CSA and voluntary "extras"

My partner pay the CSA plus half of all school related items such as school trips, school shoes, bags, coats

He also on his days he pays for childcare, school uniform, school dinners. He takes time of if necessary for sickness, cover dentists and doctor appointments.

BUT according to his ex he only does the minimum!

Mathis,

Your partners ex should meet my ex. £30.50 a week csa, 6 and 1/2 hours a week contact and spends no more than £50 on birthdays or christmas despite paying at least £100 for golf shoes. I asked him if he had seen any bags for school as i was struggling to find the right colour and he told me to look on ebay! It might revise her opinion of ''the minimum''!!!

Parents can''t pay more than they have but to give an idea of the costs of raising a child research published this week by the Child Poverty Action Group put costs on average around £150 a week to meet the minimum needs of a child. That works out at £21 a day per child.

www.cpag.org.uk/content/new-cpag-researc...tting-more-expensive

If you read the details it states a lone parent costs are £20 more a child than if your a couple?

The headline figures also includes housing childcare and council tax.

Would be interested in what the costs would be if you didnt consider housing/council tax/bills as thats payable by couples without children and NRP so dont think the figure actually reflects additional costs of a child.

Mathsisfun wrote:

If you read the details it states a lone parent costs are £20 more a child than if your a couple.

The headline figures also includes housing childcare and council tax.

Would be interested in what the costs would be if you didnt consider housing/council tax/bills as thats payable by couples without children and NRP so dont think the figure actually reflects additional costs of a child.

They can make up figures to say anything they want when you go into these sort of statistics though. I mean why would it cost £20 more per day to clothe and feed a child from a household with one adult as oppossed to two?

Thats my thought too but missed the question mark!! Its just figures and no facts to back it up. It also includes a lot of assumed costs.

You really need to read the study to understand the methodology.

Table 1 ( Cost of a Child 2012 page 40) breaks down the additional costs of each child and at the bottom it gives the figures excluding rent, childcare and council tax.

Explanations why the the additional costs of children rise in lone families and why the study assumes that households are social tenants rather than families who rent privately or own their own home are on page 42.