1. Maintenance Matters Emma Yorke – Campaigns Officer at Gingerbread

2. Who we are
Gingerbread is the leading charity working with single parent families. Supporting, advising and campaigning with single mums and dads to help them meet their family’s needs.
What we do:
Supporting single parents to (re)enter work
Peer support
Advice and information
Campaigns and policy
Single parents voices are at the heart of our campaigns

3. The campaign
Child maintenance is more than just money, it helps provide the basics for children, from food on the table to clothes on their backs.
The government cannot walk away from the task of collecting unpaid maintenance debts. 
Single parents tell us the issues they’ve faced accessing child maintenance. We know that the majority of single parents don’t have a formal child maintenance arrangement in place.
One of the key things we’re calling for is:
Zero-tolerance on non-payment – problems with paying parents avoiding payments, enforcement and uncollected child maintenance

4. The e-action
Mobilise supporters to contact their MP and highlight the amount of arrears in their constituency. Also, to share their experiences with their MP.
Raise the profile of the non-payment of child maintenance and arrears with parliamentarians.
The e-action formed a key moment in the campaign complementing our wider child maintenance project
Worked with a developer to embed FOI data in Engaging Networks so an image of the amount of arrears per constituency would appear
Encouraging single parents to write about their case and the impact non-payment has on their families to MPs through our external comms channels.
Sent parliamentary briefings to all MPs stating the amount of arrears in their constituency, the number of single parent families and the impact non-payment has on families
Contacted MPs whose constituencies had the highest amount of arrears, to give them a heads up
The e-action enabled me to draw on one of the key messages of the campaign – zero-tolerance on non-payment

5. The e-action
This is what the action looked like….with a thank you page once action completed and a thank you asking the supporter to promote the action.

6. Penny Mordaunt MP - Conservative
What worked well
Over 120 MPs pledged support for the campaign
Over 1,200 supporters took action
Minister responded to MPs and to us – currently reviewing our recommendations
3,500 people engaged in campaign some way on our website
Penny Mordaunt MP - Conservative
Highlights:
Reaching new audiences meant that over 1,000 people took the e-action. Also approached by organisations to feature the campaign as their ‘campaign of the week’, pathing the way for new relationships
Over 100 people signed up to our campaigner base – growing our campaigns list
Parliamentarians were shocked at the figures and the number of families effected. 120 MPs showed support for the campaign – signed the EDM, wrote to the Minister, active on Twitter, released a PR and tabled a parliamentary question on CM
mostly to take the action but also to read single parents blogs, the missing maintenance report or head to our advice and information on child maintenance.
Joined up approach with other teams - Working closely with media colleague – who targeted the top worst constituencies/with the highest arrears received fantastic local media coverage – giving us greater impact
Karl Turner MP - Labour
Marion Fellows MP - SNP

7. Lessons learnt Think about: - Testing and checking
- Supporter journeys
- Quick and easy actions
- Criticising vs supporting
Pushing out action to a new audience boosted engagement – but need to revisit supporter journeys.
Few supporters actually wrote about their child maintenance case in the letter to the MP – but we learnt that single parents do not have a lot of time and want quick and easy ways to campaign
Recipients’ postcodes were not initially being pulled into their letter but colleagues at EN supported to quickly rectify this – parliamentary protocol
Challenges between advice products that support single parents to use the service vs cristising/holding CMS to account
I’ve found that, although this is quite an old school action and one that most campaigners are used to – they can still be very effective in exposing new data to supporters and decision – can work really well for a key moment of a campaign

8. Impact
Having had direct personal experience of non-payment of child maintenance I am delighted to support your campaign.
Having considered setting up a campaign myself, but being daunted by the sheer scale and complexity of the problems and obstacles facing parents fighting for financial justice for their children, I was so inspired to see Gingerbread's clear, compelling, well researched and evidenced campaign.
I would like to talk to you about how else I can help including sharing my own personal story and giving of some of my time.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Single parents voices are at the heart of our campaigning

9. Next steps
Monitoring and responding to the external political environment
Capacity building with single parents
Sharing single parent stories
The e-action formed part of our policy and research work on child maintenance
Department of Work and Pensions review on the service – will be responding to
Working with single parents to create a toolkit to better support single parents to campaign
More single parents have come forward to share their story – we want to develop these relationships
Planning next steps – MP engagement and further opps to influence

10. Emma Yorke – Campaigns Officer