>>> Now, as taxpayers we applaud the general principle. However, in the real world, if a father- "errant" or otherwise- knows that most of his payment will go to the state rather than getting through to his children, he has little natural incentive to pay at all. And faced with a hugely complicated system operated by an agency in permanent crisis, many have chosen not to.
You're 90% there, Wat, and missing only a reference to the fundamental structural flaw in the concept of the CSA - you cannot reduce a situation as individual and deeply personal as the breakdown of the relationship in to a set of rules and formulae that can be administered by a office scutter earning 10-12K a year.
The old system in which such things were dealt with by the courts may have been far from perfect but it did have the merit of providing individual solutions based on the circumstances of individual cases - an effective Child Support system is necessarily somewhat labour intensive at the point of assessment in order to provide tailored solutions but with the trade-off of delivering higher returns by providing for a fair system which incentivises payment.
The point about the CSA is that it is a way of forcing errant fathers to meet their responsibilities and so avoid the mothers sponging off the state instead. There must come a point at which the cure is more expensive than the disease. Any data on that, Wat?
There's broadly 2 types of errant father: divorcees who want to wash their hands of the whole business and blackguardly seducers absconding after having had their wicked way. In either case the simplest solution is a clean-break with a lump sum settled in trust to support the children (but not the mother) so the father can run off if he wants. If the father, of either category, doesn't have the assets to fund something like that, then it probably isn't worth pursuing them for tuppence a week.
The realflaw of the CSA is that it is trying to enforce an undoubted moral responsibility in a welfare system which deliberately does not "punish" people for "wrong choices" - such as, having children by men without being sure you can support them. I'm not sure how tolerable people would find a welfare system which did punish people.
Hard-headed practical advice for solving this problem? How about Oliver Goldsmith:
"When lovely woman stoops to folly
And finds too late that men betray
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What art can wash her tears away?
The only art her guilt to cover
To hide her shame from ev'ry eye
To give repentence to her lover
And wring his bosom is - to die."
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