Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps she is taking to support victims of economic abuse when applying for monies that they are entitled to through the Child Maintenance Service.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) takes the issue of domestic abuse extremely seriously and recognises that domestic abuse can take many forms including physical, emotional, or financial abuse, violent or threatening behaviour and coercive control.

The CMS has procedures in place to ensure victims and survivors of domestic abuse can use its services safely. CMS caseworkers will also signpost, where needed, to suitable domestic abuse organisations, if domestic abuse is raised or suspected.

All CMS caseworkers have extensive training, equipping them to be able to comprehensively act on a range of scenarios. For our most challenging and complex case groups, caseworkers complete and receive regular refresher training on specific aspects of customer service situations such as domestic abuse, advanced customer support and supporting vulnerable customers.

Specialist Case Team is one of the measures CMS have introduced to manage cases with the most challenging or complex domestic abuse concerns. This has minimised the need for parents to recount their history of domestic abuse and caseworkers to deliver support to some of the most vulnerable customers.

For parents using the Direct Pay service, the CMS can act as an intermediary to facilitate the exchange of bank details to help ensure there is no unwanted contact between parents and can provide information on how to set up bank accounts with a centralised sort code, which reduces the risk of a parent’s location being traced.

The Government has announced plans to reform the Child Maintenance service, replacing the existing Direct Pay Service and moving to a service where the CMS collects and transfers all payments. This will remove any requirement for victims and survivors to provide evidence of domestic abuse, which we know can be difficult and traumatising. It will also remove any need for contact between parents and remove the need for receiving parents to report missed or late payments. The CMS will monitor all payments and take swift action as soon as payments break down.

Managing all CMS cases in one service will allow the CMS to tackle non-compliance faster, and better support victims and survivors of domestic abuse who use the CMS.