The Parents’ Fair Share (PFS) Demonstration:
Matching Opportunities to Obligations

Executive Summary

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Contents

• Highlights of the Report
• The Problem: Child Poverty and the Limits of Traditional Child Support Enforcement
• The Parents' Fair Share Response
• The Institutional Challenge
• Achievements of the Pilot Phase
• Lessons and Challenges
  • The Noncustodial Parents
  • Lessons About Operating PFS
• Looking Ahead to Phase II

• About MDRC
• Endnotes

The Parents' Fair Share Demonstration (PFS) is a multi-site test of programs that require noncustodial parents (usually fathers) of children on welfare to participate in employment-related and other services when they are unemployed and unable to meet their child support obligations. PFS is the first large-scale effort to extend to noncustodial parents the vision of mutual obligations that has guided recent welfare reform efforts. Under this "new social contract," parents both mothers and fathers are expected to support their own children and to take steps to become self-sufficient, and government assumes responsibility for providing employment and training services and other supports to help them do so. However, until recently, this reciprocal approach applied only to custodial parents on welfare (usually single mothers). For noncustodial parents, there was a one-way obligation: to pay child support. By creating new opportunities to match the existing obligations facing noncustodial parents, PFS seeks to increase their earnings and living standards, to translate these earnings into increased child support payments, and, ultimately, to both improve the well-being of their children and reduce public welfare spending.

This report describes the first stage of the Parents' Fair Share Demonstration: an 18- to 24-month pilot phase designed to test the operational feasibility of the PFS approach, to assess whether a full-scale evaluation of its effectiveness is warranted, and to learn more about the target population. The PFS pilot phase was supported by a consortium of private foundations (the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and the Northwest Area Foundation) and public agencies (the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Labor). It was coordinated by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), a nonprofit organization that develops and evaluates programs designed to build the self-sufficiency of economically disadvantaged people. An initial feasibility study was seen as critical because successful implementation of PFS demands profound institutional change and close linkages between agencies charged with collecting child support and those that provide employment and training and other services to the disadvantaged. These two kinds of agencies have fundamentally different missions and little history of collaboration.

MDRC's overall conclusion, based on data collected during more than a year of pilot operations in nine states, is positive: Although the pilot programs confronted a range of implementation issues, the PFS approach has proven to be operationally feasible and has shown sufficient promise to warrant a rigorous test of its impacts and cost-effectiveness. ⁽¹⁾ Thus, while continuing its efforts to strengthen the programs, MDRC recommended a full-scale evaluation, based on a random assignment research design, in a subset of the pilot states. The evaluation is beginning spring 1994.

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Highlights of the Report

The first objective of the pilot phase was to appraise the operational feasibility of the PFS approach and to assess whether people and institutions appeared to behave and operate differently than they did before PFS existed. The pilot experience was positive in this regard.

Although each site confronted a range of operational problems, all were able to mount the complex program successfully. Altogether, more than 4,000 eligible noncustodial parents were identified, contacted, and referred to PFS, usually during court hearings brought on by their failure to pay child support. About two-thirds of the parents who were referred to PFS through February 1993 actually participated in a program activity within four months of the referral. This participation rate is higher than the rates measured by MDRC in mandatory employment programs for welfare recipients. Most of the parents who did not participate in PFS activities either reported employment to program staff or were referred for further enforcement action.

Equally important, there are clear signs that PFS has generated changes in both individuals and bureaucratic systems. Quantitative data show that a substantial share of the parents who were referred to PFS were actively engaged in program activities. The most dramatic signs of personal growth and change appeared during peer support groups, built around a curriculum supplied by MDRC, which emerged as the heart of many of the pilot programs.

The key institutions also changed in important ways. Most of the child support enforcement agencies began "working" cases that were typically neglected before PFS provided a constructive option for handling them. In addition to generating large numbers of referrals to PFS, this new attention "smoked out" many nonpaying noncustodial parents who had unreported income. Most of the sites also developed procedures to routinely reduce the child support obligations of noncustodial parents during the period they were participating in PFS, and to raise these orders quickly if the parents failed to cooperate or found employment.

Employment and training systems were somewhat more difficult to change. A variety of institutional barriers and program design choices made it difficult for sites to build a broad menu of employment and training options for PFS participants with varying skill levels. As a result, the nature, quality, and intensity of the employment and training services participants received varied from site to site. In general, too many participants received only short-term job search assistance, and too few received classroom or on-the-job training (OJT), especially during the early months of the pilot. However, the menu of employment and training options became broader over time and the pace of OJT placement accelerated.

A second key goal of the pilot was to learn more about the PFS target population, a group that has been frequently denounced but rarely studied. A variety of quantitative and qualitative data suggest that the PFS noncustodial parents were a diverse group. However, many appeared to be living in poverty and facing critical barriers to employment. While the vast majority had at least some work experience, most reported very little recent employment, and many said they were having trouble meeting their basic needs.

In many ways, the PFS participants defied popular stereotypes of the noncustodial parents of children on welfare. For example, most of the noncustodial parents said they cared deeply about their children, saw them regularly, and thought it important to support them. However, their views of a father's role were often narrow, and it was clear that their actual payment patterns were affected not only by lack of income, but also by the state of their relationships with custodial parents and their frustration with the child support enforcement and welfare systems. Both of these factors led many noncustodial parents to draw a sharp distinction between the general concept of supporting their children and the specific requirement to pay child support through the formal system. This suggests that many of these parents would not pay formal child support regularly even if they were employed, and supports the rationale behind the peer support component, which was designed in part to build a commitment to formal child support.

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The Problem: Child Poverty and the Limits of Traditional Child Support Enforcement

Recent Census Bureau data indicate that 25 percent of all children under the age of six in the United States live in poverty. Nearly 10 million children live in families receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the nation's largest cash welfare program, which primarily serves single mothers and their children. Growing rates of poverty and welfare receipt are partly attributable to a sharp increase in the number of single-parent families, and point to the vital importance of child support as both a source of additional income for these families and a means to reduce public welfare expenditures.

During the past 20 years, concern about these issues has prompted a series of federal measures designed to improve the performance of states in collecting child support. In 1975, Congress created the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (now housed within the Department of Health and Human Services), and required each state to establish a child support enforcement (CSE) agency to oversee efforts to establish legal paternity for children born out of wedlock (paternity establishment is a prerequisite to collecting child support for a child born to unmarried parents) and to collect child support from noncustodial parents. These services are provided to all households receiving AFDC (indeed, recipients are required to cooperate), and to non-AFDC households by request. This national CSE system was superimposed onto a highly complex and varied set of local organizational structures often involving courts, prosecuting attorneys, welfare agencies, and others.

These local structures still exist in most areas but, over time, the federal government has played an increasingly active role in regulating the CSE process. For example, the major welfare reform legislation passed in 1988 the Family Support Act (FSA) required states to use standard guidelines in determining how much child support noncustodial parents are required to pay, to withhold child support from the paychecks of noncustodial parents, and to improve their performance at establishing paternity for children born to unmarried parents. These steps, together with providing employment and training services and requiring participation in such services by custodial parents on welfare, have been the cornerstones of recent government efforts to ensure that parents both mothers and fathers are able to assume primary responsibility for supporting their own children.

Efforts to improve child support enforcement are vitally important. It has been estimated that as much as $34 billion in potential support goes unpaid each year, and almost two-thirds of single parents currently receive no child support. This suggests that both tougher enforcement and broader changes in societal attitudes are needed. However, it is important to note that these efforts are coming at a time when the economic circumstances of young men, particularly those with limited skills and education credentials, are decaying at an alarming rate. The inflation-adjusted average annual earnings of 25- to 29-year-old men without a high school diploma fell by 35 percent between 1973 and 1991. This suggests that the payoff from tighter enforcement may be constrained by the inability of some noncustodial parents to pay. Nevertheless, the "bargain" that has been offered to custodial parents on welfare financial support and employment and training opportunities in exchange for serious efforts to become self-sufficient has, to date, rarely been extended to noncustodial parents. For them, the obligation has been almost entirely one-sided; they are expected to pay child support, and government promises to collect.

At the same time, it is becoming increasingly evident that the CSE system is ill-equipped to handle cases in which noncustodial parents cite unemployment as the reason for their failure to make court-ordered support payments. It is clearly counterproductive to jail a noncustodial parent who does not have the means to pay. However, in practice, judges and CSE staff have few means at their disposal to assess whether nonpaying noncustodial parents who claim to be unemployed are in fact telling the truth; available information on noncustodial parents' earnings and employment are typically several months out of date (and cover only reported earnings). With their enforcement options limited, courts are often forced to resort to stopgap measures such as setting a "purge payment" an amount the noncustodial parent can clearly pay and ordering him to pay this sum or go to jail. The noncustodial parent may produce the payment to gain his release, and then return to the cycle of nonpayment. In other cases, judges may order noncustodial parents to seek employment and report back to court periodically, but many courts and CSE agencies are overwhelmed and unable to carefully monitor such "seek work" orders. Given the lack of constructive alternatives for handling these cases, CSE agencies often choose not to expend resources pursuing nonpaying noncustodial parents when there is no evidence of income. Unfortunately, this means that many AFDC child support cases receive only limited attention.

This problem is exacerbated by the low levels of cooperation offered by both custodial and noncustodial parents, especially in AFDC cases, where the state retains, as reimbursement for welfare costs, all but the first $50 in child support paid each month. A variety of factors may help explain this resistance: a preference (on the part of both parents) for informal, direct payments that bypass the system; conflicts between the parents; or simple unwillingness on the part of some fathers to accept responsibility. In addition, many noncustodial parents are convinced that the CSE system is fundamentally unfair, particularly to low-income noncustodial parents who, in their view, are frequently presented with support obligations that far exceed their ability to pay. Without cooperation, it is extremely difficult for the CSE system to locate these individuals to establish paternity for children born out of wedlock or enforce support orders; many of the noncustodial parents of children who are receiving AFDC live on the fringes of the mainstream economy, beyond the reach of the administrative records available to CSE staff. Ironically, an unintended result of tougher child support enforcement may be to push a group of low-earning, sporadically working men further into the underground economy, diminishing the chances that they will provide financial stability for their families or boost them out of poverty.

This constellation of factors low earnings by noncustodial parents, limited enforcement options, and lack of cooperation by parents helps explain why only 16 percent of AFDC custodial parents received formal child support payments in 1992.

The Parents' Fair Share Response

Frustrated by the situation described above, in the 1980s judges and CSE staff in a few jurisdictions began to experiment with procedures that allowed courts to order unemployed noncustodial parents to participate in employment and training programs. This approach could provide assistance to those in need while simultaneously "smoking out" those who were working off the books: Faced with a requirement to participate in a program that would disrupt their work schedules, some parents admitted that they were employed and agreed to pay child support. Moreover, the new approach, based on mutual rather than one-sided obligations, held the potential to increase the level of voluntary cooperation by noncustodial parents, making it easier for CSE agencies to keep track of their whereabouts.

Authority to test this basic approach was built into the Family Support Act. FSA was concerned primarily with tougher child support enforcement and employment services and requirements for custodial parents on welfare; the Act created the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) Training Program for welfare recipients. However, it also included a provision instructing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to permit a group of states to test the provision of JOBS services to noncustodial parents of children on welfare who are unemployed and unable to meet their child support obligations.

