Re:consentorder

what does PWC stand for & mean?

PWC stands for Parent With Care, and means the parent who has the majority of time with the children, ie, with whom the children live.

AN NRP is a Non-Resident Parent.

Around 95% of NRPs are fathers.

You would never see an abbreviation like that in a consent order, are you sure that's what you are reading.

Ruby, I would be interested to know where the figure of 95% NRPs being fathers came from. The 2001 census reported that 10% of single families were headed by a father. There is a correlation with employment statistics - about 90% of men with dependent children work in full time inflexible jobs and fathers work longer hours than any other group of men. See;

http://www.dad.info/work/can-you-share-work-and-kids-in-the-u k/

As far as I'm aware since 2001 the number of families headed by a lone father has only dropped slightly (less than 1%) due to shared residence being more common now.

Fiona, the figure of 95% of NRPs being Fathers/male is a CSA statistic, from as recent as December 2008. If you are interested, I can email you the spreadsheet which contains this information/stat (its too big to attach to this post).

I couldn't see anything in the link you provided that would suggest the CSA statistic is incorrect Does the 2001 stat take into account the number of widowers who are lone parents?

Shared residence is indeed more common, but doesn't always mean that time is shared equally, and for CB and tax credit purposes there would be a PWC even in shared parenting arrangements.

rubytuesday wrote:
Fiona, the figure of 95% of NRPs being Fathers/male is a CSA statistic, from as recent as December 2008. If you are interested, I can email you the spreadsheet which contains this information/stat (its too big to attach to this post).

I couldn't see anything in the link you provided that would suggest the CSA statistic is incorrect Does the 2001 stat take into account the number of widowers who are lone parents?

Shared residence is indeed more common, but doesn't always mean that time is shared equally, and for CB and tax credit purposes there would be a PWC even in shared parenting arrangements.


Ok I see, but the Child Support Agency only handles maintenance for just over a third of children living in separated families. At the end of September 2011 the CSA live and assessed caseload stood at 1.14m. and according to the DWP the number of dependent children living in single families in the UK is about 3m(2010). What about those families where the CSA isn't involved?

Thank you, I have a copy of the 2008 figures somewhere on my old computer. I thought you may have had more more up-to-date information that took into account the changes to the CSA/C-MEC in recent years.

The 2001 census figure includes both widows and widowers who are lone parents. If I remember correctly the combined total of all widows and widowers is only about .2% of the UK population for ages 25-44. In this age range there are actually more widows than widowers. The rate then increases to 2% until retirement age when there are more widowers than widows. There will be a better picture of the current situation once the results of 2011 census begin to be released in the spring.

Anyway if 90% (ONS 2009?) of men in work with dependent children are in full-time jobs and fathers work longer hours than any group of men, whereas the majority of women (70%) with children take career breaks and/or work in poorly paid part time inflexible jobs, surely it is reasonable and only to be expected that a high % of fathers will be responsible for paying child support?

So any which way you look at it the number is probably in the range of 90-95%, i would guess that those who agree without the CSA are still in the same boat with a very high % of men being NRP`s, i can only think of one bloke on wiki or maybe two who are men and the resident parent.