Dead Beat Dads set to take on the CSA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                       

 

 

 

 

 

A  dad-of-three and his partner have launched a support group to help fathers who are battling with the Child Support Agency.

Train driver Maurice Barnett, 37, and Sherri Lee Barnett 39 Counsellor has started the Dead Beat Dads association in a bid to put pressure on agency bosses.

They claim the CSA's tactics when collecting payments leave fathers out of pocket, depressed and unable to see their children.The fledgling group, which already has 10 members, is planning protests against the CSA's handling of fathers' affairs.
Mr Barnett, has accused the agency of "degrading fathers" by "robbing them of their money" and dignity and said his experience of the system left him suffering from depression and set to have his former family home repossessed.
They said: "We want a fairer system set-up.

"Any man's rights have been completely eroded away. You could pay your ex-wife cash-in-hand for six years, fall out and she can contact the CSA who demand you pay it all again."When they get involved, fathers are losing contact with their children."Fathers are moving out of the home, paying for their children and then being told their bedsit isn't appropriate or they can't afford to pick up their children."
Protests planned by the group are expected to be less eye-catching than fellow fathers' group, Fathers 4 Justice, but aimed at meeting influential figures to change CSA policies.
High profile stunts by Fathers 4 Justice have included flour bombing former prime minister Tony Blair and last weekend climbing on to the roof of Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman's house dressed as superheroes.
The Dead Beat Dads has been co-founded by Mr Barnett's partner Sherri-Lee Barnett, 39, who is training to be a counsellor.
She said: "MPs up and down the country are being bombarded with calls for help from fathers.
"We hear the CSA are asking non-resident fathers what is the limit on your credit card? Can you remortgage your house? Just to get people to settle their arrears.

"They are telling people they shouldn't have had a second family."
But a spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions defended the CSA's record.
He said: "Every parent has a financial responsibility for their child.
"We look at each case individually to ensure the correct maintenance assessment is made.
"This isn't about securing money for the CSA but about recovering money for those children who are owed it."
Anyone wanting to get in contact with Mr & Ms Barnett can ring them on 07523 936072 or visit www.dead beatdadsassociation.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 How the CSA are corruption

Staff entered false data to get around CSA controls

17:15 18 Apr 2005 Taken from Computer Weekly

Inflexible IT systems created problems for beleaguered agency staff
Poorly trained, demoralised staff at the Child Support Agency have knowingly entered false information into IT systems, deleted cases for no good reason, and stockpiled claims, not putting them on the systems for years, according to a new report.
It has also emerged that the CSA is likely to delay the transfer hundreds of thousands of cases from old systems to the new rules until next year - although the CS2 system to support the changes was introduced two years ago, in March 2003, at a cost of £456m.
Some staff have revealed that there could be a mass walkout and early retirements if the agency forced through a large-scale migration of cases from the agency's old systems to new rules for calculating payments.

The agency has been struggling to implement reforms, supported by CS2, to simplify calculations of payment of maintenance by "non-resident" parents for their children.
Government ministers have repeatedly claimed that problems at the CSA were mainly due to difficulties with the IT systems. But disclosures in a report commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions show that the agency's problems are systemic, not just technological.
The Department for Work and Pensions said research for the report was carried out last year and there have been improvements since. But serious problems remain. Last month Work and Pensions secretary Alan Johnson conceded that the intake of new CSA cases was exceeding the clearance of claims.
The report questioned whether staff had been prepared for the cultural and organisational changes that accompanied reforms to CSA benefit calculations, and whether the data in case records was reliable enough to be transferred.
The report's researchers at Bristol University questioned the agency's staff and managers on their views and experiences of how well the CSA's reforms are working.
They found staff and managers welcomed the reforms. And they said the CS2 technology was improving, although they were strongly critical of aspects of its design, speed and reliability.

