After BBC Panorama: What Happens to Children When Child Maintenance Doesn't Arrive?

The recent Child Maintenance: Parents under Pressure BBC documentary put the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), and the experiences of parents on both sides of it, under scrutiny.

Behind arguments about calculations, arrears and enforcement sits a question: what happens to a child's everyday life when the money they are supposed to receive doesn't arrive?

For some families, this can make the difference between being above or below the poverty line.

Government figures estimate that child-maintenance payments keep around 120,000 children a year out of relative low income after housing costs. Across the three financial years ending 2023 to 2025, parents with care received an estimated £2.9 billion a year in maintenance.

This isn't peripheral spending money. It forms part of the household income paying for the ordinary business of raising a child.

Missing money can mean missing things

Research published by Gingerbread, the charity supporting single-parent families, in 2024 revealed that, of 777 parents with care who either had no child-maintenance arrangement or were not generally receiving all the maintenance agreed, 49% said they had been unable to buy shoes, clothes or school uniform for their children. More than half reported struggling with food or essential bills, while 57% said they had got into debt.

Although this survey was not nationally representative, it does tell us what inadequate maintenance can look like inside some households and how children continue to need things whether the payment arrives or not.

How much maintenance goes missing?

With Direct Pay, CMS calculates how much maintenance is due, but the paying parent sends the money directly to the receiving parent. Because the payment doesn't pass through CMS, it cannot automatically know whether it arrives³.

Further research from the DWP shows only 60% of receiving parents using Direct Pay said they usually received the full amount calculated, and just 40% said payments were always on time⁴.

Where CMS does handle the payments, the missing money becomes visible. Around 86,000 children received no maintenance at all during the three months to March 2026.

But the figures stop at the payment. They don't tell us what happened next: whether families borrowed, used savings, sought help or simply went without.

Clothing isn't an optional extra

When the DWP measures children's material deprivation, it asks whether they have ‘enough clothes that they feel comfortable to wear’. Adequate clothing is one of the things Government uses to understand children's material living standards.

Research with families receiving inadequate maintenance tells us that clothes, shoes and school uniform can be among the things they struggle to afford.

We cannot say how many children go without adequate clothing specifically because maintenance is missing, irregular or reduced. No national dataset makes that connection.

But that missing number shouldn't obscure what we do know.

A child still grows out of their shoes. They still need a coat. They still need something to wear to school tomorrow.

The material question is what happens when the promised money isn't there.

Feel like you could be doing something to help support the children impacted by this? Learn the different simple ways you can Support Us.