Hello
As a part of our campaign with Gingerbread and the Good Law Project to Fix the CMS, we wanted to flag up that the National Audit Office is asking CMS users to fill in this consultation about their experiences.
The NAO is conducting a 'value for money' review of the CMS to find out whether it's meeting its objectives and providing good service, so please do fill in the consultation if you're a CMS user.
[POST EDITED BY MNHQ TO ADD: The NAO has been in touch with the following:
"Thank you also to those who have pointed out that the options we have provided for parents to explain their involvement with the Child Maintenance Service are not clear. Please accept our apologies. In particular, people have pointed out that respondents cannot identify as being entitled to child maintenance but not receiving it, or identify as a parent who is obliged to pay child maintenance but isn’t."
"If you should be receiving child maintenance but are not, please select the option of being ‘A person with main care responsibilities (receiving child maintenance)’. You will be able to tell us later in the survey that you are not receiving the maintenance you are entitled to."
"If you are a parent who is supposed to be paying child maintenance but are not, please select the option of being ‘A person without main care responsibilities (paying child maintenance)’. You will be able to tell us later in the consultation that you are not paying the child maintenance you owe."
"We will also read and use contributions from parents that have already used the “other” category."
"We can’t make changes to the consultation itself, because that would make it difficult to interpret the results we have collected so far. However, we have added additional help text to the survey to make it clearer."]
In addition, Gingerbread have asked whether any CMS users have recent experience of the CMS writing off large sums owed by non-resident parents. If that's happened to you in the last few months we'd like to hear about it.
Thanks
MNHQ
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