Coronavirus upheaval has sparked an increase in fathers not paying child maintenance payments, experts warned.

The Department for Work and Pensions is allowing parents who generally pay child maintenance to stop forking out money for their children without carrying out an investigation amid the Covid-19 chaos.

Gingerbread, the leading single-parent charity, warned many single-parent families will be pushed into stark poverty if they do not receive child maintenance payments.

Around 70 per cent of the two million single parents living in the UK are currently in work, but three out of 10 single parents working are living in poverty. Some 90 per cent of single parents are women.

Anne Neale, of Legal Action for Women, told The Independent she had encountered fathers refusing to pay maintenance during the pandemic.

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Show all 13 1 /13 Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Cheryll Mack, 46, a registered nurse in the emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The Covid-19 spread has affected a lot of livelihood, a lot of people's lives. It has created a crisis, death in general. So I would like to ask not one single person, but all people worldwide, to converge and join the platform that this is something that nobody can fight individually," said Mack. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Dr Laura Bontempo, 50, an emergency medicine doctor wears her personal protective equipment she uses when she sees patients, while posing for a photograph after a nine-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moments have actually been separating families from patients, there is a no-visitor policy now and taking people away from their loved ones is very challenging," Bontempo said. "I'm used to treating sick patients. I treat sick patients all the time. It's very different knowing that the patient you are treating, is actually a risk to you as well. That's the main difference here. No one who works in hospitals is afraid of treating sick people. Just want to keep staff safe and the patients safe at the same time." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Ernest Capadngan, 29, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment during the shift was just seeing Covid patients die helpless and without their family members beside them," Capadngan said. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Martine Bell, 41, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a six-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The hardest thing in all of this, has been taking care of fellow healthcare providers. It really hits home and it's really scary when you see someone that could be you coming in and now you're taking care of them. It's also hitting home that once healthcare providers start getting sick, who is going to be taking care of the public," Bell said. "It's very stressful, everyone is on edge. We don't know who's coming in next, or how sick they're going to be, or if we are going to get a whole bunch of people or if we're not going to get no one. It's a really stressful and just a completely unusual time for all of us." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Kaitlyn Martiniano, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital. "We have a lot of patients and they are pretty sick right now but we have not yet been hit as hard as New York or Seattle, so I feel like we are very lucky with that so far. Every day you have to just be optimistic." Said Martiniano. "I think the reason that we are not being hit as hard right now is because so many things are closed, and because so many people are staying at home." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Tracey Wilson, 53, a nurse practitioner in an intensive care unit (ICU), poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I had a patient fall out of bed today and I had to call his wife and tell her and she couldn't come see him, even though she pleaded and begged to come see him," Wilson said. "There is a lot of unknowns and with that unknown is a lot of anxiety and stress that we're not used to dealing with." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Meghan Sheehan, 27, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I think the hardest moment has been the fear that lives within all of us. There is a lot of unknown right now. We fear what's going to happen tomorrow, how the emergency department will look next week when we come in. We have fears about our own colleagues, whether they will fall ill. We also fear that we could be asymptomatic carriers and bring this virus home to our families and our loved ones. There has been a lot of fear over our supplies and whether we'll run out. And then obviously there is the fear that we will see patients and not be able to do everything we normally can to help save patients' lives," Sheehan said. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Kimberly Bowers, 44, a nurse practitioner in an ICU, poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was a young woman who died and her family wasn't able to be here with her," Bowers said. "I think right now, it's just frustrating and scary just not knowing what comes next." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Tiffany Fare, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "One of the hardest moments was having to see a family member of a Covid patient, say goodbye over an iPad, rooms away. That was a tough one, I can't imagine how hard it would be to be saying goodbye, you can't see your loved one and then they're gone," Fare said. "My team has been really great to me. We've worked really well together and we've really come together in this crisis. We don't really know each other, we all come from different units within the same hospital, so for us to come together and work so well as a team, it's been a journey but I think that's what is giving me hope." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Dr Kyle Fischer, 35, an emergency medicine doctor, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where he works. "Since it's a new virus, we don't have any experience with it. For most diseases I am used to seeing it and taking care of it and this, I don't have any starting place. I know what I'm hearing from New York, I've read all of the papers it seems like, but no one knows what the correct answers are, so there's a huge amount of uncertainty and people are really, really sick. So it's hard to second guess whether or not you are doing the right thing when you think you are but you never quite know," said Fischer. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Julia Trainor, 23, a registered nurse at a surgical ICU, poses for a photograph after a 14-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was having to put a breathing tube in my patient who could no longer breathe for herself and after the breathing tube went in, we called her family and the husband, of course, couldn't visit her because of visitor restrictions at the hospital. So I had to put him on the phone and hold the phone to her ear, as he told her that he loved her so much and then I had to wipe away her tears as she was crying," said Trainor. "I'm used to seeing very sick patients and I'm used to patients dying but nothing quite like this. In the flip of a switch, without the support, they're completely isolated. They're very sick. Some of them recover and some of them don't. But the hardest part, I would think, is them having to go through this feeling like they are alone." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Lisa Mehring, 45, a registered nurse who works in a biocontainment unit with Covid-19 patients, poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works in Maryland. "Seeing these new moms have babies has been the hardest moment along with having do their pumping for the new moms and them not being able to be with their newborn children, it's hard to think of the family that they are missing," Mehring said. Photos Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Jacqueline Hamil, 30, a registered nurse in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital. "The hardest moment of my shift today, I was in charge, and we had a really sick patient that was in a really, really small room and usually, when we have sick crashing patients, we can have a ton of resources and a ton of staff go in and help with the nurse and the doctors that are taking care of that patient. But due to the patient being ruled out for the coronavirus, we could only have five or six people in the room at a time and putting on all the gowns and gloves and masks and face shields to protect us in case the patient does have coronavirus, it takes a while, so the nurse that was in there, ended up being in the room for you know 6, 7 hours with minimal breaks and it was hard being in charge and knowing that she was stuck in the room and really nothing I could do to help her," Hamil said. Reuters

Ms Neale, who runs the campaign group’s Support Not Separation Coalition and also supports women going through family courts, said: “In one case, a father pressing for contact made one maintenance payment of £7 the day before the court hearing but stopped almost immediately when lockdown delayed proceedings.

“In another, a father paying £45 for three children stopped as soon as lockdown ​[happened].”

Joe Richardson, of Gingerbread, said many of the children of single parents are facing an “indefinite suspension or reduction in maintenance payments”, which they desperately depend on.

He added: “Of the many families already impacted by this, most weren’t even notified by the Child Maintenance Service (CMS), and only became aware when the maintenance payments did not arrive.

“Without these payments, single-parent families will be hit with a ‘triple penalty’. Having already faced the threat of seeing their income slashed and as well as having to come up with the extra costs associated with looking after children not attending school, they are also losing out on money they rely on to put food on the table. Given almost half of children in single-parent families already live in poverty, the consequences of these penalties are unimaginable.

“It is clear that Covid-19 will have a negative impact on both parents’ finances. However, taking money away from the households of families and children who are already struggling needn’t be an option — let alone a first resort. Gingerbread is calling on the government to step in during this period to immediately fill the shortfall for parents not receiving maintenance payments to ensure this doesn’t happen and children don’t suffer.”

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The organisation urged the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) to notify parents if they will no longer be receiving payments due to another parent’s financial circumstances changing — adding such payments often cover essentials, such as children’s food, clothing and overall housing costs.

Joe Levenson, of the Young Women’s Trust, said: “Thousands of people are on a financial tightrope at the moment, but many young single mums were struggling to make ends meet long before this crisis began. Missing out, or even waiting longer than usual, for vital and expected maintenance payments could be the final straw that pushes them into further poverty.”

Chris Longbottom, a family lawyer, said he had seen a surge in parents stopping paying child maintenance overnight in the wake of the coronavirus emergency. They were taking such decisions without talking over ways to lessen payments or providing evidence of how their economic situation has changed, he said.

Mr Longbottom, who works at national law firm Clarke Willmott, said: “This is a difficult time for everyone and we understand that divorced spouses and separated partners or parents, who have perhaps had their hours cut or pay reduced, will be under more financial strain than usual, but there are ways to get help and simply cutting off maintenance payments is unconscionable.

“Such action puts families and children at risk and creates a wave of knock-on impacts. We are seeing such actions impacting even the most vulnerable divorcees and it is very difficult to witness the fallout. This behaviour is unacceptable, in particular where a vulnerable person is concerned. We have seen an increase in enquiries on this issue.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said: “In these unprecedented times, we have seen a significant increase in the number of new claims to Universal Credit - it’s right that we look to streamline our operations, and ensure that people get the support they need.