Site history during 2001 & 2002

There are not many changes this time - Christmas got in the way!

One important addition is a paper by students at Newcastle-upon -Tyne University:
Identifying the Cause of the Child Support Agency's Problems

There are also minor additions to the histories of child support in the USA.

The assessment calculator/spreadsheet has been updated with the October 2002 benefit rate increases.

There is significant extra material in the UK & USA history pages:

History of child support in the UK
History of child support in the USA

Two papers from 1998 have been added:

"Children First" & Second Family Children: Analysis of the issues and options
"Children First" & Sharing of Care: Problems with the proposed formula, and a revised proposal

There have been many minor updates and corrections.

See below - there was a major face-lift between the original 14th edition and this edition.

The primary new material in this edition is within two topics that are deliberately being expanded in parallel:

The international scene - child support across the world
The history of child support - in the UK and elsewhere

To support the above history project, two guest papers have been added to supply comprehensive reference material for "liability to maintain" and related topics:

The Liability To Maintain And The Child Support Act: A Reference Paper by Peter Snow (1998)
The Child Support Act And The Filius Nullius: The Illegitimate Child by Peter Snow (1994)

Some responses from key politicians to a recent paper of mine are included:

Letter from Baroness Hollis, Minister for Child Support (etc)
Letter from Steve Webb, Liberal Democrats Spokesperson

These on-line papers have been updated ready to send to the Human Genetics Commission:

"The truth is out there" - Commentary on "Move to outlaw secret DNA testing by fathers"
"Knowledge is bliss"- Towards a society without paternity surprises

A number of pages have been provided about paternity and infidelity testing:

Here are some pages about paternity testing, including links to "peace of mind" tests on the Internet
This page identifies relatively cheap tests for infidelity, available over the Internet

There are many minor improvements to the main index pages (linked to from the buttons on the left).

This is a "face lift" update of the entire web site. The objectives are:

• to make the style of the whole site more consistent and visually more useful & attractive
• to improve navigation across the web site, especially to make it easier to get access to all of the material available
• to make it easier to develop the web site and evolve its appearance in future

The main method to achieve this is (for the first time) to use "cascading style sheets" (CSSs). All pages now use (linked) CSSs, and perhaps 80% or more of the styles throughout the whole web site are now determined by these style sheets.

An additional change is that all content pages now provide easy access to the Site Map, and hence to the entire content of the web site.

There are 3 new on-line papers by me:

"Child Support should be for Children" - A proposal for reform (a proposal to government)
"The truth is out there" - Commentary on "Move to outlaw secret DNA testing by fathers" (a future submission to the Human Genetics Commission)
"Knowledge is bliss"- Towards a society without paternity surprises (draft of a future submission to the Human Genetics Commission)

There is brief news of the NACSA AGM and NACSA's transition to Ltd status.

Child Support Analysis has been repositioned as a small independent think-tank, with this as its web site.

There are many minor improvements to the home page and to the main index pages (linked to from the buttons on the left).

The "Child Support Agenda for the 21st Century" has been evolved and described in much more detail.

An "International Child Support Agenda for the 21st Century" has been started.

Previous month's extra news article extracts have now been merged into the general set. There are many minor updates to links, for example to recent legislation.

The main addition in this edition is the Agenda for the post-reform system:

Agenda for the 21st Century.

Child Support for the 21st Century.

This edition expands the background information about the computer systems used by the CSA. The starting point is: The CSA and its computer systems - summary. It includes more news items, and more information from Parliament.

Some more extracts of news articles have been added. They are shown in a new page for a month, ready to be merged into the general set of news articles next month. (Last month's extra news article extracts have now been merged into the general set).

There are several minor improvements to the main index pages (linked to from the buttons on the left).
The colour scheme has been changed (to be less aggressive!)

This edition provides background information about the computer systems used by the CSA. This includes:

The CSA and its computer systems - summary
Parliament and the CSA computer systems (information from Hansard)
News articles about the CSA computer systems
EDS - Electronic Data Systems (the key supplier of the CSA's computer systems)

The main NACSA domain www.nacsa.org has been taken over by a totally unrelated organisation.

NACSA are re-establishing the real NACSA site at domain www.nacsa.org.uk.

A multi-page article describing the reformed system - the law, timetable, formula, etc - has been added. The intention is that this will become one of the best on-line descriptions of the reformed system.

Links to the CSA web site have been updated to reflect its new domain (www.csa.gov.uk).

Last month's extra news article extracts have now been merged into the general set. There wasn't time to add more news articles this month.

Here is the announcement & debate in Hansard of a delay to the reformed system.

Here are news articles announcing the delay.

The sections dealing with Social Security have been completely reorganised into separate pages. These are partly indexed by the charter of the uk.gov.social-security newsgroup but it is not necessary to know that to find information.

Some more extracts of news articles have been added. They are shown in a new page for a month, ready to be merged into the general set of news articles next month. (Last month's extra news article extracts have now been merged into the general set). The ZIP file of the full text of all the published news articles has been updated, and is available from the "Downloads" page.

The FAQ for the uk.gov.agency.csa newsgroup has been updated a little.

There are not many changes this time - Christmas & New Year's Eve got in the way!

Several more news articles have been added. They are shown in a new page for a month, ready to be merged into the general set of news articles next month. (Last month's extra news articles have now been merged into the general set).

The links to Social Security information on the Internet have been extended and updated.

The assessment spreadsheet has been enhanced. Most of the changes are cosmetic, intended to make it easier to use accurately. A significant enhancement is that the assessment now provides the user with a schedule of changes over a number of years as an existing case is phased-over to the reformed scheme.

Material on the "cost of children" from the Family Budget Unit has been added.

Some changes have been made to the hypertext FAQ for the uk.gov.agency.csa newsgroup, ready for this to replace the FAQ which is posted to the newsgroup.

The links to Social Security information on the Internet have been extended and updated.

A page identifying downloadable material has been added.

Many more news articles have been added. They are shown in a new page for a month, ready to be merged into the general set of news articles next month.

There has been a significant update to the hypertext FAQ for the uk.gov.agency.csa newsgroup.

The links to Social Security information on the Internet have been significantly updated.

There is a discussion on the (welcome) reforms taking place within NACSA.

Many pages have minor corrections & other improvements.

Nearly all of the "main index" pages have been updated and simplified.

The major additions are references and extracts of about 300 newspaper articles about the CSA from 1994 onward.

The links, books and papers, etc, have been restructured and extended, with some commentaries.

More links are provided to the legislation, and a start has been made on providing explanations. (In this edition, how "variations" in the reformed scheme will affect NRPs' new partners).

Nearly all of the "main index" pages have been updated.

There is now a site map which identifies nearly every page on this web site.

Many other pages have been improved, and most of the external links re-checked and corrected where necessary.

There are contributions at the "Correspondence" and "Articles and papers" pages.

The launch of this web site. Everything is new in this edition!