HHS Child Support Demonstration Waivers to Help Promote Responsible Fatherhood

HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala recently announced the approval of waiver demonstrations for 10 states to improve the opportunities of young, unmarried fathers to support their children both financially and emotionally.

The demonstrations, in Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; Chester County, Pennsylvania; Chicago, Illinois; Denver, Colorado; Indianapolis, Indiana; Los Angeles, California; Milwaukee/Racine, Wisconsin; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and New York City, New York, will total $15 million in combined federal and private funding over a three-year period. There will be an independent evaluation of the demonstration sites.

"These demonstration projects will reveal innovative new strategies to help low-income, unmarried mothers and fathers work together for their child's good," said Secretary Shalala.

"Being a good father demands skill, patience, dedication and hard work," added OCSE Commissioner David Gray Ross. "These projects," he continued, "will help us understand what works best for young fathers and can help them improve the life prospects of their children."

The projects will focus on serving young, never-married, non-custodial parents who do not have a child support court order in place and may face obstacles to employment.

Some of the projects will provide direct services for custodial parents, and all will provide for referral of custodial parents to child support services and other services as needed.

Activities will include: educational services and career planning; fatherhood and parenting workshops; supportive relationships between parents; financial planning and skill education; "team" parenting for both mother and father; substance abuse and anger management services; transportation assistance; voluntary establishment of paternity; and regular child support enforcement services.

The Ford Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundations, the Lilly Endowment, and the Community Foundations in Philadelphia and Indianopolis are providing support. Technical assistance for the sites is being provided by NPCL.

If you would like more information about these projects, contact OCSE's David Arnaudo at (202) 401-5364 or Mike Ambrose at (202) 205-8740.

Excerpts from Assistant Secretary's Congressional Testimony

Record Collections and Paternity Establishments in Fiscal Year 1999

In FY 1999, a record of nearly $16 billion in child support was collected-double the amount collected in 1992. The number of paternities established or acknowledged reached a record 1.5 million, almost tripling the 1992 figure. Of these, over 614,000 paternities were established through in-hospital acknowledgement programs.

The Importance of Child Support As Families Move Toward Self-sufficiency

The face of welfare is changing. More families receiving assistance are working, and the assistance they receive is more temporary in nature. An ongoing and continued link between child support and family income is crucial in stabilizing their lives and preparing for self-sufficiency. . . .

We want to maximize the amount of child support available to a family leaving welfare in order to ensure that they have every opportunity to become self-sufficient. . . .

Like Medicaid and child care, regular child support can be a key part of moving into stable work for a single-parent family. As studies have shown, having child support securely in place helps in a successful transition from welfare.

St. Paul Dad Honored

Personal success with help from Parents' Fair Share earned Carlos Rosas, a 33-year-old non-custodial father from St. Paul, Minnesota, accolades from the White House. During the State of the Union Address in January, President Clinton recognized Rosas (who had met the President at a January 1999 press conference on welfare-to-work and fatherhood initiatives) for overcoming financial problems and continuing to pay child support.

More recently, Rosas and members of his extended family met with the President and the Mayor of Mineapolis, Sharon Sayles Belton, during the President's visit to Minneapolis.

Rosas found emotional, education, and career support through Parents' Fair Share, a program that seeks to increase noncustodial parents' earnings and living standards and to translate those earnings into increased child support payments. He paid support for his son until he was laid off in 1996. "Even though I was still involved in Ricky's life, I couldn't pay," he said.

When he became concerned about his growing arrears balance, Rosas responded to mailings he received about Parents' Fair Share. Kristen Schuldt, a Ramsey County child support enforcement agent working with Parents' Fair Share, said most of the men she works with are trying to do the right thing. "Through Parents' Fair Share, they get the help they need to turn their lives around," said Schuldt. "Everyone benefits."

Workshops and other program support helped Rosas get into St. Paul Technical College, pay tuition, and pursue his interest in electronics. He graduated last spring and found work repairing office machines. He now pays support according to state guidelines, as well as arrears payments. "Anybody can do what I did," he said. "Parents' Fair Share has done so much for fathers."

