June 2022 Child Support Report

Trainings to Engage Fathers Involved with Child Support

Office of Family Assistance

Each year on the third Sunday in June we celebrate fathers and recognize the important role they play in their children’s lives. We also recognize that nonresidential—or noncustodial—fathers often face complex challenges, such as co-parenting, divorce, economic hardship, and incarceration. It’s with this in mind that the Office of Family Assistance worked with OCSE and the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse (NRFC) to jointly host a training late last year on fatherhood engagement for the Alternative Solutions staff within Washington State’s Division of Child Support.

The training highlighted successful strategies for working with nonresidential fathers and free resources available through NRFC at fatherhood.gov. Our offices regularly work together on conference presentations, webinars, and trainings to share child support-specific resources designed to support work with nonresidential fathers. 

One of the resources we shared at this training was NRFC’s Responsible Fatherhood Toolkit . This web-based guide is a useful tool for child support and other human service agencies interested in learning how to engage, recruit, and retain nonresidential fathers more effectively. We also shared NRFC’s interactive Program Map where child support professionals can search by city, state, or ZIP code for local responsible fatherhood programs that they can partner with to meet the needs of the fathers they serve.

We look forward to offering this training to other local child support programs as our resources allow. We’re continuing talks with OCSE and NRFC on ways to expand the scope of the training and help programs include the lived experiences of fathers in child support outreach.

Fatherhood.gov Summit - Registration is open

Virtual fatherhood conference

We’re joining the NRFC to host a two-day virtual event June 15-16, 2022, called Leading the DRIVE: A Fatherhood Summit on Diversity, Reentry, Inclusion, Vision, and Employment. This powerful event  will be a great opportunity for child support professionals to learn new skills and strategies to effectively work with fathers. Register for this free virtual summit. 

For more information, contact James.Murray@acf.hhs.gov

Providing Fathers a Hand Up

Georgia’s Division of Child Support Services 

Dad with two sons

If a hundred fathers were asked how to define “fatherhood,” there would likely be a hundred different answers. However, we imagine words like nurturer, teacher, role model, and love would be used frequently. Instinctively, fathers want the best for their children and have a desire to provide that. Unfortunately, the reality is that sometimes these good intentions are thrown off track by life's circumstances or a father’s decisions. 

For many years, the child support program could be a difficult experience for fathers who found themselves in tough circumstances. Despite enduring challenges, a father’s inability to make regular child support payments often led to a cycle of enforcement actions, court appearances, and being in and out of jail. In recent years, child support programs nationwide have developed outreach programs to lift fathers out of challenging situations and help them overcome barriers to get back on a healthy and positive path.

Georgia Parental Accountability Program Map - CSR

Fatherhood and court programs

Georgia’s Division of Child Support Services is one state program that has seen success from outreach services. Our Fatherhood and Parental Accountability Court programs connect parents who are struggling to make regular payments with resources that lead to employment and help overcoming other barriers they may face.

Our statewide Georgia Fatherhood program is available to parents who are unemployed or underemployed. Participants benefit from services like job placement, soft skills and short-term skills training, resume writing, GED referral programs, and coaching and mentoring. The program lasts about six months and over 2,800 parents successfully completed the program in FY 2021.

The Parental Accountability Court program is a joint effort between our office and Superior Court Judges to offer an alternative to incarceration and help chronic nonpayers make regular payments. It uses community resources and judicial oversight to address barriers and currently operates in 43 of the 49 judicial circuits in Georgia. Each program uses local resources and is tailored to the needs of the community. Over 5,600 parents have participated since the program began. 

The child support program has evolved from an enforcement-based program to a service-based program. Fathers now have resources from their local child support program to help them get through challenging situations. The success stories from these outreach programs show that a “hand up” approach works.

For more information, visit childsupport.georgia.gov .

Texas Makes Online Modifications Easier Using Procedural Justice Principles

Child Support Division, Office of the Attorney General of Texas

Shape of Texas with words PJAC Peer Learning Site

At the beginning of the pandemic, the Texas child support program launched an online form to assist customers with modifications. We designed this feature to help customers submit modification requests online, avoid delays in scheduling a review or court hearing, and prevent multiple modification request submissions. 

With help from OCSE, our office used procedural justice principles to create a video on the modification process, enhance the modification webpage, improve the automated response, and create supporting documents. We also selected six field offices to provide additional interventions, including phone, email, and text reminders at intervals of four days, 48 hours, and 24 hours before the review appointment. These six offices received training on procedural justice principles and scripts to guide them through each touch point. The phone calls allowed customers to ask questions, and the emails provided appointment information and helpful resources. The email also included a link to our infographic and video that explained the modification process. 

Intervention data

We asked customers who reached an agreement during the review process to complete an online survey and participate in an interview. We sent 275 survey invitations and received responses from 20 parents—14 custodial and six noncustodial. We conducted four of the 17 scheduled interviews. Customer responses indicated a need to incorporate procedural justice principles—like increased transparency into the child support modification process—beyond our intervention. 

