DCL-07-17, PAID Practices

DEAR COLLEAGUE LETTER

DCL-07-17

ATTACHMENT: Project to Avoid Increasing Delinquencies (PAID) Practices 2.0

DATE: May 30, 2007

TO: ALL STATE AND TRIBAL IV-D DIRECTORS

RE: PAID Practices

Dear Colleague:

In Dear Colleague Letter-07-06, the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) announced PAID: Project to Avoid Increasing Delinquencies, an initiative emphasizing activities that will increase the collection of current support and prevent and reduce arrears, so that child support will be a reliable source of income for more families.

PAID Practices is the first of several PAID tools intended to assist child support enforcement programs in considering steps to improve their performance in the areas of current support and arrears. Many strategies and activities currently in use across the country have an impact on the collection of current support and arrears or reduce the growth of arrears. This document presents many of these strategies, arrayed under five topic areas - setting appropriate orders, employing early intervention, order review and modification, improving locate and enforcement, and managing existing arrears.

One size does not fit all when it comes to what will produce the best results for an individual jurisdiction, but we believe that certain strategies hold the most promise to effectively produce the results we all seek. We hope that child support programs and their partners will take a look at the questions posed in the document and consider what steps they might take to improve child support enforcement in their jurisdictions.

OCSE wants to work closely with individual programs in support of PAID and encourages you to review the document and then contact your Regional Office to assist you in creating approaches and strategies that will work best in your particular jurisdiction.

Other upcoming tools in support of the PAID initiative include:

PAID In Full/Expanded Analysis: This mid-level analysis tool will provide “drill down” detail on practices listed in the PAID Practices document. It will focus primarily on assessing and optimizing level of automation.
PAID UPdates: IV-D Directors will receive individual PAID best practices electronically, followed by a posting on the PAID Workplace. Some practices will be published in the Child Support Report.
PAID Workplace: This electronic point of access will make PAID-related documents and information available to State, Local and Tribal staff.
PAID Attention Meetings: OCSE and the appropriate Regional Office will review available data and information on a particular jurisdiction in order to offer PAID-related technical assistance.
PAID Affinity Calls: OCSE will arrange teleconferences on PAID topics or strategies to connect jurisdictions with similar interests.

OCSE will continue to provide information about these tools, and other PAID materials, as they become available.

Please contact your Regional Office with your questions and suggestions in support of PAID.

Sincerely,

Margot Bean
Commissioner
Office of Child Support Enforcement

cc: ACF/OCSE Regional Program Managers

Enclosure