Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will direct the Child Maintenance Service to recognise care provided by grandparents and other family carers when calculating maintenance payments for parents who share the care of their children.

Our approach to shared care is to amend the maintenance calculation if the child in a case spends more than 52 nights a year at the same address as the non-resident parent. This is to recognise the additional costs directly borne by a parent to be able to provide shared care, such as having an extra bedroom in which the child can stay.

There are no plans to expand the shared care allowance to include overnight care that grandparents and other family carers provide as the responsibility lies with the non-resident parent to pay the maintenance liability.