But the report revealed details of bad practices and behaviour, driven by pressure from needy clients and tough targets, which were undermining the agency's operations.
Staff in one CSA business unit told the report's authors that they had been instructed to stockpile some claims because "they are easy to process and would look good on their stats when the new system went live".
The ploy went "badly wrong and resulted in the work not being done at all". The report added, "Those cases had been stockpiled since 2002, and we were told they had still not been put on the system."
Some staff bypassed controls on the system. They were "entering false information to fill in unknown details so that they could get the system to continue with the case".
An administrative officer was cited in the report as entering information which the person knew to be false. They were "extremely concerned that by doing so they were breaking the law but was determined to get cases moving and knew of no other workaround that could help".
One focus group said that when staff were unable to send cases to the right office "they simply deleted them" not knowing whether or not they were duplicated in the appropriate business unit.
The report also found there were poor internal communications. Staff were discouraged from criticising, and "information was filtered" as it passed between higher levels of staff. Above a certain managerial level some executives were "painting roses red".
The reforms require staff to deal with clients on the phone. New computer-based telephony systems were installed which were designed to direct callers automatically to the right member of staff.
But staff were not trained in having conversations with distressed parents, and some developed ploys to avoid using the phone. They directed callers to answer machines, or turned down the sound of the phone ringing
IT staff have told Computer Weekly that many of the problems at the agency are because of systemic weaknesses. They said senior managers had enacted reforms as mainly an IT project instead of an exercise in managing change and re-engineering business processes.

A spokesman for the Department for Work and Pensions said, "This report is based on research carried out in early 2004. Since then the service to clients has progressively improved following action taken by the agency to improve levels of customer service and to support our staff. "The agency very much values its staff, who work in difficult circumstances involving emotional family break-ups. That said, there is still some way to go before the agency is delivering for all its clients the level of service they are entitled to expect."
Work and Pensions secretary Alan Johnson said last month, "An agency business transformation programme is being developed which will contain short-term tactical initiatives and also places significant emphasis on ensuring medium to long-term sustained recovery."

 

 

 

Manchester Evening News January 27th

PARENTS who refuse to pay maintenance for their children will face having their driving licences and passports confiscated - without going to court.
New laws will be brought in which will mean government `enforcers' will be brought in to lead the crackdown.
Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell, the MP for Stalybridge and Hyde, is set to introduce the new legislation.
He denied that the new laws would be too severe and said it was intended to make a `hard core' of repeat offenders pay what they owe on time. He said evidence from the US, Canada and Australia - where the enforcement system is already in place - has shown a dramatic increase in the number of parents paying on time.

The old Child Support Agency had the power to apply for a court order to confiscate the driving licences of parents who refuse to pay for their children.Last year, Parliament passed an act to give the new Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission the same power with relation to passports. But the Welfare Reform Bill, which goes before Parliament tomorrow, will enable CMEC to bypass the courts in order to seize absent parents' driving licences and passports until they pay up.
Mr Purnell said the proposals would help ensure children received the money which they are due on time and will only be implemented as a last resort.

He said: "There's nothing draconian or severe about these proposals - the passports and driving licenses can be recovered by simply paying the money which they owe.
"Everyone fully understands that relationships break up but that doesn't mean that parents can just leave their responsibilities behind.
"We are supporting parents in these tough times but for those who choose not to support their own kids, we will not stand by and do nothing.
"If a parent refuses to pay up then we will stop them travelling abroad or using their car."
A spokesman for the DWP said the confiscation of driving licenses in the US state of Maine generated £64.7m of previously unpaid child maintenance since 1993.
In Australia, the government generated £5.2m from the confiscation of passports in the two years up to last August.

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1092693_crackdown_on_slack_parents

 

 

                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just  to inform you folks that Poly Toynbee deleted our post that exposed the lies and the scams that have been going on within the CSA/CMEC, so now you can see the media are gagging us from exposing the truth which the likes of this woman are expecting to try and hide behind their smoke screens. We posted all the evidence to her column so that the British people could witness for themselves the horror stories and the way CSA staff treat those already paying or compliant fathers, backed up by evidence, but guess what folks the post was deleted, so even the media The Guardian whom which Poly Toynbee is a reporter for are gagging us too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Polly Toynbee

The Guardian states     

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/27/child-support-absent-fathers-passports

 

The long and sorry history of trying to make absent fathers pay for their children gets another turn of the screw today, as the welfare reform bill has its second reading. Won't-pay fathers could find their passports and driving licences revoked if they refuse to support their children. Fathers owe the monumental sum of £3.8bn in unpaid maintenance orders: many children are only poor because of their failure to pay.

The idea is taken from Norway, Australia, Canada and the United States, where the threat of confiscation has had a good effect. In just one state, Maine, $89m has been collected from fathers through threatening to remove their driving licences. In Australia, in two years of threatening to stop non-payers travelling abroad, an extra $11m has been collected for children.

