The Child Support Agency is an organisation set up in Great Britain by the Conservative Government in the early 1990s.

It works on the principle that absent parents should face up to their responsibilities and pay for the upkeep of the fruit of their loins. Child maintenance is worked out by an algebraic formula which, when looked at from a third perspective, is quite a fair system in some ways, and quite an unfair system in other ones.

The Child Support Agency is a system which is constantly being improved upon, although it will never be perfect because no-one is ever going to be happy with the system.