057f3528_1997_articles__s__not_necessarily_contiguous_
[Date & reference] 1997-03-19 This Is Lancashire CSA must cope
THE controversial Child Support Agency may have climbed out of the administrative chaos that blighted its birth in 1993 but it still needs to improve its act. For, even now, it has a big backlog of cases. A Commons select committee reports today that, despite a substantially improved performance by the agency, only about a third of lone parents on Income Support and Family Credit have received a CSA assessment. That is a raw deal for lots of single parents - and the taxpayers. For the agency was set up to take lone parents off benefit by ensuring that they received proper maintenance payments from their absent ex-partners. Considering that there are 1.46 million of them on benefit, the CSA's giant backlog suggests that too many dodging dads are still too easily evading their responsibilities to their children and society. The time has run out for the CSA to plead teething troubles and, unless it can convincingly show that it has not sufficient resources to cope with its caseload, it should now start putting the bite on hard.
1997 articles
Extracts (not necessarily contiguous)