| Letter to
the Independent on the Child Support Act
14
April 2005 Dear
letters Editor, Your report (Child
support agency admits it tricked families into losing cash, 12 April) which shows Child Support
Agency staff's sabotage confirms many mothers’ experience that the
CSA’s first intention was never to collect maintenance to support
children, but to stop single mothers’ entitlement to welfare benefits.
From the start we always said that mothers on benefit would pay the
highest price for the Child Support Act. Women have the right to
refuse to name fathers if it would cause ‘harm or undue distress’ but
are never informed of this. The
penalty for refusing to authorise the CSA to pursue a father for
maintenance is now £22 a week, cut from single mothers’ already
inadequate Income Support. No
one ever asked how thousands of mothers and children are surviving this.
We know from our network it has pushed women into prostitution or
crimes of poverty to protect our families from dependence on violent and
uncaring men and CSA harassment. In light of this
scandalous report, the penalty against mothers must be scrapped now! Yours sincerely Kim Sparrow Michael Kalmanovitz Child
support agency admits it tricked families into losing cash
John Carvel, social affairs editor Guardian Staff
at the Child Support Agency have admitted a catalogue of deliberate
administrative blunders that caused hundreds of thousands of families to
lose income they were due from absent parents and the government. The
errors included knowingly entering false information on the CSA database,
deleting files for no good reason and avoiding contact with anxious
parents by transferring telephone calls to the answering machines of
absent colleagues. A
report giving first-hand accounts by staff of the ploys used to cope with
the CSA's administrative overload was commissioned by the Department for
Work and Pensions last year. It was posted last month in an obscure corner
of the department's website, without any attempt to draw attention to its
findings. The
report was discovered by the magazine Computer Weekly, which disclosed the
contents today. The
report cast doubt on ministers' decision to blame the CSA's failings
entirely on defects in a £456m computer system introduced two years ago. Researchers
from Bristol University discovered a more fundamental managerial malaise,
including lack of appropriate staff training and poor communication
between tiers of management, which kept the agency's top brass uninformed
about malpractice. Confidential
interviews with staff at one CSA business unit revealed that they were
instructed to "stockpile" simple cases so they could be
processed quickly when new rules on support entitlement came into force. Staff
were told this "would look good on their stats when the new system
went live". But
the tactic backfired when the introduction of the new system was
repeatedly delayed. As a result some cases that were stockpiled in 2002
have still not been processed. The
researchers said: "Members of staff told us they were entering false
information to fill in unknown details so they could get the system to
continue with the case. For example, one admitted to entering old employer
details, knowing a client had changed jobs, just to keep the case
active." Staff
at one business unit were "told to make up national insurance numbers
on their stats sheet [by managers] more interested in hitting their target
than actually getting the work done". One
staff focus group said staff deleted files if they did not know where they
should be sent. Other ploys included sending files to the in-trays of
people on long-term sick leave. The
magazine said the government was planning to further delay the
introduction of the new child support rules until next year at the
earliest, but the work and pensions secretary, Alan Johnson, had not yet
announced the postponement. The
delay could affect up to one million families due to benefit from simpler
rules and a £10-a-week child maintenance premium. In
January the Commons work and pensions committee urged the government to
consider axing the agency if its new computer system could not be made to
work. It said staff were battling with a backlog of 250,000 cases. Mr
Johnson said the government would consider "radical fall-back
proposals" if performance did not improve after changes at the
agency, where a new chief executive, Stephen Geraghty, has been appointed.
The
CSA said: "This report is based on research carried out early 2004.
Since then the service to clients has progressively improved following
action taken by the agency to improve levels of customer service and to
support our staff." However
it acknowledged there was "still some way to go before the agency is
delivering for all its clients the level of service they are entitled to
expect." Although
there was frustration, both staff and clients considered the new scheme to
be simpler and easier to understand. "Since this research was
undertaken last year a number of new software releases have been made and
there has been significant improvement. "We will not jeopardise cases where money is already flowing to children by moving them on to the new system until we are sure it is working properly."
A few home truths about domestic violence - factsheet from Women Against Rape website |