Work and Pensions Minister Alison McGovern has confirmed that reform of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) will form part of the government’s child poverty strategy. This was a key ask of Gingerbread’s #FixTheCMS campaign, and we are working behind the scenes to make sure that the right changes are made. 

 The Minister was speaking on 20th May at a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on single-parent families. The APPG meeting was looking at single-parent households and child poverty. During the meeting the Minister also highlighted that the strategy would look at parental employment, and noted the importance of ensuring work coaches were tailoring support to individuals.  

 Gingerbread continues to push for specialist support for single parents 

 Gingerbread has been calling for specialist single-parent work coaches as part our #SupportNotPunish campaign. We’re disappointed that the Minister didn’t commit to this, however we welcome the news that steps are being made to improve the support available through Jobcentre Plus. We will be looking at how we can inform what this looks like in practice. 

 Ms McGovern also said that the child poverty strategy would look at Universal Credit, noting that action on improving the operation of UC was also being looked at as part of a review being led by Work and Pensions Minister Sir Stephen Timms. 

 ‘Negative and bullying’ – single parents describe their experience of Universal Credit 

We were enormously grateful to the two single parents who joined us to share their stories with MPs at the meeting. Single parent Ruth described how the lack of effective action from the Child Maintenance Service had resulted in unnecessary financial hardship.  

Meanwhile Nicola outlined her poor experiences of the Universal Credit system. She explained that despite doing everything she could to maximise her income, the threat of sanctions still hung over her, causing her to feel ‘sick and anxious and on edge’ She explained to the meeting that even the threat of sanctions and the negative and bullying attitude of her work coach can’t force single parents to work when childcare is unaffordable or unavailable:

 ‘Making us suffer [through sanctions] won’t decrease the cost of nursery and wrap-around care… Making my finances unpredictable doesn’t make me more likely to take a chance on a job that’s a lot of hours, or further away… It certainly doesn’t magic up an After School Club place on a Wednesday evening.’

  What single parents need from the Child Poverty Strategy 

 Meanwhile, Head of Policy and Campaigns at Gingerbread, Sarah Lambert outlined Gingerbread’s priorities for the child poverty strategy. These are:  

• Making sure the level of UC is sufficient, including scrapping the two-child limit 

• Reform of Universal Credit, so that there is genuine help through well-trained and supportive work coaches and a less punitive system, ideally through the scrapping of sanctions, as outlined in our #SupportNotPunish campaign 

• Strengthened flexible working rights 

• An improved system for getting support for childcare 

• Significant reform of the CMS as set out in our #FixTheCMS campaign. 

 Also present at the APPG meeting was Dr Juliet Stone, Research Fellow at the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University. She gave an overview of what we can learn from the data on poverty and single parents. She highlighted that full-time work doesn’t guarantee a route out of poverty for single parents. This becomes even more evident for single-parent families with more than two children, highlighting the need for government to scrap the two-child limit. 

We’d like to thank Josh Fenton Glynn MP for chairing the meeting and all of the attendees for coming along and contributing to the discussion.  If you’d like to find out about future meetings of the APPG, you can sign up to our mailing list here: