Suchergebnisse

Setting out the child maintenance obligations for separated families has been both a contentious and highly dynamic policy area in the UK. Since 1991 policy has been continually amended by three successive governments who have all searched for a solution to the problem of ensuring that non-resident parents make regular cash payments of child maintenance to support their children (where they can afford to do so). The UK serves as a very interesting case study in its own right as it provides a considerable amount of evidence as well as important policy lessons for other countries which might want to embark on radical change (such as the Netherlands – see Curry-Sumner this volume). Simultaneously, it is a unique policy within the UK as it is, arguably, situated awkwardly on the fringes of both the family law system and the social security system. Therein lies the tension: the boundary between public and private responsibility. Successive governments have attempted to rebalance these private and public responsibilities for supporting children in separated/lone parent families. Currently, in the latest policy formulation, the UK appears to have decoupled the private obligations of child maintenance from the public social security system (which provides means-tested social assistance benefits). This paper discusses these developments and provides new research evidence on the amounts of maintenance expected under the latest policy proposals via the use of vignette techniques.

Using the UK Families and Children Study (FACS) (2008-09 wave), this paper assesses the contribution made by child maintenance to the income packages of lone mothers and whether it helps to lift them out of poverty. Results show that, despite reforms implemented in October 2008 which allowed parents on means-tested benefits to keep up to £20 per week of child maintenance, the effect on poverty is disappointing. The median amount of payments remains low and only a minority of lone mothers report receiving any money. This raises concerns about the UK Coalition government's latest proposals to introduce charges for using the statutory child maintenance scheme.

Abstract The Labour government aims to increase the lone parent employment rate to 70 per cent by 2010. To achieve this aim, it has introduced a state subsidy for childcare in the form of the childcare element of the Working Tax Credit. So far this has been limited to formal childcare despite evidence that lone parents are more likely to use informal childcare. This article investigates the potential of a state subsidy to be extended to support informal childcare. Utilizing evidence from a study of 78 qualitative in‐depth interviews with lone parents, it explores preferences for informal care and the way that informal care is negotiated. On the one hand, we found that some lone parents held deeply embedded preferences for informal childcare based on trust, commitment, shared understandings and children's happiness. Thus it can be concluded that it is important for the government to support informal as well as formal care. On the other, we found that the way lone parents actually negotiated informal childcare involved complex notions of obligation, duty and reciprocity, suggesting that a subsidy could potentially intrude upon complex private family relationships. However, the evidence suggests that care was negotiated differently depending on whether it was provided by a grandparent or other family and friends, with lone parents tending to favour paying for childcare provided by other family and friends than grandparents. This has implications for a state subsidy, which needs further investigation.

Children's living arrangements have become increasingly complex over the last decades, with more children born to parents who do not live together and, even among those born to parents who do live together, increasing numbers are experiencing their parents separating and one or both re-partnering. These changes raise questions about who has financial responsibility for the children. In this article we conceptualise how different child maintenance schemes might deal with six common family transitions, focusing on the extent to which responsibilities are organised according to biology or residence. We then investigate the child maintenance policies in place in 12 countries, and use the results to categorise countries into five child maintenance schemes. Finally, we compare the child maintenance scheme with the level of family complexity in each country to see if countries with the highest levels of complexity tend to organise responsibility differently.

The economic vulnerability of children in lone-parent families has drawn attention to child support policy. After 13 years of constant policy changes the child support system remains highly problematic and is currently undergoing an independent review. Given this, it is timely to question whether child support payments (from all types of agreements, not just Child Support Agency assessments) are actually helping lone-mother families. Or are most low-income mothers connected to men who have little capacity to pay, so that child support actually helps only moderate-income families? This article uses data from the UK Families and Children Study to examine the receipt of child support by lone mothers across the income distribution. It examines the amounts of child support received and the contribution it makes to total income packages across two major groupings: lone-mother quintile groups and poverty groups. We find that lone mothers who are already relatively better off (compared with other lone mothers in the survey) are more likely to receive child support. However, lone mothers who receive child support tend to receive similar median amounts, regardless of their income levels. Moreover, child support is a more important part of the income package for lone mothers with low incomes than for those with higher incomes.

This paper assesses the contribution that child support makes to Australian lone mothers' income packages and the proportion lifted out of poverty as a result. Using the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) dataset, we compare the results to a study conducted in the UK. Child support payments were more likely to be received in Australia and, when received, payments reduced lone mothers' poverty rate by 21 per cent, a greater extent than in the UK. These findings provide important insights for Australia and the UK where debates continue about the configuration of the system and enforcement mechanisms.

The aims of this special issue were twofold: to provide international research evidence of child maintenance schemes in five countries and to produce a comparative analysis of that research, to show how child maintenance outcomes differ across countries. The research data were collected using a vignette technique. This set up two fictional families, specifying sets of characteristics in order to explore how child maintenance schemes deal with key factors. Decision processes and payment outcomes are explored for applicants who are, for example, lone parent families on low incomes, divorcing families on middle incomes or reconstituted cohabiting families where a new child is born to the non-resident parent; the effects of changes in employment status and shared care arrangements are also considered. This final paper provides a comparative analysis of the vignettes to show how child maintenance outcomes differ across countries, and summarises the key themes that emerge from the individual country papers. Ultimately, the comparative analysis demonstrates that we have only scratched the surface in understanding similarities and differences internationally across child maintenance schemes. This is partly because of the complex interaction between child maintenance schemes and social security systems, which is not always transparent.

Increasingly, parents in separated families equally share care of their children post-separation. In this article we extend a well-known family policy model to generate hypotheses about the level of child support to be paid by separated parents when children live primarily with their mother ('sole custody') in contrast to when children spend equal time with both parents ('shared care'). We test these hypotheses with data collected from thirteen countries. In sole custody cases, countries with an earner-carer policy model do have lower child support expectations than countries with a traditional family policy model or a market-oriented model, as predicted. Countries with a traditional family policy model do have the highest orders in the shared case, as predicted. However, there is as much variation within models as there is between, suggesting new analytic frameworks for considering child support in family policy need to be developed.

Recent social trends and policy developments have called into question the divide between the provision of income support and social care services. This book examines this in light of key trends.The book presents new evidence on the links between cash - whether from earnings from paid work, social security benefits, and payments for disabled people and carers - and social disadvantage, care and disability. It presents theoretical perspectives on the need for and provision of care, which some commentators have described as a 'new social risk' and offers new insights into traditional forms of risk, such as poverty, disability, access to credit and money management.It provides an analysis of childcare and informal support for sick, disabled or elderly people in the context of increasing female labour market participation and the introduction of cash allowances to pay for care and posits a new look at both disabled people and older people in their roles as active citizens, whose views and experiences should help shape both policy and practice.Cash and care is essential reading for students, lecturers and researchers in social policy, applied social science, social work, and health and social care