CHILD SUPPORT SERVICES FOR FAMILIES IN HEAD START PROGRAMS

Dear Parent:

This brochure describes special services to assist Head Start parents. Called child support services, they can assist you to establish the legal paternity of your son or daughter. They also can help you to establish a child support order requiring the non-custodial parent to contribute to the financial support of their children.

Child support services offer you some much-needed financial assistance to meet the costs of raising your children. Beyond this, fathers who acknowledge legal paternity and pay child support often want a personal relationship with their son or daughter. So, child support services could mean your child will enjoy emotional support from both parents!

Please take a few minutes to read this brochure about child support services. If you are interested, we encourage you to talk to your local Child Support staff about child support services for your family. Your Head Start Program staff will be happy to help you contact the Child Support office.

If your family already enjoys the benefits of child support services, we encourage you to share this information with other Head Start parents. Telling them what these services mean to you and your family may move them to seek child support services.

Head Start values the Child Support Program for the emotional and financial support it offers many children enrolled in Head Start Programs. Both programs affirm that a child needs and deserves emotional support from both mother and father.

Because you care for your children, you enrolled them in a Head Start Program. Because you love your children, we ask you to read this brochure on child support services and seek these benefits for your family.

David Gray Ross
Commissioner
Office of Child Support Enforcement

Helen Taylor
Associate Commissioner
Head Start Bureau

WHAT CHILD SUPPORT SERVICES ARE

Child support services establish the legal paternity of a child and establish and enforce child support orders under which non-custodial parents contribute to the financial support of their children.

IMPORTANCE TO HEAD START FAMILIES

Child support services can be a significant resource for Head Start parents on their journey to economic self-sufficiency. A low-income family needs many resources to make it financially. Resources can supplement the family pay check to stretch its buying power; these resources include:

Earned Income Tax Credit
Medicaid
Food Stamps
Subsidized Child Care
Low-income Home Energy Assistance
Child Health Insurance Program

CHILD SUPPORT A UNIQUE RESOURCE

Child support is an additional and unique resource for parents. The resources listed above diminish or zero out for a low-income family as its income level exceeds program limitations. But Child support payments continue until the child becomes a legal adult. These payments can even increase over the years to keep pace with a growing child’s needs and the non-custodial parent’s rising income levels. Also, support orders can require medical coverage of a child under the non-custodial parent’s health plan; this could be especially critical as a family loses its Medicaid eligibility. Not least of all, fathers who contribute to the financial support of their children frequently give them emotional support as well.

THE CHILD SUPPORT PROGRAM

The Child Support Program exists to assist any parent to establish the legal paternity of a child, where necessary, and to establish and enforce a child support order under which the non-custodial parent must contribute to the child’s financial support. It is a program which - - like Head Start - - puts children first by affirming that every child needs and deserves financial and emotional support from both parents. State and local Child Support Agencies administer the Program. Any family with an absent, or non-custodial parent, can ask a Child Support Agency for assistance in establishing legal paternity and / or a child support order without regard to the family’s income level.

LEGAL PATERNITY

Paternity means fatherhood. To establish legal paternity is to give the child of unmarried parents a legal father. (Parents who were married to each other when the child was born do not have to establish legal paternity.) By taking steps to establish legal paternity, a mother gives her child a right to the same benefits as children of married parents. Establishing legal paternity gives a child access to the following benefits:

A sense of identity: A child can have the father’s name on his/her birth certificate. A child then has a sense of full identity by knowing the father and his family. A child has a right to know both mother and father and, wherever possible, to be supported by both.
Access to father’s medical history can help prevent or treat diseases and health conditions passed from father to child.
Financial support by father includes regular cash payments and health insurance benefits.
If father dies, child could qualify for death benefits, including social security benefits, veteran’s benefits, life insurance, pension and inheritance rights. Unless legal paternity has been established, a child may not be able to claim these benefits from his or her father.
Acknowledging legal paternity and making child support payments often leads a father to want a personal relationship with his son or daughter. The enrichment this bonding can offer a growing child is priceless!

HOW TO OBTAIN CHILD SUPPORT SERVICES

The substantial benefits child support offers low-income families led Congress in 1998 to direct all Head Start Programs to inform custodial parents about child support services and refer eligible parents to a Child Support office. So, ask your Head Start Program staff to help you apply for child support services. They will be happy to assist you in contacting a local Child Support office.

An unwed Mother to Another

Raising a child is no easy task, and it is even more difficult if you are an unwed mother. But it can be manageable if the father of your child legally establishes paternity and provides you with the financial assistance you need.

When I was pregnant, I assured friends and family that my situation was different from other unwed mothers because my boy friend, Paul, and I were in a loving relationship. He was even going to be with me in the delivery room for the birth of our baby! Yet six weeks after our daughter, our relationship broke down. Paul simply wasn’t ready for the emotional and physical demands of caring for a newborn, much less marriage.

Like many unwed mothers, I believed I would be able to afford and raise my child alone. But it didn’t take long to realize I couldn’t manage financially. My daughter was ill during her first months and medical bills rolled in. Her day care costs nearly equaled my monthly rent!

But what finally got me to seek the services of the local Child Support Office was seeing a copy of my daughter’s birth certificate. I assumed it would show Paul as the father since he had been with me in the delivery room. I was shocked to see on the “name of the father” line a row full of XXXs! That’s when I realized my daughter deserved much more in life. She had a right to her father’s name on her birth certificate and to his financial support.

So, I contacted the Child Support Office for assistance. Within months, paternity was legally established and a child support order issued. I am now receiving child support payments on a monthly basis. The legal and financial concerns are resolved and Paul has since decided he wants a relationship with his daughter. Today my daughter is benefiting from both the financial and emotional support she receives from her father.

From one unwed mother to another, I urge you to put your child’s needs first. Please think about the importance of having your child’s paternity legally established and the benefits of child support. Every child deserves a father! Every child deserves and needs the caring love of both parents!

- - From a Mother Who’s Been There