Around the time FSA passed, several private foundations were focusing increasing attention on child poverty, the rising number of single-parent families, low child support payment rates, and the relationship of these developments to declining earnings among men. In late 1989, MDRC initiated discussions with foundation and federal officials about building a demonstration and research project around the FSA provision described above.

Throughout 1990 and early 1991, MDRC conducted background research to identify a set of program services that seemed likely to engage and assist unemployed noncustodial parents. Three key conclusions emerged from this effort. First, although the PFS population was likely to be diverse, it was assumed that at least some participants would need fairly intensive training or education in order to secure stable employment. However, it also seemed clear that these parents would need jobs and income quickly because most would not be welfare recipients (AFDC is only available to custodial parents) and would be facing large child support debts. Second, employment and training services alone would probably not suffice to engage noncustodial parents and make a lasting difference in their employment and payment patterns; the program would also need to address broader social and psychological factors that lead many noncustodial parents to resist working and paying support regularly. Third, the intervention would be unlikely to achieve its long-term goal assisting children if the CSE system practiced "business as usual." Changes would be needed to ensure that the noncustodial parents' child support obligations matched their ability to pay, both during and after their participation in PFS, and that CSE agencies could move quickly to translate their earnings into support payments and to respond when noncustodial parents failed to participate in PFS as ordered.

As a result of this research, states applying for admission to PFS were required to build programs around four core components: a menu of employment and training services with a special emphasis on on-the-job training (OJT) as a means to mix training with income-producing work; ⁽²⁾ peer support groups built around a curriculum stressing responsible fatherhood; enhanced CSE activities; and opportunities for noncustodial parents to mediate conflicts with custodial parents. These components are described further in Table 1. Sites were also encouraged to devise strategies to use PFS to reach out to fathers of AFDC children who had not yet established paternity for children born out of wedlock in addition to working with parents who had already been ordered to pay support but were failing to do so (most of the pre-PFS programs described earlier targeted parents with support orders).

Apart from there being a general requirement to include the four core components and to build relatively large-scale programs, states were free to design PFS programs to fit their own objectives and views of the target population. This flexible approach partly reflected the limited knowledge base about effective employment and training strategies for disadvantaged men. It also seemed appropriate because PFS targeted a broad, varied population and would operate in diverse environments. In contrast to earlier MDRC demonstration projects that were created to test a specific set of services designed for a fairly narrow target population, PFS tested a new, large-scale bureaucratic system that attempted to incorporate noncustodial parents into the JOBS program and redefine child support enforcement to include both obligations and opportunities.

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The Institutional Challenge

PFS presented daunting institutional and operational challenges. The two main organizational players employment and training providers and CSE agencies had little history of collaboration and few incentives to expend resources on the PFS target population. Moreover, their missions and organizational cultures were fundamentally different. PFS asked these systems to reconcile their divergent perspectives, make major changes in their standard operating procedures, and focus their efforts on a long-neglected group.

The greatest changes were demanded of CSE agencies. Since the national CSE program was created, a mix of financial and organizational factors has pushed the system to focus on maximizing immediate support collections. CSE agencies are generally unfamiliar with the notion of making short-term service investments in noncustodial parents in the hope of increasing their ability to pay later. In fact, as noted earlier, these agencies are likely to de-emphasize cases that seem unlikely to yield immediate payoffs. Moreover, many CSE agencies see themselves as representing the custodial parent or the state in an adversarial process and Bly resist measures that they perceive as "coddling" noncustodial parents. PFS pushed the system not only to identify and take action on these cases, but also to invest in the noncustodial parents by temporarily reducing their child support obligations during the period of PFS participation.

Employment and training providers are, in principle, much more familiar with investing in the human capital of participants. However, the key systems that provide employment and training to the disadvantaged, the JOBS program and the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) system, have had limited experience working with very disadvantaged men. JOBS programs primarily serve female welfare recipients, and the voluntary JTPA system, driven for years by performance standards stressing low costs and high placement rates, has been criticized for underserving individuals facing severe barriers to employment and for emphasizing short-term services. PFS asked both of these systems to alter their approaches.

Fortunately, the key changes sought by PFS were generally consistent with recent federal efforts to reorient both systems. For example, the Family Support Act and subsequent regulations require CSE agencies to take action on all cases within prescribed time limits and to ensure that child support obligations reflect parents' changing economic circumstances. Similarly, 1992 amendments to the Job Training Partnership Act pushed that system to serve more disadvantaged clients with longer-term services; and FSA's JOBS provisions were created partly to reorient state welfare-to-work efforts to stress education and training in addition to short-term job search assistance. However, as with any attempt to change large, decentralized systems, these federal efforts have only gradually begun to affect local practices and organizational cultures. Thus, in many respects, PFS was still cutting against the grain.

These challenging circumstances and the lack of previous knowledge about the PFS target group pushed the PFS demonstration partners toward a two-phase strategy. Under this plan, the demonstration began with an 18- to 24-month pilot phase designed to test the feasibility of the PFS model, to learn more about the noncustodial parents, and to assess whether the PFS approach appeared to be promising. If the pilot phase experience was sufficiently encouraging, MDRC would work with the pilot phase partners and other interested parties to develop a rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of PFS based on a random assignment research design.

In late 1991, nine states were selected from among 15 that applied to join the PFS pilot phase. Each participating state was granted permission to use JOBS funds to serve noncustodial parents and received a grant from the PFS foundation partners. States were also required to contribute their own (or local) resources, and both state or local funding and foundation grants could be used to draw down federal matching funds. Table 2 shows that each of the participating states operated PFS in either one or two counties rather than statewide. The nine pilot programs (referred to here as "sites") began operating between March and August 1992.

