Asked by: Rachel Gilmour (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Minehead)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the report by Gingerbread entitled Fix the CMS, published on 25 November 2024, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of (a) assigning (i) dedicated and (ii) named caseworkers for all Child Maintenance Service (CMS) cases, (b) implementing a digital contact platform for communicating with the CMS, (c) closing loopholes on the enforcement of CMS decisions, (d) training CMS staff in domestic abuse and (e) implementing the other recommendations of that report.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) continues to engage regularly with stakeholders as we consider CMS reform. We are currently considering the recommendations and our response to the Gingerbread report ‘Fix the CMS’.
The CMS Service Modernisation Programme has delivered improvements to the customer experience enabling parents to access their on-line My Child Maintenance Case, ensuring parents can report changes of circumstances and access their digital communications at any time of the day. In addition, caseworker training to support vulnerable customers has been updated following invaluable engagement with stakeholders.
The CMS has recently consulted on significant reforms and are analysing the responses. This included removing the Direct Pay service and managing all CMS cases in one service to allow the CMS to tackle non-compliance faster. The consultation also sought views on how victims and survivors of domestic abuse can be better supported to use CMS and whether removing Direct Pay completely would benefit victims and survivors of domestic abuse. The Government will publish a response in due course.
Asked by: Rachel Gilmour (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Minehead)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the impact of the journal system for Universal Credit on the mental health of applicants and users.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
DWP are committed to providing the best possible support for all our customers, including the most vulnerable in society. Within Universal Credit, we recognise that customers have individual needs and different barriers, so we train and support all our work coaches to be able to respond appropriately to a customer’s situation.
We have no plans to assess the impact of the journal system on the mental health of applicants and users., Independent research published in 2018 showed that the majority of customers found the journal easy to use. The DWP Customer Experience Survey for 2023-2024 showed that 88% of people found it easy to use their UC online account.