Months ago I was sent a form from CSA to get child maintenance off my partner, whom I'd left because of domestic violence, and they said if I didn't give the info they wanted my Income Support could be affected, but in some circumstances you could opt out. I wrote to then to say I wished to opt out because of domestic violence. Heard nothing for months so assumed tha was fine.
Then I had a woman from DSS do a house visit to interview me about this and take a statement from me so they could establish whetehr I had good cause to opt out or not.
Ok, its my fault. Women didnt come til really late in the day, children had driven me mad all day and just wanted to get them out for a walk, by the time she got here I wanted to get rid of her asap so I could get some work done as they had finally gone to sleep. Also she had an uncanny resemblance to ex partners aunt so I didn't feel comfortable talking to her. Its difficult to talk about what he's done to me anyway but especially to her.
However, she did say they should accept it as good cause but she didn't make the decision. she said if they didn't accept it they would write and send me another form and ask me for his details again and if I didn't co-operate I would lose 20% benefit.
They didn't do this, they just wrote to say my money was beinfg reduced. I rang up DSS, they said it was because they hadn't accepted my good cause for opting out but hadn't said why and told me from next week I will just get £9 a week, which is 40% less not 20 probably because there are two children.
However,