Child Support Report

Vol. XXVII, No. 3, Mar 2005

Child Support Report is a publication of the Office of Child Support Enforcement, Division of Consumer Services. CSR is published for information purposes only. No official endorsement of any practice, publication, or individual by the Department of Health and Human Services or the Office of Child Support Enforcement is intended or should be inferred.

New HHS Secretary Michael O. Leavitt Sworn In ACF Publications Offer Guidance for Healthy Marriage Projects Costa Rica Becomes A Foreign Reciprocating Country 'Child Support is My Baby' - Director Marks 30 Years in Eau Claire County,Wisconsin Child Support Debt Analysis Seeks More Effective Strategies Characteristics of Families Using Title IV-D Services TANF Agencies' Access to NDNH New Child Support Data in the Census Bureau Report, "Support Providers: 2002"

New HHS Secretary Michael O. Leavitt Sworn In

America's 20^th Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael O. Leavitt, was sworn in on January 26, 2005, in a ceremony attended by President George W. Bush. Prior to his current position, Mr. Leavitt served as Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and was elected Governor of Utah three times. He was chosen by his peers as Chairman of the National Governors Association and represented the states in Congress on welfare reform, Medicaid and children's health insurance. As Secretary, he is committed to utilizing technology to improve the quality of care, reduce mistakes and manage costs.

President Bush commended Secretary Leavitt for "his integrity, creativity and compassion, for his proven ability to move beyond the partisan debate, to work with leaders at all levels of government and to improve the lives of the people he serves."

The President also recognized Secretary Leavitt's leadership skills that "will enable HHS to work with Congress to reauthorize welfare reforms that strengthen marriage and promote responsible fatherhood."

Secretary Leavitt thanked President Bush, his family and friends, and a host of colleagues for attending the ceremony. He also recognized former Secretary Tommy G. Thompson and stated he would build on his legacy of making America a healthier and safer place.

The Secretary shared a personal story about his grandfather who taught him to "stick with what's real and right..." He stated, "Responsibility to care for the truly needy is real...the responsibility to nurture children...strengthening marriage and protecting families is right."

ACF Publications Offer Guidance for Healthy Marriage Projects

By: By Elaine Blackman

During the last several years, the HHS Administration for Children and Families has funded a number of research and evaluation projects to support the Administration's Healthy Marriage Initiative. To help get the word out about publications available on these projects, the Child Support Report last month featured "Implementing Programs to Strengthen Unwed Parents' Relationships: Lessons from Family Connections in Alabama," by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. The report is based on a study of an OCSE Special Improvement Project (SIP) grant to educate low-resource unwed parents about marriage.

Also developed by Mathematica are two brief reports that can serve as guides for conducting healthy marriage projects. Like the above report, these briefs were prepared as part of a multi-phased ACF project, "Building Strong Families"(BSF), which is to develop and evaluate a model for healthy marriage services for interested low-income expectant or new unwed parents, and may be of interest to ACF grantees and the child support community.

The first of the two BSF briefs, titled "Strengthening Relationships and Supporting Healthy Marriage Among Unwed Parents," is based on Mathematica's study of how programs to strengthen relationships in unmarried parent families can be developed, implemented, and evaluated. The study culminated in a "conceptual framework" that identifies factors to consider, including circumstances and needs of unwed parent families, program planning and curricula, implementation and service delivery, and outcomes. This brief focuses on the program design aspects of the conceptual framework.

The other brief, "What We Know About Unmarried Parents: Implications for Building Strong Families Programs," summarizes information from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study about the characteristics and relationships of unwed parents. The findings can help agencies and groups interested in designing BSF programs similar to the BSF model to better understand their target population.

To view the Building Strong Families briefs, visit http://www.buildingstrongfamilies.info.

Costa Rica Becomes A Foreign Reciprocating Country

By: William Alvarado Rivera

On Feb. 16, 2005, U.S. Charge d' Affaires Douglas M. Barnes, and Costa Rican Foreign Minister Roberto Tovar signed a bilateral agreement for the reciprocal enforcement of child support orders at the Foreign Ministry in San Jose, Costa Rica. This is the first bilateral child support agreement between the United States and a Latin American country. As Mr. Barnes remarked at the signing ceremony, "Our hope is that this treaty and the laws both our countries have put into effect to better establish systems for the enforcement of child support payments will be a model for other countries in the region."

