Fife Gingerbread: Test and Demonstration

In some areas, the learning never truly ends. We embraced this thinking when we began our journey with the Transforming Child Maintenance partnership (TCM) alongside our colleagues from OPFS, IPPR Scotland and Poverty Alliance.  

What we knew at the start 

Building on a plethora of existing research and evidence, alongside our own report published in 2023, we already understood several key issues: 

• Parents felt the current child maintenance system wasn’t working. 
• Families had limited access to meaningful support or experienced practitioners to help. 
• Thousands of children were missing out on the maintenance they were entitled to. 

But what we didn’t fully understand was why. 

So, in May 2023, Fife Gingerbread launched the Test and Demonstration initiative as part of the TCM partnership with two goals: 

• Develop a model of support for parents navigating the complexity of the current system to identify improvement opportunities and scale-able solutions. 
• Build practitioner confidence and organisational capacity to embed child maintenance in financial inclusion support for families.  

By working within the system, we set out to uncover the deeper barriers and began to develop approaches to shift them. We placed the rights of children to fair financial support at the heart of our activity.

Year one: Learning the system 

Like any improvement process, we started by establishing a baseline. The first few months focused on connecting with key organisations, gathering insights into the barriers facing parents and practitioners, developing internal systems and processes and laying the groundwork for project delivery. 

Initially, referrals were accepted internally from families already supported through Fife Gingerbread projects, and from key partner organisations. By March 2024, we opened up to all of Fife. Working towards developing a model of support for families navigating child maintenance by testing various support and referral pathways. 

Using real-world feedback and frontline experience, we developed our Child Maintenance: Confident Conversations training module, piloting it in November 2023 and refining it through five rounds of updates. Aimed at ensuring child maintenance is a core component of financial inclusion and income maximisation activity for lone parent families.  

In addition, we worked to amplify the voice of families through participation in the OPFS lived experience panel, joined DWP stakeholder groups and enabled parent participation in CMS government consultations. 

To support the learning in Year 1, we worked with Poverty Alliance to produce an independent evaluation of the test and demonstration activity. 

A key recommendation from this evaluation was to begin to better define and categorise casework types to better understand the support needs of lone parents. By doing so we discovered that 70% of referrals required only basic guidance and signposting – this is what we now categorise as primary advice. Primary cases are often families looking for help with applications, the CMS portal or challenging decisions. On one day alone, we sent seven identical advice emails about reporting changes via the portal. The remaining 30% of cases were categorised as intermediate and complex casework, which we have now defined to monitor need and impact more effectively. Intermediate cases are where a parent needs advice that will require follow up such as requesting the CMS relook at a calculation or reporting other changes, and complex cases are those with significant barriers to progression such as domestic abuse, substantial unpaid arrears or escalating to First Tier Tribunal.  

This insight led to an update on our recording system (FORT) to capture casework type at registration, and an emerging need to develop a toolkit for primary level information to enable families to access simple jargon free information and guidance to empower them to independently take the next steps on their child maintenance journey. 

We identified that for smaller, remote organisations the training was not accessible due to numbers of participants or travel, leading to a successful pilot to deliver Confident Conversations training online 

In addition, we identified that for smaller, remote organisations the training was not accessible due to numbers of participants or travel, leading to a successful pilot to deliver Confident Conversations training online, further expanding our reach and accessibility to frontline workers across the Scotland in addition to the in person offer.   

In collaboration with Transforming Child Maintenance partners, we have contributed to strategic discussions with government, MPs, House of Lords representatives and DWP officials. These meetings have been instrumental in highlighting the lived experiences of families and influencing future policy direction. 

Year three: Expanding the impact 

In the final year of the TCM partnership we are focused on strengthening the work from years 1 and 2, building on our knowledge and working to create the project legacy.  

So far, we have: 

• Co-created with young people a child maintenance information resource specifically for children and young people. This is especially significant in Scotland, where children above the age of 12 can apply for their own child maintenance with the incorporation of the UNCRC into law. Read our blogs on the partnership with Fife Young Carers to develop this here. 
• Developed a direct systems change response to 70% of parents requiring primary advice. We are working in partnerships to develop a Primary Toolkit to empower families to independently navigate their journey and support practitioners connecting with families. The working group included DWP, Scottish Women’s Aid, OPFS, CAB, and those with lived experience. We are looking to launch the online Toolkit in early 2026.  
• Continued to focus on supporting parents in Fife with complex child maintenance issues including, calculations disputes, significant arrears and 1st tier tribunal processes. We are working with Poverty Alliance this year to evaluate the impact of this focused service delivery for complex casework – why it’s needed, what difference it makes and the case for change.  
• Worked to ensuring our model is supportive and trauma informed, grounded in our ability to build relationships and trust. We know that domestic abuse is a barrier to child maintenance for almost 60% of the parents accessing support. Meeting with the DWP Domestic Abuse policy team to share the experiences of families and the need to improve the approach within CMS.  

We have continued to work as part of the wider Transforming Child Maintenance partnership to shape the recommendations in the final report. 

The CMS has become a residual service by design. A service for families who have found it impossible to reach the UK government’s preferred outcome of a private family-based maintenance arrangement. What should have been the primary objective of securing maintenance arrangements for as many children as possible (widening access to support to all parents) is today secondary to promoting private resolution.

Our polling indicates that parents are 78% in favour of a more fundamental change in direction: an approach to child maintenance in the UK that prioritises getting maintenance arrangements in place, no matter their design, complexion or scale of state involvement. Here is where a more active state can play a larger role in ensuring less children of separated parents grow up in poverty.

We are calling for the DWP to reform the current system into a Child Maintenance Payment Platform which replaces Direct Pay and opens the systems behind Collect & Pay to all parents to manage their arrangements if they desire it. The platform would be inclusive and support the whole spectrum of child maintenance arrangements, facilitating and enforcement payments where appropriate without fees, and offer a consistent interface for parents to manage payments.

What we’ve learned

As the Project Coordinator, I learn something new every day. But here are some of the most powerful insights: 

• Parents fare better when complex issues are met with consistent, trauma-informed support. 
• Domestic abuse is the most significant barrier to accessing child maintenance. 
• Existing information for families navigating the system is often complex, inconsistent, and inaccessible. 
• There’s a critical lack of resources for children and young people, even though those aged 12+ in Scotland can make their own child maintenance claim. 
• Advice practitioners often feel under-skilled and unconfident discussing child maintenance, so it’s not always embedded in financial inclusion interventions.  
• Families face little to no legal support when cases escalate to tribunal. 
• The current narrative around child maintenance is stigmatising and distracts from the welfare of the child. 

Did we achieve what we set out to do? 

Absolutely. We: 

• Supported almost 200 families in Fife on their child maintenance journey. 
• Secured over £105,000 in regular, reliable child maintenance for children. 
• Boosted the confidence of over 300 frontline practitioners across Scotland. 
• Amplified the voice of families with lived experience.  
• Co-created a children and young persons child maintenance resource.