Child Maintenance Service – Survey of Direct Pay Clients

The DWP operates the statutory child maintenance scheme (administered by the recently launched Child Maintenance Service (CMS) and the Child Support Agency (CSA)) and funds Child Maintenance Options, a service which provides information and support for separating parents. The Government is committed to helping parents (both the receiving parent and paying parent) 1 to take responsibility for their children, and strengthening and supporting families is one of its key priorities. The Government’s view is that a parent’s failure to take responsibility for their children or to pay child maintenance is simply not acceptable.

The main aims of this research are to measure the outcomes of Direct Pay in the short-term (i.e. around 3 months after putting an arrangement in place) and in the longer term (i.e. around 12 months after putting an arrangement in place), following the introduction of charging.

This requirement is for a series of quantitative telephone surveys with key groups of clients. DWP will provide a sample files containing clients’ contact details.

The supplier will be responsible for:

Designing questionnaires, including cognitive testing and piloting (in conjunction with DWP)