefits such as universal credit and child benefit. In particular, child benefit is a source of delay, so there would be a limit to what could be achieved by splitting Scottish payments specifically.
At this point, I would circle back to the fund to leave pilot, which we would like to be rolled out nationally across all 32 local authorities and delivered by an agency with the relevant expertise, such as Scottish Women’s Aid, for consistency. That is where a lot of the focus could be, when it comes to what is delivered in Scotland.
Good morning. Erica Young mentioned financial planning to leave an abusive relationship. Earlier, we heard that, in order for discretion to be used to give someone an exemption from sanctions or conditionality, the victim/survivor must not be living in the same household as their former partner. Where a work coach identifies or suspects that abuse is going on, is there any mechanism in the universal credit system to make an application in private in advance and for decisions to be made in principle, so that a victim/survivor can see what their financial situation would look like if they decided to leave?
The system does not seem fit for purpose for someone who has to leave in a chaotic situation without any planning, because they then have to deal with all the inbuilt delays that come with universal credit in the first place. Has any consideration been given to that or has the DWP done any work on it? Whether it is Social Security Scotland or the DWP, should we start to do that?
There are two main issues in that regard. One is that the nature of household payments means that, where a work coach is concerned that financial or other types of abuse are happening, in order to make an alternative payment arrangement to split the universal credit award, the abuser is inevitably alerted, because the money is paid via a joint account, so there is no possible way to hide what is happening.
The DWP will assure advisers that a change of circumstances advance is available so that, when a victim leaves, an advance payment will be available to her on the basis of a change of circumstances. However, in essence, that still means having to borrow money, because that is what an advance is. At the time when a victim/survivor is leaving, potentially with absolutely nothing behind them, they might not even have their own bank account and they might be managing the hangover of debts that have been taken out in the context of economic coercion. That does not make for sustainable financial planning. We have victims/survivors phoning our help to claim service just to understand how claiming universal credit would work if they left.
In the context of a household where universal credit is not in place, it is the five-week wait that is the challenge for the victim/survivor. Again, their only recourse is to an advance payment. We quite often see victims/survivors having to have recourse to the Scottish welfare fund and similar funds to get through that initial period. Their ability to build up a buffer zone before leaving is terribly limited.
Other members will ask about those other aspects, so I do not want to step on their toes, but that is very helpful—thank you.
Good morning to the witnesses. I found that discussion about split payments helpful. In reading our Scottish Parliament information centre paper, I was struck by the small number of households involved—in 2024, it was 15 in Scotland and 324 in the UK overall. That is totally understandable, now that you have talked about the complexity that is involved.
I will stay on the subject of universal credit. In last week’s session, I asked the witnesses a similar question. As Erica Young just spoke about, an advance of universal credit up to 100 per cent can be given, and is obviously repayable in full. If the repayment advances remain part of the system that emerges from the UK Government review, should the case be made that, in all domestic abuse cases, advances should not be repayable? Would you be okay with that, Erica?
Yes, I would absolutely support that—it is essential. Evidently, our preferred option would be for the five-week wait to be eliminated. There is quite a straightforward way to achieve that, which would be to provide payments up front based on the indicative UC amount. That is quite technical, but it simply means making an advance calculation of what is likely to be payable at the first assessment period and providing that payment. If it then turns out that slightly more is paid out than what will be awarded in the first assessment period, that amount could be clawed back. It would be a much better system than an advance.
Failing that, we would absolutely look for write-offs of advance payments in the context of victims/survivors.
The two-child limit is causing major financial hardship. How common is it for families who are impacted by domestic abuse to be hit by the two-child policy?
I do not have data on that, but we know that the number of people at the DWP level who are claiming the non-consensual conception exception is incredibly low—it is vanishingly small. That, of course, is because that particular exception is abhorrent and it really does not design in the needs of victims/survivors.
We would like to see it phased out in Scotland, and we think that that could be done by not requiring women to have applied to the DWP for that exception in order to benefit from future Scotland-specific two-child limit mitigation payments. That would gradually, over time, phase it out completely in Scotland. Although some people in Scotland would still be in receipt of payments under that exception, in future, no woman in Scotland would have to apply for it.
