Take-up of the Department’s CMS scheme is substantially lower than it expected. The Department estimated that 18% of separated families used the CMS scheme in 2019– 20, compared to its expectation of 33% by 2019.14 In 2021, the Department found that 49% of non-resident parents and 35% of parents with care without any arrangements wanted to change this. This suggests that there may be 500,000 non-resident parents and 350,000 parents with care (equivalent to around 60% of receiving parents on t...

Take-up of the Department’s CMS scheme is substantially lower than it expected. The Department estimated that 18% of separated families used the CMS scheme in 2019– 20, compared to its expectation of 33% by 2019.14 In 2021, the Department found that 49% of non-resident parents and 35% of parents with care without any arrangements wanted to change this. This suggests that there may be 500,000 non-resident parents and 350,000 parents with care (equivalent to around 60% of receiving parents on the current CMS scheme caseload) who do not have a child maintenance arrangement but would like one.15 Type: conclusion | Number: 10 | Response status: not_addressed Government response: 2a. PAC Recommendation: The Department should: • within one year, develop a clear action plan to assess, tackle and monitor the ‘take-up gap’ between the number of separated parents that would benefit from using its statutory CMS scheme (and other relevant support services) and those that actually u