To be AMAZED at this cms calculation?

[whatnowws]

Recently split from DS’s dad. He won’t communicate or see ds, so after several weeks I contacted cms. They are getting in touch with him but… the claim is for 730 a month?!? He earns almost 80k? How can this be right?

meanwhile, I’m earning 46k and paying 1,700 in nursery costs and all other costs for ds?

how on earth is that supposed to be fair?! This calculation is also assuming he continues not to see ds. If he wants him a night or more then costs reduce further… basically he can do what he wants and I’m expected to pick up the financial pieces no matter what.

Going by your calculation he eats more than 2 adults, a 4 yo and a teenager combined which is a bit unbelievable. If he's really so hungry that he can't survive off the same 3 square meals a day that everyone else in the family does and requires two extra meals daily I highly doubt he can eat £200 a month in beans, toast and scrambled eggs.

It's quite rare for children to be in wraparound care 5 days a week and a little unfair tbh, 8am-6pm Mon-Fri is a very long week for a primary school child and leaves little to no family time or time for extra-curricular activities or just down time.

So what do you suggest parents like OP do, when their "partner" has buggered off and she needs to work full time to be able to afford to keep a roof over her child's head? Magically retrain as a teacher? Take a massive drop in hours/salary to move into one of those gold dust term time/school hours only jobs?

I very much doubt any parent has a child with the desire to have to put them in wraparound care every day. But that is the reality for many.

Teenage boys are bottomless pits. My DH has two brothers and his mum always says it was nigh on impossible to fill them when they were all teenagers at home.

Make a request with your employer for flexible working, possibly to arrange some WFH in the evenings, or take a slight reduction in salary on a temporary basis in order to reduce working hours. We both planned our careers to fit around the kids (both the ours daughter and his daughter) and I can only speak for how we made it work, but I know most parents do make it work. I taught for several years and had to gather up the children for afterschool club before taking the others out to meet parents and there was never more than one or two children who went to afterschool club every single night, and they were always tired.

Please note, I am not justifying the behaviour of the deadbeat Dad in this situation, he should be sharing the load of parenting. He will come to regret it in a few years when the child wants nothing to do with him. I don't think paying more is really solving the problem though, children need time with both parents, not more money spent on childcare.

You're very privileged that you were able to plan your career around children. I am lucky that I can work flexibly. DH can't. He has to be on site 5 days a week. Flexible working would likely be declined because to be able to do his role effectively he needs to be there 5 days a week. He has to be available to be on call.

My sister and her husband both work in retail. They reduce their hours they don't get paid. They can't work from home. They don't have the necessary experience or skills to change roles, despite applying for many. They keep getting rejected. They're trying because they want to be able to be there for their kids when they come along. If one of them didn't work or worked less, they couldn't afford their mortgage.

You are speaking from a place of privilege and I don't think you realise it.

This argument is SO flawed. Why don’t you do consider you childcare cost were low/non existent because you were around to pick up the childcare etc. I think you’ll find having two people to raise kids with the flexibility to accommodate your own childcare is completely different to the Op who is a single mother, raising a child 100% of the time AND working full time. Take a moment to think about it 🙄

Not taking a career that you know isn't going to enable you to parent effectively isn't privilege, it's common sense. Your DH is privileged to have your unpaid labour available so he CAN be on site 5 days a week, if he didn't, he'd have to get another job. If you SIL and BIL don't have children and know retail won't work around children, they have to retrain.

Absolutely this. Until I had a mental breakdown I worked in care.
Oddly enough that's not a job you can do from home. The shifts are what they are. They aren't flexible. Working part time isn't an option with UC.
Luckily my mum provided childcare for which we agreed costs that I covered.

I suppose I could have changed careers, but that's not always that easy. And it's not like I set out to be a single parent.

Where are you based? Because where I grew up, there are very limited job options. You take what you can or you move away, so usually you lack family support. So that's a choice to make, stay by family or move for more flexible work. My sister stayed. I moved.

We didn't think we could have children. My DH is older than me and was in an established trade when we met. I pursued my career thinking I would never be a mother. DD was a surprise. Switching careers at the ages we are now (late 30s/mid 40s) would mean taking a drastic drop in salary. Which would mean we would also have to live in an area in which it would not be considered ideal to raise children. Our lifestyle would have to change, and we already love quite simply. We would be more stressed. There'd be a lot more financial strain.

My sister and her husband could retrain, before having children, you're absolutely right. But to do what, in an area where there's barely any employment? How long will that take, and will they then have missed their window? How will they pay their bills while they do so? And who will do their jobs when they quit? Because we still need those roles filling.

What about medical staff? Carers? Vets? Military? Should we have no parents in any of these fields because they can't work from home?

You are privileged. You'll just have to accept it. Not everyone has had the same choices as you.

Yes, there was a lot of financial strain when SD was younger, we lived in not an ideal area and we had to drastically change our lifestyle to make it work. We weren't able to move back to be close to family and have a better lifestyle until she was old enough not to need us close by.

And why is it better for a child to live with parents under financial strain, in an area they don't want to be in / feel safe in, away from family support than to do an hour in wraparound care?

You have to weigh up pros and cons. Sometimes it's unavoidable that some children are going to be in wraparound care (which is usually 2-3 hours) 5 nights a week, but the vast majority of parents find a solution which avoids that from happening. The children who are in afterschool club 5 nights a week until 6pm do suffer for it. They obviously suffer less than they would if the alternative was not having food on the table. I'm not going to analyse exactly what OP should do, and I don't have inside knowledge of what other parents do. I know what we did and that it wasn't easy, although that also had a lot to do with needing to stay near SD's Mum who lives mortgage free in an extremely expensive area so we were forced into the cheapest nearby place to try to survive on income from the roles we could get that enabled us to be there for SD. We've gone off on a massive tangent to the original question.