I appreciate that there are other exemptions, and that that approach would capture all of them. Nonetheless, we think that it would be one of the best ways of phasing out that appalling policy and protecting victims/survivors in Scotland from having to go through that process.
Thank you.
Convener, in the interests of time, I will hand back to you, unless other witnesses in the room want to come in.
It is important to note that, although we absolutely agree with what Erica Young says on the two-child limit and its mitigation, there will be some circumstances in which parents will get universal credit only if they have applied for an exception. It would be far better, therefore, if the two-child limit was scrapped at source by the UK Government—that would scrap it completely and avoid the need for anybody to have to record their situation.
I support the views of my colleagues, who are a bit more expert in that field. Nonetheless, Aberlour supports the scrapping of the two-child limit as part of ending child poverty. We know that children in poverty who are affected by domestic abuse face further inequalities, so we would support ending the two-child limit.
I want to touch on other financial support, which was mentioned earlier. How effective and accessible are discretionary housing payments and the Scottish welfare fund in supporting people to try to establish a new home when they are leaving an abusive relationship?
Discretionary housing payments are a really good and supportive scheme, but they are not set up to help people who are leaving domestic abuse. You can get a discretionary housing payment only if you are already getting the housing element of universal credit or housing benefit, so people who are leaving domestic abuse who might not be getting those benefits already cannot get help through discretionary housing payments for rent in advance or for deposits to set up a new home. There is a bit of a hole in entitlement in that regard, because the Scottish welfare fund also prohibits grants being made for deposits and rents in advance. Only somebody who is moving from a situation in which they are already getting one of those benefits could benefit from a discretionary housing payment to help them to establish themselves in a new tenancy.
In addition, people are often asked to sign up to a new tenancy really quickly, particularly for housing association tenancies, for example. If there is a delay in moving in—for example, because you are waiting for a community care grant—the housing element of universal credit will not start until you have actually moved in. If you have a delay in receiving the Scottish welfare fund—the SPICe briefing says that the average time for applications is two weeks—you could be accruing two weeks-worth of rent arrears before you have even moved in. Because you were not getting the housing element of universal credit for that period, you might not be able to get help from the discretionary housing payment to cover that either. In that case, in effect, you are starting in debt.
Although those schemes can be helpful and supportive in certain circumstances, there is a bit of a gap in entitlement where the system does not support people to leave domestic abuse. That is why we were so keen to work on the fund to leave pilot with Scottish Women’s Aid and Engender.
I echo everything that Kirsty McKechnie said. I would add that, although there are some rent deposit guarantee schemes, the provision is patchy, because some local authorities provide them and some do not. Where they are available, they are often a good option, so it might be worth looking at whether that provision could be rolled out more consistently.
I also point out that support with housing costs for private renters, via reserved social security, has been really squeezed, due to a combination of cuts and freezes. Originally, local housing allowance rates were set at the 50th percentile of local rents; they are now set at the 30th percentile. After seven years of being frozen, that has been frozen again for the latest financial year. Admittedly, there was one year of inflationary uplift, but research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies just before that suggested that just one in 20 private lets are on the market at rental levels that would be supported fully by social security, so there is a significant shortfall. Where DHPs can meet those shortfalls, it is for short periods—usually six to eight weeks—which is not adequate time for a victim/survivor to get back on their feet and be able to pay the rent themselves.
Payments from the Scottish welfare fund are normally limited to three in any 12-month period, and a local authority does not have to consider an award if an application on the same grounds has been made in the past 28 days, which means that, if the abuser has been applying for the Scottish welfare fund while they were living with the victim/survivor, the ability of the victim/survivor to access an award can be compromised. We also see some delays, particularly with community care grants, but, overall, they are an absolute lifeline, particularly for victims/survivors who are facing homelessness.
What strikes me is that it is a very complicated system that women and children have to navigate. My colleagues are the technical experts, but Aberlour hears on a daily basis that women’s and children’s experience is that the system and the processes that they have to navigate are really complicated. As I said, at a time when they need support the most, it often just is not there or it is fragmented and complicated. The cost to our state is often higher if women and children have to go into homeless accommodation or into private rented accommodation at overinflated prices. We need to consider those issues and look at whether we can make small payments to families and get more money in their pockets when they need it most. That would offset the higher costs of placing families in homeless accommodation.
