The House of Commons Library has published a useful collation of recent statistics relating to child maintenance. In the most recent statistics which cover the 2022/23 financial year, the Department for Work and Pensions estimated there were 2.4 million separated families in Great Britain, and 3.8 million children living in separated families. Around 59 per cent of separated families were estimated to have a child maintenance arrangement. The Child Maintenance Service was the sole organiser of maintenance for around 16 per cent of separated families. In the quarter ending March 2024, there were around 658,000 paying parents on Child Maintenance […]

New research from NSPCC reveals that most (83 per cent) professionals across healthcare, the police, children’s social care and education believe there are not enough services available to provide support for children experiencing neglect. Professionals report that the current response is ‘inadequate and slow’. The report – Too little, too late, the multi-agency response to identifying and tackling neglect – also shows that in 2023/2024, neglect was once again the top concern reported to the NSPCC Helpline: 20,571 contacts were made by adults worried about the wellbeing of a child and almost half of these contacts (47 per cent) led […]

During an average shift on the shop floor at Next, Helen Scarsbrook has to remain polite and keep smiling while she makes split-second judgments about which customers need help and which need to be tactfully discouraged from shoplifting and ushered out of the store. She and her mostly female colleagues are on their feet for long stretches and regularly do heavy lifting as new stock arrives at the back of the shop. She is confident that her work in one of Next’s 466 UK stores is just as challenging, or more so, as the jobs performed by Next’s mostly male […]