Edinburgh Solicitors

According to the Government, the proportion of separated parents who are paying for their children through the Child Support Agency has reached an historic high, with more than four in five parents meeting their financial responsibility. As the number of parents paying continues to rise, the percentage having to be chased to pay continues to fall. The number of deduction from earnings orders, where parents have the money deducted at source because they refuse to pay voluntarily, has dropped by more than 20% over the past five years. The Government has also recently announced that, after careful consideration of the views of separated parents, it would be reducing the ongoing collection charge for receiving parents who choose to use the new Child Maintenance Service (CMS) from a planned 7% to 4%, while keeping the charge for paying parents at 20% on top of their payment. Work and Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, commented: “Having a charge for using the CMS will provide a nudge to parents to try to sort things out for themselves if they can. Similarly, parents can escape the ongoing collection charge altogether by opting for the DirectPay service, and they can rest assured that the state will still step in and enforce payments if they were to ever stop.” Victims of domestic violence and abuse will be fast-tracked into the state service with no upfront fee. Contact Thorley Stephenson’s Solicitors For specialist legal advice from our solicitors in Scotland, please telephone 0131 556 9599.

The government has announced that it has renewed its commitment to helping and supporting separated families to work together for the sakes of their children by committing to the Child Maintenance Options service for a further five years. According to the government, G4S will be the new provider of the service following a competitive tendering process. The contract, which is worth £18 million over five years, will see the company deliver the specialist contact centre for separated parents. The organisation will continue to provide Child Maintenance Options’ expert help and support via telephone, text, online chat and social media, to help separated parents sort out child maintenance. Janet Wojtkow, Director of Child Maintenance Options, said: “We’ve helped almost a million parents with impartial help and support since we started the service five years ago. We look forward to helping even more parents work together in the years to come – to ensure their children get the best possible start in life.” Contact Thorley Stephenson’s Solicitors For specialist legal advice from our solicitors in Scotland, please telephone 0131 556 9599.

The Scottish Government has published a document that gives guidance on how to manage allegations against foster carers and approved kinship carers that have given rise to concerns about the safety and well-being of looked after children. The document is designed to both help to ensure positive outcomes for looked after children and to minimise stress on foster and kinship carers. Foster carers and approved kinship carers look after children who will all have experienced trauma, abuse or neglect in their early years which has led to them being placed away from their birth family. Caring for these children is challenging for carers and children may find living with another family difficult and this may lead them to try to find ways to break up a placement through making an allegation that the carer has abused or neglected them. It is vital that services respond appropriately when children or young people, their parents or others raise concerns about the child’s safety or well-being when in the care of foster carers or approved kinship carers. According to the Government, the document aims to describe good practice in managing and responding to allegations, concerns or complaints. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v1.0. Contact Thorley Stephenson’s Solicitors For specialist legal advice from our solicitors in Scotland, please telephone 0131 556 9599.  

Children’s Hearings Scotland (CHS) has recently published details of its latest business plan. The business plan sets out the seven business objectives that CHS will be focusing on during 2013/14. According to the plan, these are: “Capture the views and experiences of children and young people in the Children’s Hearings System to inform our policies, practice and decision making. Put in place the structures, processes and resources to facilitate a smooth transition to the Children’s Hearings (Scotland) Act 2011. Ensure that Area Support Teams are well trained, supported, resourced and work together to provide high quality support to the national Children’s Panel. Work with partners across the Children’s Hearings System to deliver improvements for children, young people and their families. Embed effective governance and support arrangements across CHS and ASTs. Develop systems and resources to communicate and engage effectively with all our stakeholders. Make the most of our people.” Contains Crown copyright public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v1.0. Contact Thorley Stephenson’s Solicitors For specialist legal advice from our solicitors in Scotland, please telephone 0131 556 9599.

One in five (19%) women stop paying into a pension altogether after getting divorced, while a quarter (25%) reduce their savings, according to new research by Phoenix Group. The specialist consolidator of closed life funds also reveals that two in five divorced women (42%) say they are worse off financially after divorce. Additionally, half of divorced women made no contributions at all to a pension scheme whilst married, but only one in six had rights to a pension through their ex-husband. “It’s clear that divorced women face an uncertain future in retirement,” says Shellie Wells, spokesperson for Phoenix Group. “Not only have many given up rights to their husband’s pension provision, they have often stopped paying into their own pension plan; dipped into savings and at worst, lost contact with any savings they have accrued.” These are rather startling statistics, particularly since, after the former matrimonial home, the pension pot is likely to be the largest capital asset of the marriage. Data released by the Office for National Statistics underline these findings, showing that single (including divorced) women pensioners are worst off in terms of income. In 2010-2011 single female pensioners had a mean gross monthly income of £1,209, compared with £1,495 for men and £2,643 for couples.