These guys on today’s panel are the technical experts, but the experts in the families that we support tell us on a daily basis just how hard it is and just how difficult it is. I would call for our systems and processes to be trauma informed but to uphold children’s rights at the same time.
09:30
That is helpful.
On that interesting point that you raised, what kinds of simplifications would you like to see to make things easier?
Do you mean with regard to the Scottish welfare fund?
Lynne O’Brien argued that women and children find it difficult to navigate the system, which is obviously creating difficulties, so what simplifications would you like to see to overcome the issue?
As I said, my colleagues are the experts with regard to the benefit entitlement aspect, but just having funds available for women to access would be really simple. We need things such as early financial advice at the time when women and children need it and specialist advice. We have heard about women and children being given wrong advice that sets them on a different pathway. Those are simplifications that would mean that we could get money into families’ pockets so that they would have more choices.
Does that mean having a special fund?
That is one thing that would definitely help, along with some of the simplifications that we can make in the benefits system. We need advisers and assessors who are much more trauma informed. We need to look at the things that we can do right now. We need to create a pathway in Scotland that, as I said, upholds the principles of the equally safe strategy, because that is what we have signed up for and that is our strategy and yet our systems do not do that—they do not help women and children to leave domestic abuse in a safe way. Women and children who face the greatest inequalities are most affected and, therefore, less likely to be equally safe. When we are looking at legislation and changes to the benefits system, we must do human rights and children’s rights impact assessments and look at what that actually means for our families in Scotland.
The fund to leave pilot was intended to help people to navigate the complexities of the system. It was financial support to give them the breathing space to access the support that they need and to navigate the complexities of the system, which is why we thought that it was so important in the first place.
However, that raises an interesting point about whether those who are most in need require better advice and support or whether we need to find an additional pot of money that is specific to their types of needs, because those are two different things.
The additional pot of money is needed to help people to access the advice that they need. People need to be able to plan to leave but, although they could get advice, because of the way that things such as universal credit are set up, at the moment, the social security system is not responsive enough to help them to leave immediately, and someone might well be in a situation that means that they need to leave very quickly. We need something that is responsive enough to help people who are in that situation straight away, while they navigate all the places that they might need to apply for money from, such as universal credit, the Scottish welfare fund and discretionary housing payments. There are so many different sources of support that it is not possible to apply for all those things in one snap moment.
Our advisers help victims/survivors to navigate an incredibly fragmented and complex system every day. On what is needed, access to advice is absolutely indispensable, but a genuine immediate safety net that transcends all that complexity would signal a very deep respect for victims/survivors. It would signal that we are listening to them and that we are advocates and allies. As well as providing practical help, it would provide the deep psychological reassurance that comes from knowing that there is a cushion available to get yourself restarted in order to have a safe future-facing exit from that relationship.
There is a theme coming out of all this about a victim/survivor needing certainty in advance of taking the massive decision to get out of an abusive relationship. For some, it will be a crisis moment—very specific circumstances—that will mean that they have to flee. For many, from what the committee has heard, the decision is made over time as they reach certainty and clarity. What has come up, however, is that there is a lack of support and a lack of a pathway for everyone.
I want to explore whether there is enough money in the system already. If the DWP provided certainty up front and with privacy to the victim/survivor so that they knew the amount of cash that they would get if they left and knew that that would not be an advance, and if discretionary housing payments and the Scottish welfare fund did the same, would we start to get to a quantum of cash in a system—money that the victim/survivor might eventually get anyway but in a fragmented way over time and with great uncertainty—that would mean that they could do something meaningful and in a more dignified way in order to get out of an abusive relationship?
We need a bit of both. We need to design victims/survivors needs into the universal credit system and, potentially, we need a bit more discretion in relation to the Scottish welfare fund and a bit of expansion of discretionary housing payments. However, you would still be looking at a number of different agencies and at complexity. The beauty of the fund to leave is that it transcends all that; it is very clear. It would also avoid a lot of downstream costs. Potentially, there would be a lot less need for recourse to the Scottish welfare fund, and discretionary housing payments in particular, if the fund to leave was there in combination with some basic design modifications to universal credit.