To summarise:

OP's ex sucks, but the amount of maintenance she gets should cover at least 50% of her child's essential costs once he's getting funded hours or in school.

Employers do not judge employees based on having an open case with the CMS, CMS is a perfectly valid way of resolving a dispute over CM with the other parent or simply ensuring everything is being done by the book.

CM is a very flawed system which attempts to balance the need for the NRP to be able to survive with the costs the RP bears in order to support their child, and sometimes gets it wrong, because it's a blunt tool used for a very complex job and each family has very specific circumstances.

We've gone off on a tangent because you suggested that it was unfair of parents to use wraparound care and that all parents should only do jobs that avoid it.

Not everyone can do what you did. And not everyone should.

This is a bizarre response. Maybe she can't afford to cut her hours or maybe she doesn't want to cut her hours. He left and presumably the childcare costs were the same before he decided to do so. Why aren't you suggesting he cut his hours to look after the child

And presumably they have a decent lifestyle and live in a house with a mortgage in line with their income and have a. He walked out on her and she's left with all the bills as well as childcare. It doesn't matter how much they earn or if it seems a lot to most people. It's her circumstances and her household income has just reduced by 2/3rds

So men have no responsibilities whatsoever. They aren't to be held accountable or have to think if they want a child or not? They just get to pump and run?

Perhaps if societal expectations of men changed and they were held more accountable there would be no need to put all responsibility on women

I understand your frustration OP but once your child is out of nursery it won't cost £730 a month to raise them so for the majority of their life that you receive CMS for them (14 of say 18 years) you will actually receive more than what he costs you

(Mother of 3 here of equally deadbeat father who walked away who received £350 total for 3 children with childcare bills alone of £2k)

OP implied that the cost of raising a child was much higher than I think it is (the word was "deluded") because full time wraparound care is £400. I was pointing out that a £400 wraparound bill is not the norm and that most parents would take steps to avoid that for multiple reasons aside from the cost.

There was financial strain? But you worked part time, SD’s mother was there and father. All pooling resources and childcare arrangements with at least 3 people. And then you come on here saying how the Op should manage. Give yourself a shake @MrsSunshine2b

I quoted you before.

It's quite rare for children to be in wraparound care 5 days a week and a little unfair tbh, 8am-6pm Mon-Fri is a very long week for a primary school child and leaves little to no family time or time for extra-curricular activities or just down time.

That suggests it's the wrong thing to do.

In another post of yours:

If you SIL and BIL don't have children and know retail won't work around children, they have to retrain

Have to retrain. Because otherwise they're doing wrong by their future family, by working in a job that's available to them.

You also basically ignored everything around careers that we as a society need (medical etc) where people have to be on site. You can only see your own circumstances, which is that you were able to work your working life around family life. That's also mine. But I'm able to see that not everyone can do that. I have friends who work from home but if they do so with their child at home after school they can't actually do their job. I know people in jobs where they would be fired if they tried to do that.

The world isn't as simple as "fit your career round your children". Life costs money. Not all jobs are flexible.

And I stand by the assertion that it's not ideal for children to spend 4 hours a day in wraparound care and parents should try to find a way to avoid that if possible.

Yes, some jobs have less flexibility than others and most parents find a solution to that- coupled parents have one parent working more flexibly, single parents change careers, enlist family support, or step into a lower paid role temporarily to make it work. No-one said that parenting was going to seamlessly fit into your existing lifestyle.

But not everyone can afford to change or move into lower paid roles. That's the point.

I stand by the fact it's not ideal to be under financial strain rather than utilise available childcare, even if that is paid for rather than family. It's not ideal to have parents who are miserable. I watched my dad do a job he hated just so my mum could be at home. He was exhausted and miserable as far as work went. And even though he shielded me from it as a child, I saw it. I felt it. And what I think is better for a child is to have happier, financially secure parents. Even if that means they both work less than ideal hours and childcare is necessary.

Again, I am very lucky I can work part time and flexibly. But if anything changed and I had to work more hours or less flexibly to maintain the life we want for our DD, I would do that and make sure she was in a setting she enjoyed. I wouldn't move her away from family she loves to live in a cheaper area with potentially a worse school, just so I could work less.

Perhaps Op should do what your DH did and get herself a boyfriend who will do the school pick ups her. Then she can come on here and lecture single parents how they shouldn’t put their kids in childcare as she manages because her boyfriend picks up the kids for her. @MrsSunshine2b

Maybe she should. Considering her partner has buggered off and isn't involved at all, maybe OP could look at the possibility of moving to be closer to family support if she has any, that could reduce the costs of childcare for her and also allow her DS to not be out of the house so much. Maybe there are absolutely no options other than full time wraparound care or destitution in OP's case. Nothing wrong with using childcare but when you're working so many hours that your child is out of the house 10 hours a day, I think it's worth thinking very hard about whether there are any other choices. If that's the least worst possible option you can find, then you do what you have to do. The point I was making is that it's not typical, even for single parents, to end up in that position.

As I said, it's irrelevant to the point- I'm very happy to argue with anyone who would like to set up a thread entitled, "Is 20 hours a week in wraparound care in the best interests of a child?" on that thread. In this case, ex is paying £730 per month so almost enough to cover the full time wraparound care twice over. Him paying more won't solve the real problem which is that he's not doing any of the practical work of parenting.