By
Dan Bloom and Kay Sherwood
Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation
April 1994
This report is available on the Internet at:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/pfs94/index.htm
1 Guidelines for Parents’ Fair Share Pilot Programs: The Four Core Components
2 The Parents’ Fair Share Pilot Sites
3 Selected Characteristics of Noncustodial Parents Referred to Parents’ Fair Share Pilot Programs
1.1 The Parents’ Fair Share Pilot Sites
1.2 Selected Characteristics of Sites in the Parents’ Fair Share Pilot Phase
1.3 Guidelines for Parents’ Fair Share Pilot Programs: The Four Core Components
2.1 Parents’ Fair Share Lead Agencies
3.1 Characteristics of Noncustodial Parents Referred to Parents’ Fair Share Pilot Programs, by Site
Pilot Programs Who Completed an Enrollment Form
Pilot Programs Who Completed an Enrollment Form
4.1 Parents’ Fair Share Referral and Participant Totals Through June 1993, by Site
7.1 Key Providers of Employment and Training Services in the Parents’ Fair Share Pilot Sites
Share Among Noncustodial Parents Who Participated in Employment and Training Activities
Share Among Noncustodial Parents Who Participated in Employment and Training Activities
3.1 Simplified Depiction of the Parents’ Fair Share Intake "Funnel"
Examples of PFS Organizational Structures
An Example of How the CSE Process Often Deals with Low-Income Noncustodial Parents
Examples of Two Approaches to Enhanced Child Support Enforcement During the PFS Pilot Phase
Employment and Training Provider Networks
Innovative OJT Strategies
This report could not have been completed without the assistance of numerous organizations and individuals, starting with the PFS funders, who are acknowledged separately in the Preface.
The directors and staff of the PFS pilot programs and the state-level project coordinators deserve much of the credit for mounting this pathbreaking initiative. In addition, they patiently answered the researchers’ questions and reviewed a draft of the report. Space does not permit us to mention all of the staff who contributed, but special thanks are due: Erin Wheeler and Joel Sanders (Alabama); Herbert Moore and Tracy Sumner (Florida); Donna Hobart and John Buonomo (Massachusetts); William Camden and Gary Howitt (Michigan); Kathy Sweeney and John Brenneman (Minnesota); Diane Patrick and Larry Hightower (Missouri); Barbara Kelley-Sease and Rowena Bopp (New Jersey); Dannetta Graves, Carliss Hines, and Jackie Martin (Ohio); Viola O’Neil and Fagan Thompson (Tennessee).
The members of MDRC’s Committee on Employment Studies offered wise guidance at several points during the pilot phase and insightful comments on an early draft of the report. The Committee includes members of MDRC’s Board of Directors Bernard Anderson (now a former member), Rebecca Blank, Eli Ginzberg, Antonia Hernandez, and Alan Kistler and outside experts: Elijah Anderson, Orley Ashenfelter, Glen Cain, Irwin Garfinkel, Ronald Mincy, Barbara Paulin, and Judith Seltzer.
At MDRC, Gordon Berlin has been the driving force behind PFS from the project’s inception and played an essential role in shaping the report. Judith Gueron provided continuing guidance and thoughtful comments on drafts of the report. Fred Doolittle helped design the analysis, reviewed drafts, and wrote some sections of the report dealing with employment and training issues. Vicki Turetsky wrote some sections focusing on child support enforcement, and helped the authors understand that system.
Sharon Rowser, Marilyn Price, and Suzanne Lynn were liaisons to the PFS sites and provided valuable assistance and comments on drafts of the report. Gaston Murray, Margarita Agudelo, and Juanita Vega-Chetcuti prepared the data for analysis, and Patti Anderson provided early guidance on systems design. Bridget Dixon and Iris Reyes programmed the analysis and produced the report’s tables. Judith Greissman edited the report, assisted by Michael Wilde. Patt Pontevolpe and Stephanie Cowell did the word processing.