The agreement is the result of several years of negotiations, beginning with a U.S. delegation visit to Costa Rica in the summer of 2002. Subsequent negotiations between the two countries took place in the U.S. and at The Hague in 2003 and 2004, respectively. The agreement will become effective upon notification that the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly has ratified the agreement.

The U.S. and Costa Rican governments are excited at the prospect of establishing successful cooperative relationships for the enforcement of child support orders across their borders. The 2000 Census estimates there are approximately 69,000 Costa Ricans in the U.S. According to the Department of State, over 20,000 Americans reside in Costa Rica. At the signing, officials from both countries emphasized the importance of this agreement to promoting the well-being of children whose parents reside in either country.

To date, the U.S. has declared nine countries and nine Canadian Provinces to be foreign reciprocating countries. OCSE expects to negotiate additional bilateral agreements during the year. We are also active participants in the multilateral negotiation at the Hague Conference Special Commission on the International Recovery of Child Support and other Forms of Family Maintenance, as OCSE continues its efforts to improve support enforcement for children residing in the U.S., wherever their parents may live.

For each foreign reciprocating country, OCSE is preparing guidance for child support enforcement caseworkers to facilitate the processing of international cases. For additional information, please visit the OCSE international resources Web site at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/international/.

OCSE Turns 30
'Child Support is My Baby' - Director Marks 30 Years in Eau Claire County,Wisconsin

By: Elaine Blackman

In the early 1970s, based on an inkling that it was only a matter of time before the launch of an official child support operation, the AFDC welfare program chief in Eau Claire County, WI, decided to set up a function for collecting child support. That's when welfare caseworker Jan Steiner considered the switch to child support work an interesting opportunity.

Before long, "interesting" turned to "a unique sense of pride and commitment that I haven't seen elsewhere in the government," says Steiner about the mind-set of those connected with the new child support enforcement program nationwide.

Now, Steiner celebrates her 30-year directorship of Eau Claire County's IV-D program, and her sense of "attachment" stays strong. Because "the whole concept of what we do is so vital," she insists, "you really like what you do, and [feel that] you're making a difference."

And she's not just speaking for herself. Child support specialist Dan Hannafin boasts 18 years with the office. He attributes his, and Steiner's, longevity to the challenges of keeping up with the "constant evolution" of the IV-D program. Hannafin recalls the sparse workplace of his past, with only file cabinets, desks, and phones, and very little data processing (and the loud sound of an old IBM teletype machine with its big ream of paper that turned out payment records). Fast-forward to the present: "We have everything on our desktop, and you can locate [parents] in a matter of minutes," he says, noting the adage "If you can't find them, they're not worth finding."

The program has become "so vast that your brain can't retain it all ... You're constantly educating yourself," Hannafin says. He's amazed by new hires who can "walk in from the cold" and learn the incredibly complex program.

Newcomers, however, are not the rule in Eau Claire. A total 15.5 full-timers include 13 with a combined 154 years in child support enforcement, and another who last year filled one retiree's post of 22 years. One possible cause for retention is that caseworkers who conduct court-ordered pre-trials and manage their cases require bachelor's degrees, says Steiner. (Pre-trials call for caseworkers to gather as much information as possible and educate customers about the process; the majority of cases reach stipulation and prevent the need to go to court.)

Says Steiner, "One obvious challenge with all those staff years is to be able to accept change and not grow stale." Easier done, perhaps, under a leader who allows staff control over their jobs. "If they do better with routine tasks, such as managing their cases on the computer, in the morning, and do better with scheduling appointments in the afternoon, so be it." And she recognizes the importance of the verbal pat-on-the-back.

For Barb Larson, child support specialist for 10 years, the program's newer focus on delivering services to families, and the "astounding" leaps in automation, make the profession rewarding. Her boss's style also lends to a "fitting atmosphere" in which she can get so much accomplished.

Wisconsin IV-D Director Susan Pfeiffer calls Steiner a veteran child support director with a flair for understanding and implementing child support policy. "Jan runs a high-performing operation," she says, that "provides excellent services to child support customers."

