Schedule 1
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
10:15 am
Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)
The Minister and the Department are right to attempt to predict future staffing levels. No business or organisation would embark on establishing an entirely new department or company without taking that into due consideration. However, the premise on which the staffing levels have been based anticipates that a large number of cases will move over to a different type of system—the voluntary arrangements. As we were told during the evidence-taking session, parents now have an opportunity to enter into voluntary arrangements, and 50,000 parents across the UK do so. There is no obligation at the moment; nobody drives parents towards the Child Support Agency. Therefore, I am not sure whether the premise on which the staffing reductions are based is correct.
As for the words “appropriate staffing levels” in the amendment, surely one way to guarantee appropriate staffing levels would be to explore further the option of a key caseworker scenario. In the evidence-taking session we were told that the department and its lines operate for 66 or 68 hours a week. In my experience of key caseworker scenarios, that is fine, because there is a back-up key caseworker, so two people share one case. Parents are made aware of when their key caseworker is working, either by e-mail or another system. It would be possible to have appropriate staffing levels and for parents to have a better service if they were aware of when their key caseworker would be working and when their cases could be managed. We know that sometimes 20 or 30 people deal with a case. One person with one computer screen dealing with one case would give better outcomes, both for parents and staff, and may even reduce sickness levels in the Department.