The Department told us that it “absolutely” wanted parents who were not receiving maintenance because the other parent was not willing to pay to feel that they can come to the Child Maintenance Service and that it will support them. It explained that, since closing CSA cases at the end of 2018, it had “much more opportunity to focus on things like building awareness and growing the caseload”. As part of this, it told us that it had been providing training to Universal Credit Work Coaches on t...

The Department told us that it “absolutely” wanted parents who were not receiving maintenance because the other parent was not willing to pay to feel that they can come to the Child Maintenance Service and that it will support them. It explained that, since closing CSA cases at the end of 2018, it had “much more opportunity to focus on things like building awareness and growing the caseload”. As part of this, it told us that it had been providing training to Universal Credit Work Coaches on the CMS and what it does, and that it was putting more services online to improve the accessibility of its Options Service (a mandatory service for those Type: conclusion | Number: 11 | 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