Achievements of the Pilot Phase

MDRC's decision to recommend a full-scale test of the impacts of PFS was based on three broad conclusions, drawn after more than a year of close observation and the collection and analysis of considerable data on the operational performance of the pilot sites. These three key findings are as follows:

• The pilot sites were able to recruit diverse institutional partners, build programs around the four core PFS components, and ensure that participants received a consistent message about the goals of PFS.

Given the challenging circumstances described in the previous section, the ability of sites to mount PFS programs including the four core components was far from certain. First, it was necessary to assemble a network of diverse agencies to operate the program. Second, sites needed to devise creative management strategies to blend these disparate pieces into coherent programs reflecting the multiple goals of PFS.

All of the sites achieved the first objective. They succeeded in building multi-agency partnerships to run the program and, by the fall of 1992, PFS projects incorporating the four core components were up and running in all sites. The networks included JOBS programs, JTPA agencies, CSE agencies, courts, private nonprofit organizations, school districts, and community colleges, among others.

As expected, smooth linkages among these partners took time to develop. However, over the course of the pilot, sites developed numerous strategies to reconcile divergent organizational cultures and ensure that participants did not receive mixed messages about the program's goals. For example, in most sites, staff from various agencies were outstationed in the offices of others or in a central PFS program office, and often led activities together. In addition, all sites developed management teams, representing the key agencies, that met periodically to identify and jointly resolve operational issues. As a result of these efforts, the programs received consistent attention from staff in most of the key agencies and broad community and political support.

The major challenge, discussed further below, has been to develop a broad menu of employment and training options for PFS participants. While all sites developed some B services, the range of options was typically too narrow to accommodate a diverse target population, especially during the early months of the pilot.

• Nearly all of the sites have developed effective procedures to identify eligible noncustodial parents, move them into program services, and encourage and enforce regular participation.

The first concrete task facing the local PFS partners and the first test of their ability to collaborate was to design and implement systems to ensure a smooth flow of people through the PFS program. Specifically, an early challenge was to develop procedures to routinely identify large numbers of noncustodial parents with children on AFDC who were not making court-ordered support payments; bring them to a court hearing or an appointment with CSE staff to explain their nonpayment; and, if unemployment was cited, require them to participate in PFS and refer them for program services (for reasons discussed below, most sites did not make major efforts to recruit fathers who had not yet established paternity). This task involved intense inter-agency collaboration and entirely new procedures because, as noted earlier, most CSE agencies had not consistently pursued these cases in the past. The ability of sites to mount large-scale programs was a key test of the operational feasibility of PFS and would be critical to conducting the rigorous evaluation of PFS's effects that is central to Phase II of the demonstration.

Although the pace of referrals was slow at first in most sites, by mid-October 1993, the sites had succeeded in contacting and referring more than 4,000 noncustodial parents for PFS services. This required identifying a much larger number of nonpaying noncustodial parents because, as expected, many either failed to show up for scheduled hearings or appointments or admitted that they were employed and agreed to pay support without being referred to PFS. In order to facilitate a steady flow of referrals, CSE agencies developed new internal procedures to identify cases and worked with courts to establish special PFS dockets to process large numbers of potential cases.

Noncustodial parents who were referred to PFS were typically instructed to appear at an orientation session at the program office within a few days; at orientation, they were scheduled for a peer support group and, shortly thereafter, employment and training activities. About two-thirds of the noncustodial parents who were referred to PFS actually participated in an employment and training or peer support activity within four months of the referral. Given the fact that less than 5 percent of the noncustodial parents were engaged in employment and training activities on their own at the time of the referral, this suggests a major increase in service receipt levels. Moreover, the PFS participation rate was higher than comparable rates measured by MDRC in mandatory employment programs for AFDC recipients that also imposed participation requirements on large numbers of individuals. Finally, most of the noncustodial parents who were referred to PFS but did not participate in program services either reported to program staff that they were employed or were referred to CSE staff for further enforcement action. Relatively few noncustodial parents "slipped through the cracks."

• There have been clear signs that PFS is changing both individuals and bureaucratic systems.

The pilot phase was not designed to assess whether PFS is effective; that is, whether the program is making a difference. Without a benchmark against which to compare pilot phase activities and outcomes (for example, a comparison or control group of noncustodial parents who did not have access to PFS), it is impossible to determine whether these would have occurred even if PFS did not exist. Nevertheless, an important goal of the pilot phase was to assess whether participants and institutions appeared to behave and operate differently than they did before PFS began. If no such change was evident, it would be difficult to argue that PFS had the potential to make a difference.

Regarding the participants, the quantitative data show that a substantial share of those referred to PFS were actively engaged in program activities (participants were usually expected to attend at least three days a week). Noncustodial parents who participated in PFS attended an average of 26 activity sessions, including peer support and employment and training activities, within four months of the referral to PFS (the definition of a "session" varied depending on the activity). Almost one- fourth of these participants attended 40 or more sessions, and nearly half were still active in the final month covered by the data, which suggests that the average number of sessions per person would be considerably higher if additional months of follow-up information were available. More than 20 percent of those referred to PFS reported employment to program staff within four months, another figure that will increase with longer follow-up.

The most dramatic signs of change appeared during the peer support sessions, which emerged as the heart of most of the PFS programs. Many participants quickly developed a B attachment to this activity, and both group members and staff insisted that profound attitudinal changes resulted. Participants frequently reported rediscovering their B feelings for their children, which inspired them to work harder to obtain employment, pay child support regularly, and choose "above ground," mainstream activities over underground opportunities. A few sites designed expansive peer support components including a range of extracurricular activities for participants. In one site, a group of peer support participants, energized by their experience in this component, created an independent organization to advocate for the interests of noncustodial parents.