Managing the business of child support also involves dealing with cut-backs in funding and "cumbersome Federal regulations." Steiner cites as an example the National Medical Support Notice sent to employers with the income withholding form. Our program's "most valuable resource" - the employers - "are forced to deal with an inundation of paper," she says.

Putting it all in perspective, Steiner explains, "We're the little guy in the big scheme of things ... We're down in the trenches ... a cog in the wheel. But this is where it's really happening." Primarily, she adds, "child support is my baby."

Child Support Debt Analysis Seeks More Effective Strategies

By: Dennis Putze

One of the top priorities for OCSE has been to gain a greater understanding of child support debt, since the amount of unpaid child support debt in the United States is continuing to increase and is approaching $100 billion. With more knowledge about the composition of unpaid child support, we should be able to design and implement more effective strategies to collect arrears from those who are able to pay, and develop more appropriate policies for low-income parents who are unable to pay.

OCSE and the HHS Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation have contracted with the Urban Institute (UI) to conduct a "Child Support Debt Analysis Study" for nine large states. The aim of this study is to understand the composition of child support debt, the causes for dramatic growth, and what steps may be taken to curb future arrears growth.

The nine states that have agreed to participate are Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. These states account for about 40 percent of the national child support debt as of the end of fiscal year 2003. (California was not included in this study because the UI had already conducted a similar study under contract with the State.)

The states submitted to OCSE detailed files of all IV-D child support cases with an obligation to pay. These have been matched against the National Directory of New Hires (NDNH) to obtain quarterly wage and unemployment insurance information for six quarters. After the matches were complete, OCSE stripped personal identifiers from the data and sent the files to the UI for analysis, which is currently under way. Upon completion of the data analysis, the UI will produce one national report and nine state-specific reports. Initial drafts of these reports should be available later this year with final reports available early next year. The nine state-specific reports will describe each state's arrears in great detail and, based on these findings, will suggest ways to reduce arrears growth, increase arrears payments, and increase compliance. The national report will draw on these and other state-specific reports as well as national data available from OCSE.

Based on preliminary analysis of the data by the UI, and analysis of national data by OCSE, we have learned the following about the child support debt.

• Approximately 65 percent of the national child support debt is held by the 20 percent of debtors who owe more than $20,000. Most debtors owe small amounts of debt, but most of the debt is held by persons who owe large amounts.
• In states that charge interest routinely, arrears are even more concentrated among debtors who owe large amounts of debt.
• According to State Workforce Agencies' quarterly wage data, it appears that most debtors have little or no income. However, many of the people who have no quarterly wage records have other sources of income. Some are receiving government benefits. Some have substantial bank accounts, and others had a Federal Tax Offset even though no quarterly wages are reported.
• Support orders are often too high for noncustodial parents with low reported wages. Preliminary findings from three states show that current support orders are often more than 50 percent of reported wages for obligors with low reported wages (i.e. below $10,000 a year).
• Approximately one-half of the debt is owed to the government.

Debt analyses should not focus on how to write off debt. Instead, they should be aimed at gaining insights on how to make smarter use of our technological tools and other resources to increase child support collections from parents who are able to pay, and developing strategies to deal with debtors who cannot afford to pay. Our ultimate goal is to make child support a reliable source of income for children.

Characteristics of Families Using Title IV-D Services

By: Linda Mellgren

HHS has recently released a report, Characteristics of Families Using Title IV-D Services in 1999 and 2001, that provides descriptive information on child support eligible families based on data from the Bureau of the Census March Current Population Survey (CPS) and the April CPS Supplement on Child Support Supplement (CSS). The analysis uses information from the surveys to identify families that are likely to be in the child support system funded under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act and compares their characteristics with those child support-eligible families not receiving IV-D services. Characteristics include such items as: race, income, gender, marital status, poverty, and participation in government programs, including cash assistance, of the custodial parent (CP), and the residence of the non-custodial parent (NCP). The report also addresses the question of whether the family has a child support agreement in place or has received child support payments.

According to the CSS, there were 13,382,897 child support-eligible families in the U.S. in 2001. Unlike child support administrative data which is based on NCPs and their children, the CSS interviews CP families. This analysis found that 8 million, or 60 percent, of the child support-eligible custodial parent families in the Census Bureau survey receive services through the IV-D program.

