Improving parents’ journey accessing child maintenance advice and information.

As part of the Transforming Child Maintenance Partnership with One Parent Families Scotland (OPFS) and the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR), Fife Gingerbread had an aim to develop new approaches to supporting parents to navigate their child maintenance journeys while also building the capacity of front line financial inclusion practitioners to embed child maintenance in conversations.

I’ve written a few blogs about the test and demonstration journey over the past three years but there was one emerging theme that really stuck out. One, that we had the capacity to change, to improve the experiences for parents - Access to accessible Information.

In the first two years of the project, Fife Gingerbread received 167 referrals and with the help of Poverty Alliance, evaluating the project, they organised the types of support required into levels.  Level 1 – Primary, where parents required basic child maintenance advice to then independently continue their journey. Level 2 – Intermediate, short-term support to understand correspondence and Child Maintenance Service (CMS) processes and Level 3 – Complex Casework, long-term support including domestic abuse, significant unpaid child maintenance and navigating appeals processes including child maintenance tribunals.

70% of the referrals received were for Level 1 advice so we began to look deeper into why  this support was needed for such a large government system.  Parents fed back that the current information available felt complicated, not easily accessible, full of jargon, and that they could not relate it to what it would mean for their family.

To put it into perspective, in one day, the project coordinator sent 7 emails to parents with the exact same information on how to report income changes on the online portal.  I googled the same question, and well over 20 websites came up, all of which gave information on what parents must report. There was limited information on how to report an income change, most said it can be done by calling the Child Maintenance Service, which it can, but none explained that a parent could do this online and how to. The links also used different languages for reporting changes, like ‘variations explained’, ‘varying Child Maintenance’. Some spoke about ‘appealing decisions’, which is different from a parent just reporting a new change. Confusing right?

I also deliver training throughout Scotland, and feedback from practitioners included:

• Not confident in giving advice

• Unsure of reputable links to signpost for information

This became an area we knew we could improve for parents, but also give practitioners something they felt confident in signposting to and using with parents accessing primary support.

So we created a working group of key organisations and, most importantly, lived experience to look at developing an accessible child maintenance information toolkit for parents. Led by Fife Gingerbread, the working group had both Receiving and Paying Parents who were joined by Citizens Advice Scotland, One Parent Families Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid, and the DWP.

The group met monthly to discuss key areas of information parents looked for when accessing support and how this could be presented. After 7 meetings and a lot of information gathering, the project Coordinator began turning the information into a website.  It was important that the website is:

• Aimed at both Paying and Receiving Parents

• Accessible

• Easy to navigate

• Has ‘good to know’ information that’s relatable to real life

• Explains complex language where needed

• Has information on domestic abuse

• Includes information for children and young people

• Signpost to further support where needed.

With help and support from web developers Dropkick Marketing building the basic website layout, and Simplicity helping re-code a whole page to ensure it supports all formats of information required, Child Maintenance Explained was developed. 

It’s been a labor of love, inputting 9 areas of information, getting feedback, doing updates, getting more feedback, doing more updates ,but it’s finally launching as part of the National Child Maintenance Support Service , a partnership with One Parent Families Scotland and Fife Gingerbread.

This is the first stage of the website, though we aim, as the national service develops, as will the Child Maintenance Explained website. We hope that the website forms part of a route of advice and support for child maintenance, with caseworkers available for more complex casework where needed.