Less dramatic but equally important change occurred in the key institutions involved in PFS. CSE agencies began "working" cases that were typically neglected before PFS provided a constructive enforcement option. In addition to generating large numbers of referrals to PFS, this new focus uncovered a substantial amount of previously unreported income. One site found that at least 14 percent of the nonpaying noncustodial parents identified as potentially eligible for PFS quickly acknowledged that they were employed, agreed to pay child support, and were never referred to the program; other parents "found" (or acknowledged) employment just after the referral but before receiving any program services.

Four of the nine sites developed procedures to routinely reduce the child support obligations of noncustodial parents during the period they were participating in PFS, and to raise these orders quickly if a parent failed to cooperate or found employment. This represented a major change because support orders were rarely changed in this manner in the past. Finally, CSE agencies developed new systems to expedite the implementation of wage withholding orders for participants who found employment and to follow up quickly when noncustodial parents failed to participate in PFS as ordered. These individuals were referred for further enforcement action including, in some cases, contempt hearings. In most sites, these enhanced CSE efforts were facilitated by designating specific CSE staff to work with PFS cases.

Employment and training systems were more difficult to change, perhaps because these agencies perceived that they were already prepared to serve the PFS population. Although some JOBS programs took steps to tailor their approaches for PFS, many JTPA-funded agencies were reluctant to take risks on PFS participants. Thus, especially during the early months of the pilot, too many participants received only relatively short-term job search assistance and relatively few received classroom or on-the-job training (OJT). Nevertheless, several sites identified B nonprofit employment and training providers with experience serving individuals facing serious barriers to employment, and, as discussed below, the menu of employment and training options became broader and the pace of OJT placements accelerated over time.

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Lessons and Challenges

In addition to confirming the operational feasibility of the PFS approach, the pilot phase research effort uncovered a wealth of useful information about the PFS target population and about operating PFS programs. This section discusses the key findings and conclusions reached during the pilot.

The Noncustodial Parents

Much less is known about the fathers of children who receive welfare than about their mothers. This is in part because custodial parents are, by definition, part of a mainstream social services delivery system, while noncustodial parents may not be part of such a system and may not work steadily in the mainstream economy. This makes it difficult to study this group using traditional data sources such as surveys and administrative records maintained by government agencies. Thus, while the PFS pilot sites worked primarily with a subset of AFDC noncustodial parents those with child support orders in place the project has provided an unusual opportunity to study and learn about this group. Data on the backgrounds, living conditions, and attitudes of noncustodial parents were collected via standard forms completed during intake interviews. Later, MDRC researchers interviewed program staff and a small but diverse group of participants to supplement the baseline data. Key findings include the following (some, but not all, of the figures cited below are included in Tables 3 and 4):

TABLE 3

TABLE 4

• The PFS noncustodial parents are a diverse group; however, many appear to be living in poverty and facing critical barriers to employment.

The vast majority of the noncustodial parents who were referred to PFS during the pilot phase are men. Almost half were 30 years old or older, but more than one-third were 25 years old or younger. Nearly 60 percent had never been married. Overall, the population was about two-thirds African-American, one-third white, and 6 percent Hispanic, although this breakdown varied substantially by site. ⁽³⁾

Most of the noncustodial parents reported very little recent employment (although, once again, there was variation from site to site). Nearly two-thirds of the parents said they had worked three months or less in the past year, and one in seven said they had been unemployed for more than two years. Almost three-fourths reported that their most recent hourly wage was less than $7 an hour. Moreover, many of the parents faced important barriers to success in the labor market. For example, while just over half had earned a high school diploma or General Educational Development (GED) certificate, sites that routinely administered diagnostic tests found that many participants scored far below their reported grade level. Three-fourths of the enrollees reported that they had been arrested at least once since their sixteenth birthday; nearly half said they had been convicted.

On the other hand, there was a group of noncustodial parents with somewhat more extensive work histories. About one-third said they were either employed at the point they were referred to PFS (the programs may serve individuals who are underemployed) or had been out of work less than three months; about one-fourth said that their current or most recent job had lasted at least one year; and one-fourth said that their current or most recent job paid $7 or more an hour. Moreover, in assessing the data on employment histories, it is critical to note that, in most sites, noncustodial parents had a B incentive to underreport their recent work experience at the point these data were collected, since most had been called in to court to explain why they had not been paying child support.

Still, many of the noncustodial parents said they were having trouble meeting their basic needs. When asked, in interviews, how they supported themselves, many described cobbling together income from a variety of sources including "odd jobs" performed for cash, part-time jobs, Unemployment Insurance payments, and welfare payments (paid to the noncustodial parents directly or, more commonly, to the women with whom they frequently stayed). Many faced staggering debts owing to fines, medical bills, and child support arrearages (which averaged more than $4,000 per person at the point of referral to PFS). Nearly 40 percent said there had been a time during the past three months when they needed food but could not afford to get it, and nearly one-third said they had been unable to pay the rent at some point during that period. Despite their ages, less than 5 percent of the noncustodial parents reported that they were living alone when they entered PFS. Many had no stable address or lived in complex households including a wide variety of extended family members spanning several generations.

These data appear to confirm the basic premise behind PFS that lack of income presents a serious obstacle to payment of child support for many noncustodial parents of children who receive AFDC. Moreover, the program appears to provide a rare opportunity to engage a group of men who are only marginally connected to the economic and social mainstream.

• Most of the noncustodial parents who participated in PFS said they cared deeply about their children and thought it important to support them. However, their views of a father's role were often narrow, and many Bly resisted paying child support through the formal system.

