Publication type
Report
Authors
Publication date
February 8, 2024
Summary:
This report presents the findings of research looking at the needs and costs associated with a non-resident parent caring for a child some of the time. As a starting point, it makes a specific calculation of the minimum additional spending needed to maintain acceptable living standards by a separated parent whose child comes regularly for overnight stays. It finds that these costs are substantial.
There has been growing recognition of the value of input in the raising of children from a non-resident parent, where this is possible. However, the associated needs and costs have gone unrecognised, particularly in the social security system, which ignores these costs by treating someone who is not the primary carer for a child as if they had no children, allocating all child-related benefits to the main carer. This makes life particularly difficult for low-income non-resident parents who may already be surviving on incomes too low to meet their needs, and who may be making child maintenance payments that also do not take their own child-related costs into account.
Data on non-resident parents is fairly limited, with more focus on child maintenance arrangements, and a lack of non-resident parent perspectives in research on separated families. Even the number of non-resident parents with overnight care responsibilities is not known, although it is clearly widespread, and appears to be of the order of 1 million.
Analysis of household income and poverty also takes account of child-related costs only in the family with primary care. This study starts to fill that gap, by extending the Minimum Income Standard (MIS) to consider costs for separated parents who look after children some of the time.
Subjects
Link
https://www.jrf.org.uk/social-security/minimum-income-standard-for-non-resident-parents
Notes
References: Haux, T., McKay, S., and Cain, R. (2017) 'Shared care after separation in the United Kingdom: limited data, limited practice?', Family Court Review, 55(4):572-585. https://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12305
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