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Children: Maintenance

Volume 503: debated on Wednesday 13 January 2010

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many referrals were made to the Child Maintenance Options website from Jobcentre Plus in each month since July 2008; how many telephone contacts were made to the Child Maintenance Options helpline in each such month; and how many unique visits the Child Maintenance Options website received. (300691)

The Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission is responsible for the child maintenance system. I have asked the Child Maintenance Commissioner to write to the hon. Member with the information requested and I have seen the response.

Letter from Stephen Geraghty:

In reply to your recent Parliamentary Question about the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, the Secretary of State promised a substantive reply from the Child Maintenance Commissioner.

You asked the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many referrals were made to the Child Maintenance Options website from Jobcentre Plus in each month since July 2008; how many telephone contacts were made to the Child Maintenance Options helpline in each such month; and how many unique visits the Child Maintenance Options website received. [300691]

Jobcentre Plus in England, Wales and Scotland provide a leaflet for all new clients with a child maintenance interest to introduce the Child Maintenance Options service and then asks them if they wish to be referred. Those who agree have their contact details passed on to Child Maintenance Options, which subsequently contacts them by phone. Although the Child Maintenance Options website address is included in the leaflet, Jobcentre Plus customers are not directly referred to the Child Maintenance Options website.

The number of telephone contacts made to the Child Maintenance Options service and the number of unique visits to the Child Maintenance Options website are provided in the attached table. The table also includes information on the successful outbound contacts.

I hope you find this answer helpful.

Number of telephone contacts made to the Child Maintenance Options service July 2008 to September 2009

Child Maintenance Options calls received1,2

Number of successful contacts on outbound calls4

July3

3,800

9,900

August

3,800

6,200

September

4,600

6,200

October

5,400

4,800

November

5,800

10,000

December

3,900

9,100

January

6,400

13,300

February

6,300

15,000

March

6,900

15,000

April

6,300

12,800

May

7,800

14,000

June

7,500

16,200

July

11,300

15,600

August

8,400

13,000

September

13,300

14,200

Number of unique visits to the Child Maintenance Options website July 2008 to September 2009Unique visits to the Child Maintenance Options website4July6,000August13,700September22,300October28,500November32,200December20,400January39,600February33,400March35,500April30,800May31,100June31,100July61,100August50,800September72,300 1 Figures for the calls received are rounded to the nearest 100.2 Calls received exclude those outside working hours.3 Figures for July include those from the prototype phase of the service as well as the live running from 14 July onwards.4 Represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to the Option website over the course of a specified time period.