Christine Skinner of York University played a key role in the child maintenance reforms. She has been associated with Karen Woodall since at least 1996. She was the source of a key lie repeated over and over again throughout the child maintenance reforms: that the majority of separated parents using the Child Support Agency actually wanted to make their own private arrangements with the right help and support.

 
 

Christine Skinner’s long involvement with the Centre for Separated Families and the Child Support Agency.

  • In 1996 Christine Skinner and Karen Woodall fundraised together for £120,000 from the National Lottery Charities Board to purchase a large building in York and equip it as a resource centre for single parents.

  • Christine Skinner was academic consultant to a research report commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions, which she would later coach ministers to misinterpret in order to service the lie that most parents wanted to make their own child support arrangements.

  • Christine Skinner was a PhD student at York University while Vice Chair of One Parent Families. Her thesis was about “reciprocity” - the theory that separated fathers would only pay child support if there was reciprocity from mothers.




  • Christine Skinner has been involved with the statutory child support system since its very beginning. She has long argued that fathers face poverty following divorce or separation.


  • Both Christine Skinner and Karen Woodall contributed to the discussions with Sir David Henshaw, commissioned by the Labour Government to make recommendations for a redesign of the failing Child Support Agency.

  • In 2007 Christine Skinner was an academic adviser to the Work and Pensions Committee inquiry into the Child Support Agency, chaired by the Labour MP, Frank Field.


  • Also in 2007, Christine Skinner was academic consultant to the Relationship Support Survey commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions, which she would later coach ministers to misinterpret in order to service the lie that most parents wanted to make their own child support arrangements.

Christine Skinner has misrepresented her own research before. DWP Research Report 405: Child support policy: an international perspective found that private arrangements were advantageous but only with effective support.