[Excerpted with permission from the Child Support Quarterly, Winter 2000. The Quarterly is a publication of the Minnesota Child Support Program.]

The Difference A Dad Can Make

The benefits of father involvement are well-documented. At the most basic level, the father's presence in the home yields significant economic benefits for all family members; but just being present is not enough. Fathers are an important source of nurturance and emotional security for their infants, as well as a critical source of support for the mother-infant attachment.

For the fathers themselves, caring for a child is a transforming experience that often leads to personal growth, motivation and, in turn, improved economic security. As children grow, their fathers' active engagement in their lives enhances their chances for academic success, a healthy gender identify, clear values and moral development, and ultimately greater success in both family and work.

Although it's easy to imagine the importance of a father in the life of a growing son, daughters also benefit enormously from a close, loving relationship with their father. Their academic achievement and later intimate relationships speak strongly of their fathers' role in their lives.

Research suggests that it's not so critical exactly how a mother and father divide the specific tasks of parenting, but that they cooperate in figuring out what works for them and their children. In fact, a mother and father actively parenting together is the strongest predictor of positive outcomes for children.

Most likely to succeed on all fronts are the children whose parents are married and living together in relative harmony. And in cases of divorce, children do best when parents can set aside the conflicts that eroded the marriage and agree to work together as co-parents.

[Excerpted with permission from "Research confirms what dads and kids tell us," by Martha Farrell Erickson, Ph.D., in Seeds of Promise, Fall, 1999, a publication of the Children, Youth & Family Consortium, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108.]

Good Parenting, Regardless of Gender

Research points to key features of good parenting, regardless of gender: unwavering love; sensitivity to the child's needs and feelings; clear and consistent limits geared to the child's stage of development; firm but not harsh discipline; encouragement of the child's emerging independence; involvement in the child's education; and, perhaps above all, a living example of respect for self and others.

Although many fine single parents embody these qualities and valiantly raise their children to healthy adulthood, blessed is the child who has two parents working together to provide all of these things.

[From Erickson, "Research confirms . . ." in Seeds of Promise.]

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SIP Grant Updates

California Paternity Establishment/Statewide Paternity Opportunity Program Imaging and Data Access

The primary goal of California's SIP grant is to establish a streamlined process for filing, electronically imaging, and providing access to completed paternity declarations to address the heavy volume of more than 120,000 paternity declarations being filed annually in California. The initial effort was focused on eliminating a backlog of more than 80,000 unprocessed paternity declarations that had accumulated at the State vital statistics agency, so this responsibility could be permanently transferred to California's child support agency.

Results

• Eliminated a backlog of 80,000 unprocessed paternity declarations;

• Converted the State vital statistics agency file of paternity declarations and incorporations into a child support database with over 380,000 filed declarations as of October 1, 1999;

• Reduced from weeks to 24 hours the time required to image submitted paternity declarations into an accessible database;

• Transferred direct control for administering the file of paternity declarations from the State vital statistics agency to the child support agency;

• Produced monthly management reports from the database for direct oversight and monitoring of a statewide network of more than 700 mandated providers of the voluntary paternity process; and

• Made available a comprehensive database of filed paternity declarations to county child support agencies for immediate use in child support cases.

Rhode Island/New England Administrative Lien Registry

One goal of Rhode Island's SIP grant is to provide a web site for private vendors to perform administrative lien processing for the child support agency against the real property assets of delinquent obligors. The site would also provide a place to publicly list those real assets that the child support agency has placed a lien against. Also, it would serve as a single database of delinquent child support obligors, enabling statewide insurers to interface and perform claims lookup, matching, and arrears offset without the involvement of child support staff.

Results

• The Insurance Intercept Internet site has been developed and operates as a secured web site, requiring a user name and password;

• A Customer Service Hotline has been installed and staffed to assist insurers with questions and explain how to register their company on the site; and

• Through December 1999, 15 companies performed 1,265 claimant lookups on the site. Of these, 55 matched delinquent child support obligors in the Rhode Island caseload. These obligors owed a total of $769,092 in overdue child support.

The State of Rhode Island is continuing to study the best ways to get the most results from this system and is enthusiastic regarding its potential.

