Provides free impartial information, guidance and support to parents as well as family, friends and professionals to make the most effective arrangements for parents and their children.
Child Maintenance Options
Who to contact
- Telephone
- 0800 988 0988
- Website
- Child Maintenance Options
- Notes
Available over the phone, via a website or face-to-face together with Live Chat facility for real-time online support.
Helps parents overcome barriers to working together (such as housing, employment, legal issues and money)
Signposts customers to other support services
Is the ‘gateway’ to the Child Maintenance Service
Child Maintenance Options helps both parents make informed choices about child maintenance, based on their individual circumstances.
The fact that it is impartial means it can help both parents and it isn’t biased towards any one way of arranging child maintenance.
It can help parents who:
need information about child maintenance
are separating from the other parent or are not living with them and need to set up a child maintenance arrangement
have a child maintenance arrangement that has broken down or is not working
are thinking of switching from a Child Support Agency (CSA) or a Child Maintenance Service (CMS) case to a family-based/ private arrangementGateway to 2012 Scheme:
In order to apply to the Child Maintenance Service 2012 Scheme the applicant must have spoken to the Child Maintenance Options service first and been provided with a unique identifier reference number.
Those with Domestic Violence issues will be ‘fast tracked’ to the 2012 Scheme.