Domestic Violence Training and Technical Assistance

OCSS works with states and tribes to enhance safe access to child support services for survivors of domestic violence. According to studies funded by OCSS, as many as 90% of domestic violence survivors say they would like to get child support if they could do so safely. We’ve responded to the safety needs of survivors, as well as child support professionals, by providing training and technical assistance. We partner with national, state, tribal, and local domestic violence experts, develop resources, and identify model child support policies and procedures to increase safety for survivors.

Training child support professionals

We conduct direct and virtual domestic violence training for child support workers, attorneys, and judicial officers, and we can also work with ’train the trainer’ models. We design our trainings to focus specifically on the intersection of domestic violence and child support, providing child support professionals with the skills and knowledge they need to deliver safe, effective services to parents as well as maintain safety for staff. OCSS has provided training to 40 states and more than 45 tribal child support agencies. The training sessions range from 90 minutes to a full day.

Reviewing policy and procedure

Another way that we work with state and tribal child support programs is by reviewing their existing domestic violence policies and procedures to identify gaps. We’ll provide technical assistance to help them develop comprehensive domestic violence plans for program operations.

OCSS has a related tool — Enhancing Safe Access to Child Support: IV-D Program Inventory and Planning Resource (PDF) (PDF). This step-by-step guide helps state and tribal programs assess their current approach to providing services to domestic violence survivors and offers suggestions for improvements.

Collaborating with experts

Partnerships are critical to these efforts, both at national and local levels. We work closely with national leaders on domestic violence, and we help state and tribal programs connect and collaborate with state, tribal, and local domestic violence experts.

Through these collaborations, we’ve been able to disseminate model practices to child support and domestic violence professionals broadly through webinars, conference presentations, and national roundtables. We facilitate meetings with state and tribal child support and domestic violence leaders to identify opportunities for cooperation, and we establish ongoing partnerships to promote safe access to child support for survivors.
 

Identifying tools and resources

Our work with domestic violence experts and state and local child support programs has created multiple safe access to child support resources. These tools include caseworker desk cards, judicial bench cards, family violence indicator model practices, domestic violence screening guides, and public education materials.

Additionally, OCSS gathers sample materials and resources from state and tribal child support programs to share with others, and we promote dissemination of promising domestic violence-informed child support practices.

More information is available on the OCSS Family Violence webpage.