In January 2011 Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, launched his Green Paper, “Strengthening families, promoting parental responsibility: the future of child maintenance”.
“The Centre for Separated Families (CSF) is a national charity that believes that the children who do best after separation are those who have positive input from both parents. CSF works with everyone affected by a family separation to bring about better outcomes for children. It helps both parents to overcome barriers to cooperative parenting and to focus on their children’s needs. In this way, it encourages the whole family to work together for the benefit of everyone, no matter what the situation. CSF’s services include phone and web-based information and support to families, as well as face-to-face training to the professionals working with families.”
“We welcome your thoughts on whether a single website and a single helpline linking up the range of support available online and in local communities for separating families might be appropriate. It could be designed and run by those who have expertise in running such sites – voluntary and community sector organisations for example. It could also build on and complement the existing government and voluntary and community sector services, including the current plans to integrate government web services through DirectGov. They could offer an initial triage for problems, with greater emphasis on self-help tools, encouraging parents to make their own arrangements, but also fully trained advisers to help assess cases and refer families on to the most appropriate support. This would serve to protect the most vulnerable, with a fast-track option for the most distressed families, such as those who have suffered domestic abuse, into the statutory system and on to any specialist support that they may need.”
In August 2011 Karen Woodall and Christine Skinner were personally invited by Maria Miller onto an expert steering group to decide a strategy to support separated parents make “family based arrangements” for child maintenance instead of using the Child Support Agency.
Social Justice: transforming lives, presented to Parliament by Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, January 2012:
“The Government has committed £20 million over the next three years to help separated and separating parents to work together in the best interests of their child. Existing support services for separating and separated parents, which could include information on making financial arrangements or emotional and practical support to help parents work together, will be coordinated through a web and telephony service. This will enable parents to find more easily the support and help they need, when they need it. The Government is working with an expert panel who will build an evidence base on the interventions that best help parents to collaborate.”
The Sorting Out Separation website was an expensive flop. Barrister Lucy Reed of the Pink Tape blog summed it up as simplistic, fatuous and patronising.
Sheila Gilmore. Criticism of unrealistically positive scenarios and videos. Still signposting to Centre for Separated Families.
Sorting Out Separation’s web page called “Where can I go next?” suggests Netmums’ “Top ten child maintenance myths”. This is unhelpful. It refers visitors to Child Maintenance Options and clearly hasn’t been updated since 2013:
“From 2014 the CSA will be closing all its 1993 and 2003 schemes… We expect it to take about three years to contact every parent and end all CSA arrangements.”
On 21 October 2014 Labour MP, Kate Green said: “Use of the Sorting out Separation online application has been at a level well below what Ministers expected; just 9,132 unique users had clicked through to a signposting action by January this year, whereas the Government said that there would be 260,000 users in year one.”
On 20 October 2017 I emailed the DWP’s Help and Support for Separated Families “Operations Excellence Directorate” asking whether the Centre for Separated Families, which was still featured on the Sorting Out Separation website, was still in existence. I received a reply that HSSF could not deal with individual cases.
Karen and Nick Woodall abandoned the Centre for Separated Families in late summer 2013. They were furious at failing to win a further round of government funding and had prematurely left, or been ejected from, their last DWP contract training organisations to take calls to a helpline for separated parents, and alarming officials with their rejection of official guidance on domestic violence. The charity disappeared from the Charity Commission website in December 2013.
However, the Centre for Separated Families still features prominently on the Sorting out Separation website, demonstrating the absolute lack of interest within the DWP to maintain the website in a fit state to offer any kind of effective, impartial advice to separated parents.