Most of the noncustodial parents referred to PFS during the pilot phase (62 percent) reported having either one or two children at the point of referral, and the majority reported having had children with only one partner. In addition, most reported having had regular contact with the youngest child for whom the parent reported being behind on support payments (referred to as the "target child" in the research). More than half said they had seen the child at least once a week, and only about 7 percent said they had not seen the child at all in the past year. More than half said they played at least some role in key childrearing decisions. Although the usual caveats about self-reported information must be kept in mind, these data like those gathered in some other studies of this population do not support the popular stereotype of this population as men who have fathered large numbers of children with multiple partners and then abandoned them.

On the other hand, program staff reported that, while most of the noncustodial parents had B feelings for their children, many did not fully appreciate or understand a father's role. For example, staff noted that many fathers defined their role in purely financial terms. Similarly, some peer support facilitators reported that, while most of the parents in their groups saw their children frequently, the time they spent together was often not "productive." Staff attributed these attitudes and behavior patterns in part to a lack of positive male parental role models; less than half of those referred to PFS said they had lived with their own fathers at age 14.

Moreover, while most of the PFS enrollees said they did not accept the validity of a set of commonly cited reasons for not paying child support, it is clear that their actual payment patterns were affected not only by lack of income, but also by their relationships with custodial parents and their frustration with the CSE and welfare systems. Both factors led many noncustodial parents to draw a sharp distinction between supporting their children, on the one hand, and paying child support through the formal system, on the other.

Most PFS participants were united in their hostility to the CSE system. Two of the most common complaints were that the system favors women (custodial parents) and that it does not adequately consider the circumstances of low-income noncustodial parents; some PFS participants also believed that the system is racist. Many noncustodial parents said they accumulated substantial child support debts during periods when they were unemployed and either did not know or did not believe they could obtain a modification of their support obligation. Data collected for the pilot phase confirm that many of the noncustodial parents' child support obligations appeared to exceed their ability to pay. Similarly, although only about 13 percent of enrollees described their relationship with their youngest child's other parent as "somewhat hostile" or "extremely hostile" overall, many reported conflicts over specific issues that cut across socioeconomic groups such as visitation, childrearing, and the role of the custodial parent's new partner in the child's life.

Some PFS noncustodial parents reacted to these issues by refusing to pay support at all. Others were willing to pay, at least sporadically, but only in the form of gifts or direct purchases for their children; they Bly resisted paying either the custodial parent or the state. Indeed, more than half of the parents entering PFS reported that they had bought gifts or necessities for their children or had given money directly to the custodial parent in the three months preceding the referral to PFS, but less than one-fourth said they had paid support to a court or government agency during this period. These in-kind (nonmonetary) or direct contributions are not counted by the CSE system, but many noncustodial parents prefer them nonetheless because they feel certain their support has reached the child.

These factors suggest that many of these parents would not pay formal child support regularly even if they were employed, and support the rationale behind the peer support component, which is designed in part to build a commitment to formal child support. Indeed, one of the most challenging objectives of this activity is to persuade noncustodial parents that they can do their child the most good by paying through the system, thereby staying out of legal trouble, even though these payments are mostly retained by the state.

Lessons About Operating PFS

The overall positive conclusions about operational feasibility described earlier do not imply that the pilot phase was problem-free. Each site confronted a variety of operational challenges, and all continue to display both strengths and weaknesses. Throughout the pilot, MDRC closely monitored the sites to help identify operational issues and assess technical assistance needs. This effort suggested a number of important lessons about operating PFS programs, which have been incorporated into MDRC's technical assistance and may be reflected in the PFS approach during Phase II of the demonstration. These include the following:

• A wide variety of organizational approaches was tested during the pilot phase; no one strategy emerged as superior.

Each site developed a unique strategy for addressing the organizational and management challenges presented by PFS. These approaches were influenced by the nature of pre-existing organizational resources and linkages in the PFS communities, the source of the impetus for PFS, and the vision of PFS held by key managers and staff.

Each pilot program was coordinated by a lead agency. About half the programs were led by JOBS agencies; in others, the lead agencies were nonprofit organizations or, in one case, a CSE agency. The lead agencies typically provided some services directly and contracted with outside agencies for others. In some sites, responsibility for key services was consolidated with a few agencies, while in others it was dispersed among many.

The pilot phase experience indicated that no one organizational structure is clearly preferable. The key challenge for all sites was to develop systems to manage the complex multi-agency partnerships and to build a distinct "PFS culture" that incorporated key aspects of each of the partner agencies' perspectives. This process did not always go smoothly, and tensions emerged in all sites. The key factor that affected sites' ability to identify, define, and solve problems was the level of active involvement by senior staff from the partner agencies.

• The peer support component emerged as the glue that holds PFS together for participants, maintaining their interest and involvement. However, ongoing support is needed to sustain whatever benefits this activity generates.

Many noncustodial parents were extremely angry and frustrated when they entered PFS, seeing the program as an extension of a CSE system that they perceived to be fundamentally unfair. Many were in the midst of painful separations or disputes with the custodial parents of their children. Sites quickly learned that the peer support component, which was designed to engage the noncustodial parents around their interest in their children, while allowing them to air grievances in a supportive environment, was able to quickly soften participants' hostility and give the PFS program credibility. Moreover, the apparent attitudinal changes stimulated by peer support helped to create the preconditions for success in the employment and training component. Thus, sites usually placed peer support first in the sequence of program activities. In some sites, participants completed the full peer support curriculum before moving on to employment and training activities. In others, they began peer support first and later participated in both components concurrently.

