Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that Child Maintenance Service users who are assigned to the specialist domestic abuse caseworker team are transferred to that team when they contact the Child Maintenance Service helpline.

The Government is committed to ensuring that victims and survivors of domestic abuse receive the support they need when using the Child Maintenance Service (CMS).

The CMS has a Specialist Caseworker team that provides targeted support for customers experiencing the most challenging or complex domestic abuse situations. All CMS caseworkers receive training to identify indicators of domestic abuse and to refer appropriate cases to the specialist team.

Once the CMS has moved a customer’s case into the Specialist Caseworker team, all inbound calls from that customer will route directly to that team. If the automated call routing cannot identify the customer, their call will go to a different team, but all caseworkers are trained to identify this and will reroute the call to the Specialist Caseworker Team. CMS has strengthened telephony quality assurance arrangements and provided targeted training for team leaders on service standards, coaching and feedback. These measures are designed to support consistent service delivery and help ensure customers requiring specialist support are identified and transferred appropriately.