We need both.
We will move on to the matter of people who are subject to immigration control in the context of a domestic abuse setting. What can the Scottish Government do to maximise support for those people?
First, I want to note that we are really pleased that the Scottish welfare fund guidance has been amended to make it clearer, in relation to immigration status, who can get support from the fund. That was a big step forward.
Again, we come back to the point about a permanent fund to leave. Many people who are leaving domestic abuse are unable to access benefits, which makes the decision to leave so much harder, because, without financial support, where are you going to go and what are you going to do? The fund to leave pilot was not on the list of public funds, which meant that it was available to people—it was not restricted. That helps people with the initial issue of where they are going to establish themselves and where they are going to access help, particularly when it is going to be so much harder to access help.
We would like to see specific guidance developed for local authorities on supporting people who are subject to immigration control, have no recourse to public funds and are escaping domestic abuse. The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities has developed guidance, but it does not meet the specific needs of people who are leaving domestic abuse. The guidance could incorporate looking at how we can make the most of payments through things such as section 22 of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 and section 12 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 for people who do not have access to social security in the traditional sense but who require financial support.
That is helpful.
I echo everything that Kirsty McKechnie said and I add that, in any guidance, it would be really useful if there was more awareness at local authority level of the Home Office’s migrant victims of domestic abuse concession. I speak from personal experience from my adviser days when I say that it is enormously helpful—it is life-saving. It really does help women to escape, because, even though it is for just a three-month period, it gives access to public funds for that short time for victims/survivors who do not ordinarily have recourse to public funds. I am sure that local authorities are well aware of the concession, but, potentially, there could be more clarity and joined-up use of it when a victim/survivor presents in distress at a local authority, so that people are aware that that is available.
That is helpful.
We support that. We are increasingly seeing families in destitution, so, given that there are already some solutions available to us, we need to ensure that our local authority colleagues know how to take those forward.
As you know, in our submission, Aberlour shared that, since 2023, we have given £3.3 million through our urgent assistance fund to families who need financial support. One in five of those families has experienced domestic abuse, but we are seeing a rise in families who have no recourse to public funds, so we support the calls from our colleagues.
Good morning. We have spoken a lot this morning about the need to get more money into families’ hands. Lynne O’Brien, I think that it was you who said that. The Child Maintenance Service was created to do just that, but how effective is it in the context of domestic abuse? I will come to you, Lynne, since I used your words.
Again, my colleagues will be much more expert in the technicalities of child maintenance, but we have evidence through the experience of our families of child maintenance payments being stopped or used as a coercive control mechanism. We recently heard from a family where that was the case, and the woman was then forced into other sources of debt to survive. That story is not unique—there are many stories like that. We need to ensure that Scottish maintenance payments effectively uphold the rights of women and children and that women are not put at further risk during the process—we have heard from women that that is the case. I will hand over to my colleagues who know more about the technical aspects, but that is definitely an area where we want to see change.
Erica Young, how effective is the Child Maintenance Service?
Strangely enough, we advise more non-resident parents than resident parents, which is interesting. However, we see a deep reluctance on the part of victims/survivors to go anywhere near claiming child maintenance. You can understand that, of course, very often, there is no contact between the former partner and the victim/survivor. That is for very, very, very good reasons, so we see a deep reluctance to claim child maintenance, and people feel unable to pursue child maintenance through the service, or in any other way, for that matter.
When a child maintenance payment arrangement is up and running, victims/survivors face challenges, such as a long lag between income changes and reviews. Often, someone is aware that the ex-partner is now earning an awful lot of money, but the level of maintenance that is paid can take quite a long time to change, because there is a 25 per cent income change threshold for an early review to kick in.
