March 2022 Child Support Report
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Employee Suggestions Shape Policy in Wisconsin
- SharePoint Helps Missouri Better Serve Incarcerated Parents
- Toolkit: How to Engage People with Lived Experience
- Peer Learning Sites Use PJAC Lessons to Address Local Challenges
- Resource Alert: Video About Securing Child Support Data
- Policy Recap
Employee Suggestions Shape Policy in Wisconsin
Milwaukee County Child Support Services
In the fall of 2020, Milwaukee County Child Support Services created a Best Practices Team (BP Team) to gather ideas and implement process and procedure improvements. We created the BP Team to allow employees who are performing the work to make suggestions that make our program more effective and efficient.
Highly engaged employees from each of our eleven units comprise and run the team. All employees can send suggestions and questions through their unit representative or email the BP Team directly. They can make suggestions about any child support unit or process regardless of whether it involves their assigned unit. Team members from the unit(s) directly affected by the issue investigate and brainstorm solutions. This can include follow up with the employee who suggested or checking with supervisors on the viability of the solution. Once there is a solution, the entire BP Team reviews for feedback and approval. Director Jim Sullivan reviews the proposals for final approval and implementation.
Including employees from each unit allows the BP Team to consider suggestions from an overall office perspective—not just what works for a specific unit. Also, team members develop a better understanding of how the entire department functions.
Telework and training efforts
In 2021, the BP Team worked on an exciting suggestion that came from a county-wide employee engagement survey. The team reviewed survey results with Milwaukee County’s Employee Engagement Manager and chose two areas where they could propose policy changes: telework options and training/knowledge sharing. The team was heavily involved in making specific policy suggestions and reviewing the final telework policy that will be implemented in 2022. They also were directly involved in the training/knowledge sharing effort, creating the electronic resource notebooks for each child support unit.
The BP Team is excited to see the full integration and benefits of all the new processes. Early indicators show that they’re working well and have improved the office’s workflow and continuity. We’ve also noticed improved engagement and collaboration from all units in assisting Milwaukee County families.
For more information about this program, email kathleen.murphy@milwaukeecountywi.gov.
SharePoint Helps Missouri Better Serve Incarcerated Parents
Missouri Family Support Division
The Flexibility, Efficiency, and Modernization final rule requires child support programs to notify both parents of their right to request a review for modification if the paying parent will be incarcerated for more than 180 calendar days. To make this process more efficient, Missouri’s Family Support Division recently started an intake pilot project with the Department of Corrections (DOC).
Intake process and SharePoint tracking
To help with our new intake process, we developed a collaborative SharePoint platform to track all parents who are newly incarcerated at a DOC facility. Each day, the facility provides us with new parent information. Using the SharePoint site, we can complete an initial check that includes a triage of any case a parent may have in the child support system. The tracking allows us to identify parents who could benefit from a support order modification. System protocols move the tracking process automatically through SharePoint and allow management to ensure each parent’s case is carefully considered.
Once we’ve completed the intake process, we send the facility a list of parents whose orders could be eligible for review and, if appropriate, modification. The facility schedules a meeting between our program and each parent to discuss any child support-related issues and the requirements for review and modification of support while incarcerated.
After the meeting, we note in SharePoint if the parent requested a review for modification and enter the documentation we receive into our document management system. We expedite the request to allow caseworkers to begin the review for modification process.
Pilot performance
Currently, 100% of noncustodial mothers and 33% of noncustodial fathers who enter the prison system are served by the pilot project. In January 2022, DOC facilities sent us a list of 354 newly incarcerated parents to review for current child support cases. We conducted 34 in-person interviews and received 20 requests for review for modification. Since beginning the intake pilot, we have received a total of 91 such requests.
This pilot project increased communication between our program, DOC facilities, and parents who are incarcerated, and helped build a successful partnership. We plan to expand this project across the state to properly identify parents who could benefit from a modification of support.
For more information about this program, email john.b.ginwright@dss.mo.gov.
Toolkit: How to Engage People with Lived Experience
Melody Morales, OCSE
Federal agencies have often made decisions about programs and services based on “expert” consultation. Notably missing from the list of experts have been the very families and individuals the federal program is trying to serve. More recently, agencies have become more interested in seeking input from the people they serve to ensure their needs are being met. In other words, they are engaging people with lived experience.
Lived experience is defined as (PDF) “the experience(s) of people on whom a social issue, or combination of issues, has had a direct personal impact.” Those with lived experience are considered experts, and although their expertise may not come from formal education or training, they have firsthand knowledge and experience to determine what is best for them.
Engaging people with lived experience can help child support and other human service practitioners inform and improve their programs and practices. It enhances understanding of the target population’s needs and can lead to solutions that serve them most effectively. It can also benefit individuals with lived experience—whose voices often go unheard—by giving them ownership over decisions that impact them.