Now the battle lines are being drawn here. Families Need Fathers will fight the new law, claiming support from the Conservative party. Theresa May, newly appointed to the shadow work and pensions brief, is holding fire for now: "We need to explore the detail to make sure it is commensurate and in keeping with natural justice." Last year in the Lords, a group of Tory peers succeeded in taking the removal of passports and licences out of a previous bill, claiming such a move would be against the Human Rights Act - interesting how they use it when it suits them - as it won't require a court order to cancel driving licences and passports. Fathers would have to go to court to get their documents restored.

There are already new powers to take money directly out of non-payers' bank accounts - but income is often hidden away, undeclared under other names and secreted through clever accounting by the self-employed. However, no one can hide their driving licences and passports from official cancellation.

The plan has come under fresh attack from the Mail on Sunday, which called it totalitarian, draconian, and "the latest excuse for infringing liberty".

"Passports are not issued to us on condition we do exactly what we are told by the state ... If such arbitrary powers are used against absentee fathers, how long before they are used against other people who have annoyed the authorities in some way?" it asked. There follows the usual Mail complaint against 1960s divorce law reform and "a system that relentlessly penalises stable marriages and subsidises unmarried households". In all the torrid saga of both Conservative and Labour government attempts to make fathers pay, the rightwing press has taken the same contrary view: single mothers are to blame, and attempts to make men pay are a breach of their liberties. The same papers that extol family values also exonerate non-paying fathers.

Remember when the Child Support Agency was launched back in 1993; it sparked protest marches, mass refusals to pay, and absurd reports of men taking their own lives after receiving demands for maintenance. Despite numerous warnings, the Tories were too eager to claw back money to cover single mothers' benefits: they re-opened old divorce settlements so the CSA was sunk from day one under the sheer weight of cases.

Meanwhile, newsrooms staffed with well-off divorced men resentful of paying maintenance dredged up every CSA error and every father's hard-luck case to help destroy the agency. Articles encouraged fathers to fill out inaccurate forms and file endless change-of-circumstances reports to keep one step ahead of the CSA's fragile IT system. How the media enjoyed the obnoxious Fathers-4-Justice parading in Superman suits on Harriet Harman's roof.

Gingerbread, the one-parent-families' group, says things are improving. This year the CSA, which is being replaced by the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Agency, has collected twice as much from fathers as last year. Even so, two-thirds of all absent fathers pay nothing at all. Fathers employ smart accountants: penniless mothers have no chance of proving where their income is cached. A third of fathers lose contact altogether with their children. Of course some mothers behave badly, blocking access, but the big story is the mass refusal of so many fathers to pay anything - ever.

At long last the system is getting tougher on enforcement, after years when the agency was snowed under. At first mothers had no incentive to chase fathers, as most maintenance was just deducted from their benefits. But now they can keep £20, and from next year, they can keep whatever fathers pay. That should be an incentive for fathers to pay up for their children. If they did, some 100,000 children would be lifted out of poverty immediately.

So it's well worth tightening the thumbscrews. But expect fireworks and protests - even though driving licence and passport confiscation will only be a last resort, after all other means of persuasion, including bailiffs, have been tried. Even then, fathers will have seven days to appeal to court; their documents will not be confiscated until the case is heard. This is designed to frighten those who have refused all co-operation. No doubt some professional driver or commuter will claim their livelihood has been put at risk. Gingerbread is naturally anxious that there should not be many self-appointed martyrs for the father-friendly press to brandish with glee. It's the threat that counts.

Every month won't-pay fathers add £10m to the arrears: the state can't cope with mass male rebellion. This is the reality of power-and-money injustice between mothers and fathers. A report this week shows that most women lose out when they divorce while most men get richer immediately, contrary to misleading celebrity stories of foxy gold diggers. Professor Stephen Jenkins of the Institute of Social & Economic Research finds separated women have a poverty rate three times higher than former husbands because it's women who care for the children.

But the culture still prefers to castigate single mothers as the cause of the Tories' "broken Britain". The wail of the Mail and Iain Duncan Smith is that children of separated mothers lack a male role model. The truth is that marriages often break down when women escape from bad role models - the ones who become the won't-pay fathers. The world is full of good men and good fathers - there just aren't enough of them to go round. Watch how this latest attempt to make fathers pay plays out in press and parliament amid claims that it's the innocent fathers who are the main victims.