Kirith Entwistle

Absolutely. Even more troubling is that 45% of the parents in that research said that the CMS’s involvement had actually led to an increase in abusive behaviour. Those figures should stop us in our tracks. For survivors, the very experience of using the CMS can be deeply distressing. From the cold tone of emails and letters to the aggressive and harsh text messages, right through to the opaque way payments are calculated, the process can be deeply triggering for those who have experienced abuse. At the very beginning, survivors are asked whether they have experienced abuse and what form that abuse took. For a moment, there is hope that the system might understand the gravity of that disclosure, but what follows is often little more than signposting to a list of organisations before the process simply continues as though the question had never been asked. Ultimately, the disclosure changes nothing. There is no meaningful change in how the case is handled, no structural safeguards and no recognition that the dynamics of abuse may shape the entire case. Crucially, it does nothing to change the tone of communications with the CMS. For someone who has taken enormous personal risk to leave an abusive partner, that can feel like jumping out of a plane only to find that there is no parachute, no safe landing and no one to catch them when they fall.