Graph of Texas PJAC Intervention Site Data

We also collected and analyzed data about modification requests for the intervention sites. This graphic display of site data highlights the total number of applications (blue shading corresponding to left axis) and duplicate requests submitted within 30 and 90 days (green and yellow lines corresponding to right axis). As we implemented our field office interventions (November 2021 — January 2022), we saw a normal historical trend pattern in modification requests and a decrease in duplicate requests. Statewide analysis also shows this correlation, pointing to the likelihood that the website changes launched in October 2021 were driving the decrease in duplicate requests. 

We’ll use information collected during this project to incorporate procedural justice principles into other areas, including developing a plan to review court and legal service procedures.

For more information, email justin.reed@oag.texas.gov

OCSE awarded $2.1 million to six grantees during a five-year demonstration called Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC). In spring 2020, OCSE offered child support agencies the opportunity to apply to become a Procedural Justice Peer Learning Site and learn from the lessons and tools developed in the PJAC demonstration. This article is part of a series that explores how five Peer Learning Sites are applying PJAC lessons to their own programs. This opportunity did not come with grant funding, but all sites received training and technical assistance from the PJAC Project Support Team and mentoring from PJAC grantees. For more information, contact OCSE project officers Michael Hayes (Michael.Hayes@acf.hhs.gov), Tanya Johnson (Tanya.Johnson@acf.hhs.gov), or Melody Morales (Melody.Morales@acf.hhs.gov). 

Peer-to-Peer Training for Child Support-Led Employment Services Programs

Chad Edinger, OCSE 

Photo of people in a meeting discussing concepts written on notes on a whiteboard

The child support program can improve a child’s overall well-being by serving the entire family. We believe offering child support-led employment services to noncustodial parents is a good strategy to increase participation in the workforce, improve compliance with court-ordered child support payments, and provide families with a path out of poverty to financial self-sufficiency. 

In 2019, OCSE launched the Knowledge Works initiative to help child support agencies implement or enhance noncustodial parent employment programs. These resources include peer-to-peer learning and training, subject matter expertise and technical assistance, and consultation using evidence-based best practices. 

Webinar trainings

One way that Knowledge Works facilitates peer-to-peer learning and knowledge transfer is through webinars. We record these trainings and upload them to our website so that programs can access previous webinars on demand. You can also register for our upcoming training: Enhanced Child Support Services for Noncustodial Parents Seeking Employment on September 9, at 1:30pm ET.

Partnering with TANF for Employment Services for Noncustodial Parents 
This webinar covers:

  • Successful approaches to partnering with TANF
  • Specific funding models
  • Operational overviews of employment programs

Reinvesting Child Support Incentive Payments and Section 1115 Waivers for Employment Services for Noncustodial Parents  
This webinar covers:

  • Requirements for the exemption request and waiver application process
  • Key elements to consider about each funding model
  • Overviews of employment program models and their services
  • Results, challenges, successes, and key lessons learned

Partnering with Courts to Enroll Noncustodial Parents into Employment Services Programs  
This webinar covers:

  • Reasons judges value having the ability to order participation into noncustodial parent employment programs
  • Staffing models to support collaboration with courts
  • Strategies for sharing information between child support, employment program partners, and courts
  • Methods for successfully using review hearings and judicial sanctions to promote and improve program participation

Partnering with Workforce Programs to Provide Noncustodial Parents with Employment Services 
This webinar covers:

  • Who is providing employment services to noncustodial parents
  • How to uniquely leverage providers in different communities or serve distinct segments of your target population
  • What employment services are being provided that maximize each partners’ role
  • Key aspects of MOUs that drive outcomes and cost-effectiveness
  • Key lessons learned from partnering with workforce programs

Sharing Information on Noncustodial Parent Employment Services and Leveraging Automation
This webinar covers:

  • What information is shared by which partners
  • When information sharing is integral to the success of each partners’ efforts
  • How information is being shared between automated systems
  • Costs related to sharing information
  • Examples of alternative solutions programs used before implementing automation 

For more information, email OCSEDRO@acf.hhs.gov.

Resource Alert: Responsible Fatherhood Toolkit

Discover resources and promising practices used by fatherhood programs nationwide in this Fatherhood.gov toolkit .

Policy Recap

OCSE issued recent guidance to help states and tribes develop and operate their child support programs according to federal laws and regulations:

About Child Support Report

Child Support Report is published monthly by the Office of Child Support Enforcement. We welcome articles and high-quality digital photos to consider for publication. We reserve the right to edit for style, content and length, or not accept an article. OCSE does not endorse the practices or individuals in this newsletter. You may reprint an article in its entirety (or contact the author or editor for permission to excerpt); please identify Child Support Report as the source.

January Contreras    
Assistant Secretary for Children and Families             
Tanguler Gray
Commissioner, OCSE                                                                       
Crystal Peeler
Director, Division of Customer Communications                                 
Andrew Phifer
Editor, CSR.Editor@acf.hhs.gov                                                                               

Read other editions of Child Support Report