The CSA
The CSA. What can be said about this neo-fascist example of New Labour policy in the raw (even if it was created by the Tories)? What can be said that is printable?
Over the years, it is possible to deal with many government organisations, either face to face, over the phone or via email. Your issue might be housing, refuse collections, tax, passports, pensions; pretty much anything. In every one of those situations, I have found that you are talking to a human being, a person who is a mother, a father, someone's brother or daughter. I don't necessarily want to get to know them, nor they me, but there is that feeling of sympathy that I get, the idea that someone they know has had similar problems and they know where I am coming from and how Iu feel. It helps I suppose that I know people who work for the Inland Revenue and the local council, that I have friends who are policemen and Immigration officials: I'd hate to ring up, give some one slagging off, only to find its my mate's girlfriend, and I suppose the same works in reverse.
Yet, despite the feeling that many employees of the civil service, agents of the government are doing their job to the best of their ability and being nice and personable whilst doing it, there is always one rotten apple that spoils the barrel. One egg that spoils the nest. One dog-poo in the sandpit.
And that organisation is the Child Support Agency.
Now before anyone reads this and decides that I don't want to support my children, you can get that thought out of your head now. I love my kids, I want the best for my kids, and I want to care for my kids. However, being forced to give money to my ex-wife, their mother, is not the only way, and indeed is not the best way, for that to happen.
If we take an extreme, fictional (but all to commonly real) case; a man is unable to see his child due to a court order banning him, or the child's mother preventing him. He is expected to pay 20% of his income directly to the child's mother to help her support the child. That 20% takes no account of his mortgage or his getting to work expenses. He has no control over this money. The child's mother can spend it on what she likes: clothes, holidays, booze, Sky TV, drugs. Father has no say in it whatsoever. Should Mother buy the child something nice with the money: new dress, bicycle, trip to Camelot, etc, is she likely to say "Look what Daddy has bought for you!"? She will not. So by forcing Father pay a mandatory amount direct to Mother, not only does he have no control over whether the money is spent on the child, the child has no way of identifying a treat with Father's input.
Let us now reduce the extreme nature of the lack of parenting time the Father has. He now has his children spend one night with him per week. During that time he foists treats on the child, desperate to make up for all the lost time, catch a whole weeks love in the 12 hours that the child will be awake and with him. This is not the actions of a normal parent, and creates an unstable relationship between the two. Dad will become the treat provider, and their relationship may grow or fail depending on his ability to provide those treats. Mother will become the humdrum, the ordinary and there will be nothing special about being with Mum because that's the every day life: it will compare poorly to the giddy excitement of the time with Dad.
So Dad now has a direct input into what his money does for his child? Not likely. By staying over one night, the Maintenance burden is reduced by 1/7th. Not a lot. And say one day his car breaks down. He cant afford to fix it because after his mortgage and other bills, and the £50 of petrol he just put in the car, he has only the 'treat' money left once the CSA have taken their chunk. Not only can he not get to work to earn the money he needs, he cannot travel over to his ex-wife's to pick his child up, but now he faces the choice between fixing the car and not being able to treat his child (potentially facing a tantrum and the cruellest thing a child can say to a parent "I hate you, you're mean"), or of treating the child and struggling to make ends meet until next pay day.
Now in a normal family unit, by which I mean a family that still lives together, this kind of thing isn't an issue. With two parents living together, there is the ability to communicate directly with the child, and also the normal ways of dealing with issues "Hey, we cant go to Alton Towers this weekend, but lets get a DVD out and go next week". It is also normal that if money is tight that the whole family contracts its spending to accommodate the current situation. Purchases can be put off a week, or a month whilst unusual problems are dealt with, and things just carry on as normal: part of life.
But to a separated parent, the CSA represent a finite range of opportunities: Pay us how much we say, when we say, or we hit you with a Court Order to deduct the money straight from your wages.
If your car breaks down and you need a little flexibility to pay for repairs, so that you can go to work, earn a wage and pay your dues, they don't care.
If you are short this month and you need to make sure your mortgage gets paid, so that you have a roof over your head when your child comes to stay with you, they don't care.
If you need a bit of leeway to pay for the holiday you and the child are hoping to go on, so that the child can have a genuinely fun time with you, they don't care.
If you don't pay how much and when they say they will accuse you of not caring for your child. Yet these are all issues that 'normal' families deal with every day. So what the CSA are creating is a country with dysfunctional split families, driving non-resident parents to financial ruin and suicide will a total lack of care.
And they really don't care. When you talk to an agent of the CSA you may as well be talking to a banking machine. "Input Money" is their only command. If the money is wrong, or late, they penalise you. If what they are asking for is wrong then they will tell you that the amount has been determined by an expert, who must be right, and that there is no recourse to appeal or additional scrutiny. The computer says "NO".
The agents of the CSA are rude, unhelpful and uncaring. Its not even as if all the money they do collect goes to the children who need it.
The CSA are the face of Blair's New Labour, of Blair's New Britain. And you thought the last Tory Government was bad?