We also see a lot of difficulty with regard to evidencing cash-in-hand earnings. Victims/survivors are aware that the ex-partner is earning a lot through cash-in-hand work, but that is not reflected in the level of maintenance that is paid. The final challenge that we see is that, in some cases, when child maintenance is received, it can tip women over an income threshold that means that they no longer qualify for a minimal asset process bankruptcy. They then have to go into a full bankruptcy process and pay a contribution, which is a particular challenge for victims/survivors who have been left with a lot of overhanging debts from the relationship.
Erica Young, you have made a list of things that have to change. How should the Child Maintenance Service go about making those changes? Do some of them require legislation?
If we are frank, a lot of it is about communication and arming victims/survivors with the tools to navigate the Child Maintenance Service system. I am part of a working group on that, which includes work on building a toolkit. The toolkit, to be fair, is for both resident and non-resident parents, but we know that, in the case of lone parents, there is disproportionately a background of economic and other forms of domestic abuse. Again, it is about having more trauma-informed awareness, particularly about the number of lone parents who are coming through the service. It is all about the level of communication and awareness of the potential background when a victim/survivor approaches the service.
09:45
Kirsty McKechnie, I ask you the same question about the effectiveness of the Child Maintenance Service and what needs to change.
We refer the committee to the One Parent Families Scotland report, “Transforming Child Maintenance”, from September 2024, which said that the CMS was ill-equipped, despite improvement, to support families who had experienced domestic abuse. In one of its reports, Gingerbread UK commented that 45 per cent of parents who had experienced domestic abuse and who were using the Child Maintenance Service found that using the service led to an increase in the abusive behaviour. That demonstrates that the service is not working in the interests of families who are experiencing domestic abuse.
We support One Parent Families Scotland and Gingerbread in their calls for a review of the Child Maintenance Service, but we put much more focus on the reduction of child poverty for lone parents and on removing the onus from parents to almost administer the process themselves, particularly in the case of domestic abuse victims/survivors and women.
On your point about having to manage the process yourself, the DWP has just announced a consultation. If I understand correctly, there is a proposal to take the payments in-house, so that the parent without care would pay the maintenance money directly to the CMS, which would then pay it to the other parent. How effective would that be, given the issues that you raised?
That would depend on how certain issues were dealt with. For example, at the moment, the parent with care has to initiate a lot of the claim and pursue it. It would also depend on whether the DWP would guarantee the payments and how much enforcement it would be willing to carry out.
I absolutely agree with that. As part of the group that is working on the toolkit, we certainly support the call for a review of how the service works overall and for better support. To be fair, that applies across the board, because we need a system that potentially works better for all parties, including paying parents.
In the case of a disagreement between parents about the level of child support that should be paid, there is a whole process, which the CMS has highlighted and which involves mandatory reconsideration, appeals and a complaints process. What is the average timescale for the process and how satisfied are people with it, at the end of the day?
It is fairly typical for challenge processes to take 12 to 18 months, although that can also depend entirely on the level of co-operation from the individuals who are involved, which obviously varies a lot.
I do not think that we want to go back to the system that we had before this, where people went to the sheriff court to deal with the whole process. Can the issue be solved by fundamental change, or do we need to take the time to start again and look at a completely different model of delivering the service?
A lot of what is needed involves giving victims/survivors more control and autonomy, as opposed to a complete and radical process of removing the system. We all know that the ideal arrangement would be for parents to have amicable agreements—but the world is as it is. However, there are issues such as the fact that the charging system can be abused, so we need to look at such things in the basic operation of the system, as opposed to necessarily needing to radically overhaul it.
I go back to the point about equipping parents with the information that they need to effectively navigate the system and equipping the Child Maintenance Service with the tools that it needs to properly support victims/survivors and, potentially, to support them to resolve disputes more effectively. We know that solicitors have to handle the issue every day, and there is potentially a lot of learning out there and a lot of co-production that could be done to generally improve the operation of the service, as opposed to radically overhauling it.
We would refer the committee to One Parent Families Scotland’s and Gingerbread’s calls for how the system should be reviewed. They have done a lot of work with parents and they have the expertise, so I would rather refer you to them.
That concludes our questions. Thank you very much for joining us and for your excellent written submissions.
We will have a short suspension to allow for a change of witnesses.
09:50 Meeting suspended.