Although peer support appears to have exerted a B influence on noncustodial parents' outlooks, it is too early to tell whether this will translate into lasting changes in behavior. Staff and participants reported that many parents live in environments that do not support the new, more positive outlooks they developed in the program. Thus, it is crucial that participants have opportunities to remain involved with PFS, and that they succeed in obtaining jobs that can help them deliver on their commitment to their children. Short of this, the changes seen in peer support may not last.

• The most difficult challenge facing sites was to develop a broad menu of employment and training options for PFS participants.

In designing the PFS employment and training component, MDRC encouraged sites to develop a range of employment and training options for a diverse population. Particular emphasis was placed on-the-job training (OJT), which was seen as an ideal vehicle to combine training with income-producing work. Recent results from the National JTPA Study showed that OJT can produce statistically significant increases in earnings for men judged appropriate for this service.

The decision to encourage substantial use of OJT was made despite two potential obstacles. First, JTPA agencies were the logical choice to assume responsibility for this service. However, as noted earlier, this system has been criticized for not taking risks on disadvantaged clients. Second, JTPA rules governing OJT have been tightened to ensure that employers provide real training in exchange for the subsidy they receive; these reforms were prompted by earlier investigations, which revealed that many OJT placements involved little documented training. Many local JTPA agencies contend that the new rules make the OJT package less attractive to employers, and have responded by de-emphasizing the service.

During the early months of the pilot, almost all sites had difficulty placing PFS participants in OJT positions or other JTPA-funded training. Most sites chose to focus instead on relatively short-term job search or job-readiness training; two sites focused heavily on basic (that is, remedial) education. Overall, more than three-fourths of all employment and training participants attended job-readiness or job search activities, and about one-third attended basic education; fewer than one in five received skills training or OJT. Thus, while each site developed some B services early in the pilot, all had trouble utilizing OJT, and few were successful in creating the broad menu of employment and training services that was envisioned by MDRC.

There were several problems with the early, narrow employment and training strategies. On the one hand, it is clear that job-readiness and job search services were both necessary and sufficient for some participants, and some of the sites that stressed these activities achieved relatively high job placement rates. However, there was concern that this approach was not appropriate for many participants and that, without the benefit of skill-building activities, many of those who were placed were finding the same types of jobs they would have obtained on their own (in other words, that PFS may not have made a difference for these individuals). This is suggested by the average wage rate for participants who reported employment within four months of referral: just over $6 an hour.

On the other hand, the sites that stressed basic education were seeking to build human capital. However, there was doubt about whether participants would remain active in these classes for long periods in the absence of income and whether they would ever graduate to jobs. Again, this argued for opportunities to mix training with income-producing work.

During the course of the pilot, MDRC's technical assistance focused on helping sites broaden their employment and training service offerings. Consultants provided training on OJT marketing (that is, persuading employers to hire and train PFS participants in exchange for a wage subsidy) and running effective job search assistance activities. The U.S. Department of Labor, a PFS partner, challenged the local JTPA agencies to take a more active role in PFS, and offered assistance in doing so. Finally, sites were asked to develop opportunities for part-time work for participants in classroom training or education and post-placement follow-up services to help increase job retention, particularly for individuals placed through job search activities.

These recommendations stimulated important changes in nearly all sites. Several sites restructured the employment and training provider network or the sequence of activities to focus more heavily on skill-building activities. At the same time, better training and newly hired job developers dramatically accelerated the pace of OJT placement; by October 1993, more than 300 PFS participants had been placed into OJT positions (one site had made more than 60 OJT placements). Thus, it seems clear that the general employment and training approach sought by MDRC is feasible, albeit difficult and time-consuming to implement.

• While there is a range of obstacles to developing a flexible and responsive CSE system, CSE agencies emerged as B supporters of PFS.

Administrative, legal, and philosophical obstacles confronted the effort to develop a more responsive CSE system for PFS participants. For example, some CSE agencies, on principle, opposed the idea of temporarily reducing child support obligations during the period of program participation, while others contended that state law prohibited them from doing so. Similarly, while most sites agreed that the PFS participation requirement should be vigorously enforced, overwhelmed courts and CSE staff could not always oblige. In the end, however, most sites were able to make important changes. Four of the nine implemented some kind of routine reduction or suspension of child support obligations for PFS participants, and most tried to respond quickly when participants were not attending program activities. An important policy question is whether these enhancements could be sustained or replicated in CSE systems facing increasing pressure to improve their collection performance; in many sites, they required special case-by-case procedures that might be costly to institute on a large scale.

• The vast majority of noncustodial parents referred to PFS had support orders in place; few sites made intensive efforts to work with parents who had not yet established paternity or a support order.

Most of the noncustodial parents of children receiving AFDC do not have child support orders. One study found that only about one-fourth of never-married mothers receiving AFDC had paternity established for at least one of their children; paternity establishment is a prerequisite for obtaining a support order when a child is born to unmarried parents. Nevertheless, most of the small-scale pre-PFS programs linking child support enforcement with employment and training focused on noncustodial parents with support orders in place. This is not surprising because these programs were often initiated by courts or agencies that were frustrated by the lack of enforcement alternatives for these cases. Moreover, parents who have not established paternity or obtained a support order are, by definition, difficult to identify and locate.

MDRC anticipated that most of the PFS states would adopt this same approach. However, as noted earlier, prior to the start of the project, participating states were also urged to use PFS as a means to reach out to noncustodial parents who had not established paternity. Under this "early intervention" approach, PFS services would be provided to these putative fathers as part of an effort to encourage them to establish paternity voluntarily.

In fact, as described earlier, most of the sites were consumed with the challenging task of developing procedures to routinely identify and refer noncustodial parents with support orders. Thus, while most of these states are testing new paternity establishment strategies to comply with new federal performance standards, PFS was usually not part of these efforts (although PFS may be an option once paternity is established through hospital-based or other community outreach efforts).