OCSE’s Division of Program Innovation worked with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and ICF (a strategic consulting and communications organization) to host training webinars with child support and lived experience experts. These trainings highlighted successful strategies and models for working with lived experience experts and discussed how programs can integrate lived experience into the design and delivery of their services and policies. OCSE, ASPE, and ICF also held strategic consultations with webinar attendees to inform development of child support-specific resources for engaging individuals with lived experience.
These efforts led to a starter kit to help child support agencies, grant recipients, and other stakeholders:
- Identify and recruit individuals with lived experience
- Determine equitable compensation for people with lived experience
- Engage people with lived experience respectfully and effectively
The starter kit is a useful tool for child support and other human service agencies interested in learning from the people they serve. It’s also a resource that complements and supports OCSE’s human-centered design projects, which seek to improve services based on feedback from state and tribal child support program staff and others who work with them. You can get the starter kit from the OCSE website (PDF).
For more information, contact Michael.Hayes@acf.hhs.gov.
Peer Learning Sites Use PJAC Lessons to Address Local Challenges
Jacqueline Groskaufmanis, MDRC, and Adelaide Currin, MEF Associates
OCSE awarded $2.1 million to six grantees during a five-year demonstration called Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC). During Spring of 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 the first in 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).
Procedural justice is the idea that someone’s perception of how fair an administrative or legal process is and how they’re treated determines how they respond to the process. Research shows that if people perceive a process to be fair, they’re more likely to comply with its outcome whether it is favorable to them or not (Swaner, et al., 2018 ). In the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) demonstration, child support case managers at six agencies across the country received training to integrate procedural justice principles into their services.
Developed by OCSE, the PJAC demonstration targeted noncustodial parents referred to court for civil contempt for not meeting their child support obligations—despite a child support agency having determined they’re able to pay.
The goal of PJAC services:
- Address noncustodial parents’ reasons for nonpayment
- Improve the consistency of child support payments
- Promote noncustodial parents’ positive engagement with the agency and the custodial parent
Between 2018 and 2020, over 11,000 noncustodial parents across these agencies were assigned at random to either a group that offered PJAC services or a group that proceeded with the standard contempt process. MDRC, in collaboration with MEF Associates and the Center for Court Innovation, is leading a random assignment study of the model’s effectiveness. You can learn more about the PJAC demonstration on the MDRC website .
Peer Learning Sites under PJAC
OCSE developed Peer Learning Sites to extend lessons on procedural justice to other child support agencies. Peer learning is versatile, and examples include teachers learning about innovative education techniques from other teachers, doctors learning about improved patient care from other physicians, or, in this case, child support agencies learning about procedural justice efforts from other agencies.
In June 2020, OCSE invited child support agencies to apply for the peer learning sites program. Five programs ultimately moved forward with designing interventions. Each peer learning site examined its current child support processes, identified an area where it could apply procedural justice principles, and developed an intervention plan to begin addressing challenges in that area.
As part of the program, peer learning sites received training from procedural justice experts and technical assistance from OCSE, MDRC, MEF Associates, and the Center for Court Innovation. They participated in an eight-webinar series that included training in procedural justice, domestic violence response, and other topics. Each peer learning site was paired with a manager from a PJAC grantee who provided help and mentorship throughout the process. In the summer of 2021, sites began implementing their interventions and preparing to evaluate them.
Meet the Peer Learning Sites
Each PJAC peer learning site identified a problem and designed materials informed by procedural justice to address that problem:
- Georgia is addressing low enrollment and completion rates among noncustodial parents eligible for its Parental Accountability Court program. This program helps parents address barriers to payment and provide judges with an alternative to incarceration for contempt cases. The site developed a case assessment tool and scripts for case managers to use when communicating with parents.
- Indiana aims to increase parents’ understanding of the court process during initial child support order establishment and case management activities. The site developed new welcome letters, a glossary of child support terms, and a roadmap to guide parents through the process.
- Minnesota is addressing racial and economic inequities related to license suspension policies and practices. The site developed a template to help case managers assess next steps for cases with license suspension, a new outreach letter to parents, and scripts for case managers to use when communicating with parents.
- Texas is trying to increase parents’ understanding of its online order modification process and decrease the volume of duplicate modification requests. The site developed a video, infographic, and email that explain the online process.
- Wisconsin aims to improve parents’ understanding of genetic testing used to establish parentage and the process for establishing child support orders. The site developed new introduction letters to send to parents and an interactive game board to guide parents through the process.
Over the next year in the Child Support Report, sites will describe these interventions, how they’re informed by procedural justice, the lessons learned during implementation, and findings from their self-evaluations. The series will conclude with an overview of the project results.
Resource Alert: Video About Securing Child Support Data
View the OCSE video on how to protect Federal Parent Locator Service, federal tax, and child support data from unauthorized access or disclosure.
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.
| Jennifer Cannistra Acting Assistant Secretary for Children and Families | Tanguler Gray Commissioner, OCSE |
| Crystal Peeler Acting Director, Division of Customer Communications | Andrew Phifer Editor, CSR.Editor@acf.hhs.gov |