It is amazing how much more expensive children become as they get older. As
babies, my children didn’t seem very expensive. Cots, prams and highchairs
could all be borrowed from friends; nappies were my only real expense as the
children both looked so sweet in clothes that their older cousins had passed
on to them; and they had such birdlike appetites that what they ate didn’t
really affect my food bills.
But now, aged 4 and 7, and having started them at a local primary school, I am
noticing that the cost of bringing them up is increasing at an alarming
rate. As well as two sets of uniforms, there are also the winter coats, bike
helmets, bike lights, violin lessons, ballet lessons, karate lessons, school
dinners . . . the list seems to be endless, and this autumn I have felt as
if I have not been able to turn around without signing another cheque for
about £79 on something that the children really need. I am not lavish and
they are not spoilt, but I want them to have the sort of things that I and
their father grew up with such as music lessons.
So last month, frustrated by three years of failing to persuade my exhusband
Joe, to contribute in some way to his children’s upbringing, and feeling
slightly anxious about these escalating costs, I called the Child Support
Agency (CSA). They were very supportive, and quickly ascertained how much he
was earning from his part-time work. Since we split up three years ago, Joe
has never paid for anything for the children, who live with me but spend
every other weekend and some of the holidays with him.
Joe’s parents are very committed, loving grandparents, and they have always
bought the children their shoes, but otherwise the entire burden of
financial responsibility for the children has come down to me. I work as a
freelance journalist, and like a lot of mothers am adept at running straight
from work into watching my son reading in assembly. Juggle? I can do it in
my sleep.
So after three years of accepting this responsibility alone, I felt almost
excited at the prospect that we might be about to share it more equally,
because the CSA was set up to ensure that nonresident parents should
contribute financially to their children’s upbringing.
They called me last week to tell me that, based on his earnings, Joe is
obliged to contribute £5 a week to the children. I was making tea for the
children when they called, so instead of crying, I just had to laugh.
That pathetic, insulting figure of £5 enshrines all of the failings of this
shambolic system. Indeed, a report earlier this year for the Public Accounts
Committee (the parliamentary select committee which checks to see that
government expenditure is effective and honest) claimed the CSA will have
cost more than £850m when it is replaced by the new Child Maintenance and
Enforcement Commission (CMEC) in 2008. The report went on to maintain that
just 2% of what nonresident parents – and let’s face it, that’s largely
fathers – owe to their children has been collected by the CSA, and 60% of
money owed to resident parents is now “uncollectable”.
This is a system that has cost the taxpayer a fortune: the Department for Work
and Pensions paid £91m for advice on reforms between 2001 and 2005, but only
a third of that money can be accounted for. Bizarrely, despite these
manifest failings, CSA staff have been paid more than £25m in bonuses over
the past five years, even though there is a backlog of 240,000 cases and
more than £3.5 billion in uncollected debts on its books.
Two years ago, during his stint as work and pensions secretary, David Blunkett
described the CSA as a “shambles”. And Edward Leigh, the chairman of the
Public Accounts Committee, earlier this year described the reform of the CSA
as being “one of the greatest public administration disasters of recent
times”.
It was therefore with a weight of expectation on her shoulders that Janet
Paraskeva, the former chief executive of the Law Society and currently the
first civil service commissioner, was last week appointed chairwoman of the
CMEC. A Jewish lesbian bringing up two children with her lover, Paraskeva is
not expected to be sympathetic towards fathers who fail to pay up. But I am
not sure that this is anything but rhetoric, and anyway, would I really want
to send the father of my children to prison over this? It would be damaging
for his children, so of course I wouldn’t.
And a lingering spectre of jail does not, anyway, really help those who this
issue is really about, namely the children, who seem to have been forgotten
in this increasingly ugly and undignified gender war; and since that Fathers
for Justice campaigner climbed on to Buckingham Palace, it has been war.
Sometimes I feel like screaming, “I can’t cope with paying for everything on
my own” but I know that this isn’t true, because if I don’t cope, then who
will? I don’t have an option but to cope, and sign another cheque for my
daughter’s school trip or buy a new winter coat for my son when he grows out
of his old one.
I am extremely independent now, but it’s a role that has been forced on to me.
I am not going to stop Joe from seeing the children because this is
destructive for them, but it just seems so unfair that he can simply shrug
his shoulders and walk away from paying for them, simply due to the fact
that I am willing and able to work hard enough to support them on my own,
and he refuses to contribute.
But what if I could not support them? What if I was living on benefits, or a
very low income, as is the case for millions of single mothers? Would my
children end up on the social care register, due to the failings of the CSA,
which allows men such as Joe simply to negate all responsibility?
“When Ellie was small, I was completely broke. We lived on my credit card and
I couldn’t have bought her Christmas presents or paid for new clothes
without it,” says Sarah Kay, a marketing manager and single mother to her
10-year-old daughter. “Her dad claimed not to have any money. The CSA could
not make him contribute anything towards her upbringing, and quite apart
from the financial burden, it had a very bad effect on me emotionally as the
resident parent. I felt as if he had disowned Ellie.
“I was devastated when they told me that they couldn’t make him contribute to
her because I had had faith in the system, but it completely failed my
daughter. It was as if he had got away with it, and there was nothing that
anyone could do about it.”
I don’t really feel angry with the CSA but there is no doubting the fact that
it has spectacularly failed to make men such as Joe contribute to their
children. Joe comes from a stable, hard-working family, and is bright and
able. There is, however, absolutely nothing that I can do to make him
contribute more to our children’s upbringing, and he knows it.
The CSA gave me the option of appealing against its decision, but they also
warned me that it would be hard to prove exactly what Joe is earning. I
don’t want to pursue a lengthy, acrimonious case that, based on past
performance of the CSA, is almost certainly destined to end in failure. I
have dropped all claims of financial assistance, and he can keep his fiver;
I won’t ask him for money for the children again. I’ll just work harder than
before. “He can’t be allowed to get away with it,” my friends say, but the
fact is that he can, and he does.
Britain’s top 2,000 schools online
Go to parentpower for
the full 2007 Sunday Times survey of Britain’s best state and independent
schools. Find all the top secondary, primary and preparatory schools in your
area simply by typing your postcode into our online database. You can also
search by school name, town, region and education authority. As well as
displaying all the recent exam results for each school there are links on
Parent Power to take you straight to the latest inspection report and the
school website
Free Hamlet download: An
outstanding 240-minute recording of Hamlet, with Sir John Gielgud