Milton Little played a key role in the early part of the project, helping to formulate the PFS program approach and inspiring site staff to mount the complex initiative. Pam Stevens and John Robertson provided many useful suggestions in the design and monitoring of the peer support component.
Finally, special thanks are due the PFS participants who were interviewed for the report. It is not possible to mention them by name, but their insights, ideas, and experiences deeply influenced the report’s contents. Peer support facilitators Antoine Voss (New Jersey), Larry Jackson (Ohio), and Howard Nelson (Tennessee) arranged the interviews and contributed their own thoughts.
The Authors
Any successful effort to cut the welfare rolls and reduce child poverty will require a sharp increase in child support payments. However, getting tough with nonpaying fathers of children who receive welfare particularly those who do not work steadily in the mainstream economy is often difficult because many of these fathers say they are unemployed and unable to pay. Some are telling the truth and need help finding jobs. Others are hiding income by working off the books. However, judges and child support enforcement agencies are often hard-pressed to sort out the truth. As a result, child support agencies often avoid pursuing nonpayers unless there is clear evidence that they are working, which means that many cases involving children on welfare receive only limited attention.
The Parents’ Fair Share Demonstration (PFS) was created to address this problem. It is the first large-scale effort to boost the incomes of poor noncustodial parents (the great majority of them fathers) and thereby to increase child support payments. In so doing, it extends to noncustodial parents the vision of mutual obligations and opportunities central to recent welfare reforms: Parents both parents are expected to support their children to the extent possible, while government is expected to provide them with services to help them do so.
The PFS approach centers on four core activities: employment and training services (such as job search assistance and on-the-job training); peer support through group discussions focused on the rights and responsibilities of noncustodial parents; Ber and more flexible child support enforcement so that, for example, support orders are temporarily lowered while people participate in the program; and mediation services to help resolve conflicts between the custodial and noncustodial parents. Integrating these diverse activities into a single program called for unprecedented cooperation among numerous state, local, and community agencies.
Launching PFS would not have been possible without the support of a group of funders who were willing to travel uncharted territory. They shared an understanding of the importance of the problems and a concern that disadvantaged men are usually an ignored and yet critical ingredient of a successful antipoverty strategy. The early PFS effort reported in these pages depended critically on support from staff at the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Northwest Area Foundation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Labor.
While MDRC and the funders were ultimately interested in hard information about the effect of PFS on program participants, all agreed that a pilot phase was needed to determine the feasibility and potential of such a program and to find out more about the noncustodial parents, a group little studied but often written off as irresponsible and beyond help.
This study reports on the lessons from the nine-site pilot, which operated from early 1992 through 1993. It addresses fundamental questions: Would the child support enforcement and job training systems large bureaucracies with very different agendas and cultures be able to work together and implement this complex and innovative program? Would the noncustodial parents actively participate or even show up in light of their hostility to a child support enforcement system most viewed as unfair and unresponsive to the realities of their own situations?
Overall, the conclusions are positive. While there were operational difficulties (including a dearth of on-the-job training positions), the programs enrolled more than 4,000 noncustodial parents. Two-thirds of them participated in program activities, with most of the others having found jobs on their own or having been referred back to the courts for further enforcement. Surprisingly, the heart of the program turned out to be the peer support sessions, with sometimes dramatic positive changes in attitudes and behavior being reported by both participants and staff. Much, too, was learned about the parents themselves. Contrary to stereotypes, for example, most of them were in regular contact with their children and recognized that they had parental responsibilities, though they tended to take a narrow view of what that entailed. Finally, local officials in the child support enforcement system, despite the challenges posed by the PFS approach, became enthusiastic advocates of its potential.
The experience of the pilot phase led MDRC to recommend that the demonstration move to a full-scale test including a rigorous random assignment research design. Positive response from pilot phase funders and critical support from an expanded funder community have made possible the second phase of the demonstration, which is beginning this spring. This phase will determine whether PFS succeeds in its bottom-line mission: increasing child support payments, reducing welfare receipt, and curtailing the growing poverty of America’s children.
Judith M. Gueron
President, MDRC
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