For more information about Rhode Island's SIP grant, contact the State's Child Support Director, Jack Murphy, at (401) 222-2966.

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Interstate Caseload Migration Patterns

Over the past few years, OCSE has worked with states to place interstate case processing at the top of the child support agenda. An important step in improving interstate case processing is forming a clear picture of interstate caseloads and noncustodial parent (NCP) migration patterns-the most common states to and from which each state's NCPs relocate. Knowing more about interstate caseloads and NCP relocation trends may help each state identify its most important partners in interstate child support enforcement.

To help form a clearer picture of interstate migration, OCSE reviewed the Federal Offset file for processing year 2000. This file contains all cases in which eligible, delinquent NCPs have been submitted by states for one or more of the Federal Offset remedies: Federal Income Tax Refund and Administrative Offset Programs, Passport Denial, or Multistate Financial Institution Data Match.

Interstate cases are defined as those involving an NCP who lives in a state different from the one that manages or "owns" the case. By that definition, across all states in this review, approximately 24 percent of the cases in the Federal Offset file are interstate cases. Only 11 states fall below this average. For 25 states and territories, 30 percent or more of their cases involve NCPs who have relocated to other states.

Keep in mind, however, that these observations are based on an analysis of cases in the Federal Offset file, not the entire national child support caseload. By comparison, The U.S. Interstate Commission's report, "Supporting Our Children: A Blueprint for Reform," states on page 3 that, "Based on reports of custodial mothers, interstate child support cases represent approximately 30% of child support cases in this country."

The box below shows states' interstate caseloads as a percent of their overall caseloads. While interstate cases tend to represent a smaller percent of the overall caseloads in larger states, the number of children and custodial parents in need of successful interstate case processing and enforcement is still substantial.

Florida and Texas provide typical examples. When Florida NCPs move out of state, 27 percent of them move to Big 8 States while 21 percent move to neighboring states. And of NCPs leaving Texas, 40 percent move to neighboring states, while 20 percent move to Big 8 states.

When other states' NCPs move to Texas, 29 percent come from Big 8 states, while 20 percent come from neighboring states. And 40 percent of Florida's incoming NCPs arrive from Big 8 states, while 18 percent come from neighboring states.

While economic factors and geography play an important part in interstate migration, relational connections may draw some NCPs back to states in which they have lived in the past. Over 18 percent of New York's out-of-state NCPs live in Florida, while 11 percent of Florida's out-of-state NCPs live in New York-more than twice the percentage of any other state except Georgia.

In addition, migration patterns can be unexpected. Georgia is one of the top 10 states to which New York's NCPs relocate and vice versa. In fact, among all 54 states and territories, Georgia is the fifth most common State, followed by Tennessee and North Carolina.

NCP movement is often reciprocal between states but not always proportional, even if the states are in close proximity to each other. For example, while more than 18 percent of West Virginia's NCPs relocate to Ohio, less than 5 percent of Ohio's NCPs relocate to West Virginia. And while 17 percent of Mississippi's NCPs move to Tennessee, Mississippi is not one of the favored states of Tennessee's NCPs.

Based on this initial review, OCSE plans to disbribute to states information on each state's top 10 interstate partners.

20 - 29 percent

AL, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, IL, IN, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MS, MO, NC, NJ, NM, NY, OH, OK, OR, TN, VA, WI

AZ, AR, CO, IA, KS, MN, RI, SC, UT, VT, WA, WV

AK, DC, GU, ID, MT, ND, NE, NH, NV, PR, SD, VI, WY

CA, PA, TX

How the Review Was Conducted

For the initial review, OCSE examined only Big 8 states (California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas), which account for nearly half of the national caseload and half of the child support collected on behalf of America's children. The review has now been expanded to all 54 states and territories.

Interstate trends can be gleaned by reviewing cases contained in the Federal Offset file, which contains a record of both the submitting state-the one that "owns" the case-and the NCPs state of residence.

Child Support Offers Protection Against Poverty

New OCSE Tribal Head

Online IRG Available

For more information, contact Ella Lawson at (202) 401-4963 or elawson@acf.dhhs.gov.