With the overall decrease in TANF rolls, most families receiving means-tested benefits are also receiving IV-D services, are custodial mothers who have never married, and are more likely to have incomes below $30,000. Among all races, African-American and Hispanic families are more likely to receive IV-D services than white families, but among low-income families, IV-D participation is equal across black, Hispanic, and white families.

Families receiving no child support payments made up a majority of both the IV-D and non-IV-D populations. However, those families participating in the IV-D program were more likely to have a child support agreement (68 percent as compared to 50 percent) and to receive some payment (47 percent as compared to 36 percent). IV-D families receiving no public assistance were more likely to have both an agreement and receipt of payment (58 percent) than IV-D families reporting receipt of TANF (28 percent) or other government assistance (35 percent).

The report indicates that in just over one-quarter of the IV-D families (2.1 million), the CP and the NCP did not live in the same state. The percentage of interstate situations was substantially the same within and outside the IV-D families. Within the IV-D families, custodial mothers receiving TANF were slightly less likely than those receiving other public assistance or no public assistance to report that the NCP lived in a different state. However, among those not receiving IV-D services, CPs who reported receiving non-cash government assistance, such as Food Stamps, were almost 10 percentage points more likely than those not receiving assistance to live in a different state than the NCP (33 percent as compared to 24 percent).

The full report is available at http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/CSE-Char04/index.htm.

TANF Agencies' Access to NDNH

By: Grant E. Collins, II

Dr. Wade F. Horn, Assistant Secretary for Children and Families, recently issued a letter to TANF agencies regarding IV-A agency access to the National Directory for New Hires (NDNH). TANF agencies are specifically authorized by statute to access NDNH to help them carry out their program responsibilities (improve program integrity, account for work participation, reduce erroneous payments, etc.).

In 2002, I worked with OCSE to forge a pilot program to provide access to the NDNH for the District of Columbia's TANF program office, the Income Maintenance Administration (IMA).

The Bush Administration is committed to getting results, and through this access to match TANF adult records against the NDNH, ACF is providing State TANF agencies with the most effective program management tool available to reduce erroneous payments, reduce fraud, increase work participation rates, and more effectively provide support to working TANF adults to reduce recidivism.

The NDNH is the most powerful source of information to provide leads for TANF agencies to determine if TANF adults are in fact possibly employed. Historically, TANF agencies have found it difficult to obtain this information timely. With access to the NDNH they can know within a month which TANF adults are actually employed.

The preliminary results of the pilot are:

• NDNH matches identified nearly 7,000 records of employment that were previously unknown to the agency.
• The District of Columbia estimates that identified unbudgeted wages will result in annualized savings or cost avoidance of over $6.2 million (nearly 6% of the District's TANF Block Grant).
• Sustained employment with sufficient earnings have been uncovered following an extensive third party verification process, therefore, case actions to close for earnings have increased significantly.

Based on these results, each State TANF agency is being invited to learn more about gaining access so they too can strive for similar results.

The findings related to verifications conducted from the NDNH matches were unprecedented for the DC welfare program. Nearly $6 million in anticipated annualized savings and nearly 6,500 jobs verified in 15 months is extraordinary.

New Child Support Data in the Census Bureau Report, "Support Providers: 2002"

The Census Bureau's "Support providers: 2002" took a look at monetary support provided for people living in other households for children under 21. The data in this report are from the 2001 panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Interviews for the Support for Nonhousehold Members Topical Module were collected from June-September 2002.

A summary of the Selected Characteristics of Providers of Financial Child Support for 2002 were:

• 80 percent of male providers made a payment under a CS agreement or court order while 55 percent female providers did so.
• About 6-in-10 CS payers supported one child, about 3-in-10 two children, and 1-in-10 supported three or more children.
• About half the people who provided child support were under age 40.
• 38 percent of parents paying CS provided health insurance for their children.

Child Support Report is a publication of the Office of Child Support Enforcement, Division of Consumer Services. CSR is published for information purposes only. No official endorsement of any practice, publication, or individual by the Department of Health and Human Services or the Office of Child Support Enforcement is intended or should be inferred. Internet: http://www.acf.dhhs.gov/programs/cse/ Permission to reprint articles is granted Acknowledging CSR is appreciated

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