However, one site did initiate promising efforts in two areas. First, some noncustodial parents were recruited into PFS through community-based outreach efforts; some of these fathers had not established paternity for children on AFDC and agreed to do so. Second, the PFS lead agency, an established community-based organization, worked with the CSE agency to reach out to putative fathers who had been named by custodial parents during AFDC intake interviews (welfare applicants are required to name the noncustodial parents of their children). Rather than undertake its usual location efforts, which often prove to be fruitless, the CSE agency routinely turned these names over to the PFS agency, which went out into the community to find these men and recruit them into PFS. Early evidence suggests that these special measures may have helped to improve the site's paternity establishment performance.

• Few PFS participants obtained mediation services; this is consistent with the results of previous studies.

Mediation was included as a PFS component primarily as a "safety valve." In its background research, MDRC found that disputes between custodial and noncustodial parents over visitation, custody, childrearing, and other issues, though legally separate from child support, nevertheless affected support payment patterns. Moreover, it was assumed that the peer support component, if successful, would lead many noncustodial parents to seek increased contact with their children which, in turn, might trigger additional conflicts.

The profile of the noncustodial parents described above confirms that conflicts often affected payment levels. However, the pilot sites found that relatively few noncustodial parents expressed interest in mediation and, when they did, it was difficult to persuade custodial parents to participate. Some have speculated that mediation is unfamiliar to these parents and that they may doubt its impartiality. This may explain why a few sites appear to have had some success with more informal mediation efforts assisted by program staff. In any case, low utilization rates particularly among low-income parents have been found in other studies of mediation initiatives.

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Looking Ahead to Phase II

During the early months of the pilot phase, there was wide variation across the sites in almost all aspects of PFS, from intake approaches to service strategies. However, during the course of the pilot, as lessons about useful operational strategies emerged and were disseminated by MDRC, the level of variation began to decrease.

The service approach for Phase II should reflect this growing consensus. Although much flexibility should remain, the approach may be specified in somewhat more detail based on the pilot experience. For example, during Phase II, each site could be asked to develop three types of employment and training services:

• Structured job-readiness and job search activities.
• Opportunities for participants to mix training with work, either through OJT or through combinations of classroom training or education and subsidized or unsubsidized work.
• Post-placement follow-up services for at least six months after participants obtain employment.

In addition, operational targets should be developed to ensure that a substantial fraction of participants receive human-capital-building services.

Similarly, the enhanced CSE component should include three types of activities in all sites: (1) procedures to identify eligible noncustodial parents and move them into PFS services; (2) effective "carrots" (temporary reductions in support orders) and "sticks" (quick follow-up and tough responses to noncompliance) to encourage and require regular attendance at program activities; and (3) systems to ensure that wage withholding orders are instituted promptly when participants find jobs. These efforts could be facilitated by designating specialized staff to monitor the CSE aspects of PFS cases.

Phase II will feature a random assignment evaluation that will provide the data necessary to determine whether PFS is indeed making a difference. Under this design, eligible noncustodial parents will be randomly assigned either to a program group, which will be exposed to PFS in the same way people made contact with the program during the pilot phase, or to a control group, which will be ineligible for PFS. Because the two groups will be created by selecting randomly from a pool of eligible parents, their members will not differ systematically in any measurable or unmeasurable way. Thus, differences between the two groups in subsequent behavior will be attributable to PFS.

In addition to measuring changes in noncustodial parents' employment rates, earnings, and child support payments, the study will assess impacts on custodial parents' welfare receipt, noncustodial parents' relationships with their children, and on the children's well-being. Finally, the study will address a range of critical questions about PFS, including: Do increases in child support payments (and corresponding reductions in welfare spending) outweigh the expenditures on PFS services and enhanced CSE activities? If there are increases in child support payments, do these improve the economic circumstances of custodial parents and children, or do they affect only government budgets?

The evaluation may also address a variety of broader questions of fairness and equity that are implied by PFS. For example, does the addition of a special "opportunity" for low-income noncustodial parents send an inappropriate message to parents who work and pay regularly now? In an era of scarce resources, would the resources devoted to PFS be better spent on employment and education services for custodial parents? Although these critical questions cannot be answered definitively by evaluators, the study results should provide valuable information to inform the wider debate.

About MDRC

The Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) is a nonprofit social policy research organization founded in 1974 and located in New York City and San Francisco. Its mission is to design and rigorously field-test promising education and employment-related programs aimed at improving the well-being of disadvantaged adults and youth, and to provide policymakers and practitioners with reliable evidence on the effectiveness of social programs. Through this work, and its technical assistance to program administrators, MDRC seeks to enhance the quality of public policies and programs. MDRC actively disseminates the results of its research through its publications and through interchange with policymakers, administrators, practitioners, and the public.

Over the past two decades working in partnership with more than forty states, the federal government, scores of communities, and numerous private philanthropies MDRC has developed and studied more than three dozen promising social policy initiatives.

Endnotes

1. This report has been written mostly in the past tense because it describes PFS structures and activities as they were operated during a particular point in time the pilot phase of the demonstration. However, all of the PFS programs that were in the pilot phase are still in operation, although not all of them will be part of the next phase of the demonstration. Also, masculine pronouns are sometimes used when referring to noncustodial parents even though not all such parents are men.  [Back To Text]

2. Under an OJT arrangement, an employer receives a publicly funded subsidy in return for hiring and training a disadvantaged worker. [Back To Text]

3. It is not clear whether this group is typical of noncustodial parents nationwide because the PFS sites were not chosen on the basis of their representativeness, but rather on the basis of applications submitted by states. [Back To Text]

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Last updated: 04/26/01