Domestic Abuse and the Child Maintenance Service Published 22 April 2026
from national single parent campaigning organisation GINGERBREAD
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The CMS fails to support survivors to safely and sustainably access the CMS.
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The CMS fails to prevent non-payment of children’s support and non-disclosure of earnings.
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The CMS fails to safeguard against misuse by abusive parents that places victim-survivors at risk of harm.
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The CMS fails to provide effective and accessible specialist support to victim-survivors.
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Urgently introducing legislation that will enable the government to safely transition service users from the Direct Pay service to Collect and Pay.
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Providing specialist developed and delivered training and support for CMS staff to consistently identify and respond to domestic, including economic, abuse, with a particular focus on how the CMS is used to coerce and control victim survivors.
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Improving safeguarding processes and procedures to help survivors safely engage with the CMS to manage their children’s entitlements. This includes basic procedures for alerting survivors to any changes or contact with a perpetrator that could increase their risk of harm, and ensuring access to specialist, trauma informed support.
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Using stronger enforcement of non-payment and fraudulent non-disclosure of earnings responses, including improved automatic maintenance calculations based on cross-agency information sharing, proactive monitoring and investigations that do not place a disproportionate burden on victim-survivors to report or prove fraud, and a zero tolerance approach to non-compliance. The reforms should also close loopholes that allow abusers to misuse the enforcement process to evade accountability and urgently introduce secondary legislation to implement commitments made in the Child Support (Enforcement) Act 2023.
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Removing barriers to the Collect and Pay service, by guaranteeing that victim-survivors can remain on Collect and Pay indefinitely to safely manage their children’s entitlements and waiving Collect and Pay fees for all parents, so that they are not financially penalised for relying on the CMS to safely manage their children’s support.
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Posted 19 December 2025
Yesterday, the government published its Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy, setting out an ambition to halve VAWG within the next decade. This is an important step toward tackling abuse in all its forms, including economic abuse, which affects many single-parent families.
Economic abuse and child maintenance
Gingerbread welcome the strategy’s commitment to prevent economic abuse, including the withholding of child maintenance and the misuse of the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) as a tool of coercion. These behaviours are all too common forms of post-separation economic abuse and coercive control, with devastating consequences for victim-survivors and their children.
For many single parents who have experienced abuse, the CMS represents the only safe and viable way to secure child maintenance, reducing the need for direct contact with an abusive ex-partner. It is no suprise that Gingerbread’s Fix the CMS report found that 77% of parents using the CMS had experienced domestic abuse from the other parent.
Where the CMS lets families down
Despite its intended role as a safeguard, the CMS has significant shortcomings. Weak enforcement, payment loopholes and insufficient domestic abuse training for staff means victim-survivors are not adequately protected. In some cases, CMS involvement actually makes things worse. Our research has found:
- 45% of parents with care reported an increase in abusive behaviour after CMS involvement.
- 39% said the abuse was still ongoing.
These figures highlight the urgent need for reform.
What’s changing and what still needs to happen
The strategy reaffirms the government’s intention to remove the Direct Pay service type, a change Gingerbread has long called for and which could strengthen protections for victim-survivors. However, this reform must be implemented with care and the government must go further to ensure the CMS delivers a trauma-informed service that robustly safeguards those who rely on it.
With the Child Support Collection (Domestic Abuse) Act 2023 not yet in force and with consolidation of the CMS into a single ‘Collect and Pay’ system at least two years away, there remains a serious gap in protection for victim-survivors in the meantime.
What’s next?
Gingerbread will continue to assess the implications of the VAWG Strategy for single-parent families and will publish a full response in due course. We’ll also release new findings on victim-survivors’ experiences of the CMS in the new year.
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Following our #SupportNotPunish parliamentary drop-in, where we showcased voice notes from single parents about their experiences with Universal Credit (UC), we’ve been working behind the scenes to push for UC reform.
Roundtable with the Minister
In November, we were pleased to host a roundtable with the Minister for Social Security and Disability, Sir Stephen Timms, who is currently carrying out a review of UC, alongside single parents with lived experience of the system.At the session, single parents outlined the persistent challenges they face with UC, including its insufficiency, rigidity, poor communication, and a lack of tailored support, particularly around conditionality, childcare, and self-employment. They called for a more flexible, compassionate, and responsive system, with empathy and understanding built into staff training and communication. These reflections echo the findings and key asks of our They’re Sanctioning the Children report and #SupportNotPunish campaign.
The Minister’s response
Following the roundtable, we shared a follow-up briefing with the Minister, reinforcing the key messages single parents shared and our calls for urgent reform. In his response, the Minister re-iterated the focus areas of the UC review: tackling poverty and helping people manage their money, making work pay and improving work incentives, and maximising UC’s potential and its impact on customers.
He also highlighted positive several changes underway, including an increase to the Universal Credit standard allowance, the removal of the two-child limit, and the launch of the Get Britain Working Coaching Academy – aimed at professionalising the support provided to claimants. He also noted the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) commitment to becoming a more trauma-informed organisation, with co-production being a key element of this approach.
In his response, the Minister confirmed that conditionality and sanctions remain outside the scope of the UC review. This is particularly disappointing, given the ongoing anxiety and hardship these measures cause for single-parent families. However, our efforts do not stop here. We are continuing to raise this issue with the government, including in a meeting with the Minister for Employment, Dame Diana Johnson, last month.
It is also disappointing that the government has not committed to scrapping the benefit cap. In his response, the Minister states that “leaving the overall benefit cap in place encourages personal responsibility while maintaining incentives to work”. However, most single parents are already in work or want to work. Yet they often face practical barriers that make it difficult to gain and sustain high-quality employment, including limited access to flexible or part-time jobs and affordable childcare. This particularly affects those with young children.
Single-parent families are therefore disproportionately affected by the benefit cap: almost 70% of capped households are single-parent families, and over 60% of these have a youngest child under five. With 43% of children in single-parent families living in poverty, maintaining the benefit cap without addressing these barriers risks deepening poverty rather than promoting work.
Read the Minister’s response here.
Continuing the conversation
Earlier this week, we met with Sir Stephen Timms again to continue the conversation around UC reform. We were encouraged to hear that some of the issues raised at the roundtable, such as support for self-employment, are being considered as part of the review, and that the DWP is exploring improvements to its childcare offer. During the meeting, we highlighted the need for specialist single-parent work coaches in Jobcentres, and it was positive to hear the Minister agree to take this recommendation away for further consideration.
Next steps
We will continue to engage with the government as the UC review progresses, creating opportunities wherever possible for single parents to directly share their experiences and the changes they want to see. Alongside this, we will keep pushing for wider social security reform. In April 2026, several previously announced changes to UC will come into effect, including an uprating of the standard allowance and the removal of the two-child limit (both key asks of our #SupportNotPunish campaign). Keep an eye on our social media channels for updates on when these changes happen and what they mean for single-parent families.
We will also be holding another #SupportNotPunish week of action later this year. To stay up to date with our work and hear about opportunities to get involved, please subscribe to our campaigns mailing list. Get involved | Gingerbread
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