Child Support Report

Vol. XXVI, No. 12, Dec 2004

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.

Model Caseworker 'Builds Bridges' in Maryland Misty-eyed Family Reunites OCSE Healthy Marriage Initiative Projects Colorado and Texas Give Other States Access to Their Web Sites A Thanksgiving Holiday Donation Additional Reciprocating Nations New Data on Out-of-Wedlock Births How Can We Be Better? Best Practices: Washington State Collection Efficiency Model NOTICE

Model Caseworker 'Builds Bridges' in Maryland Misty-eyed Family Reunites

By: Elaine Blackman

As a high schooler, Linda Jones may have given a little more thought to a career than her fel- low students, but she probably never imagined she'd get a boost by working with children and families in a school-run day care program. Now, with additional experience as a day care teacher, seven years in a local child support enforcement office, and a reputation as "diligent" and "relentless," Jones has been dubbed a "model" child support specialist.

"She goes the extra mile" in trying to unify the family, says Joan Kennedy, director of Maryland's Prince George's County Office of Child Support Enforcement in Temple Hills. Ms. Jones serves as an incentive for other child support specialists because "successful caseworkers get that big picture," she adds. "They understand we do more than establish paternity, collect child support ... We promote bridges between fathers, mothers and children."

Indeed. As Jones begins the new year, she takes pride in having gone that extra mile for one "ecstatic" local family: In a case that began in 1985 with a custodial mother's application for child support, the noncustodial father finally has been located and has reunited with his daughter. The two are continuing a relationship, with an added benefit-a 1-year-old granddaughter. And he is paying on his child support arrears.

As the story goes, when custodial mother Bettie Peterson received her first payment last June from the child support office, she told her daughter, Misty, now 24 and living on her own. The younger Peterson's reaction: She wanted to reunite with her father.

Bettie Peterson next requested help from Jones in the child support office. Jones had no contact information for the dad, Furman Jones (no relation to Linda), but checked the case frequently with hopes to ultimately "build the bridge" that would reunite Misty Peterson with her dad.

At last, Linda Jones was able to get contact information to Furman Jones, who reported the week before Thanksgiving that he and his daughter met and both were "ecstatic."

Meanwhile, Bettie Peterson, Misty's mom, cried at the prospect of the father and daughter reunion. She thanks the Office of Child Support Enforcement and Linda Jones for making this possible.

"All of us in the child support office cried, too," says Jones. The request to locate the father for a reunion "was not put on the bottom of the pile. A request is a request. ... It was not for the money; it was for the reunion."

As for Mr. Jones, he admits to "going through a change in my life," eventually hitting rock bottom, and even losing the family he already had when Misty was born to Bettie. He spent time incarcerated and he "had time to think," he says. He'd lost track of Misty's residence, but continued "to pray that someday I would be a part of her life."

When the surprise call came that his daughter wanted a reunion, "I broke down," said the dad, who adds he is thankful that his daughter offered him forgiveness for the past, and hope for the future.

Kennedy believes Linda Jones is an ambassador of goodwill for the Prince George's County OCSE. She "never gave up on the case that brought a family together." And with his new granddaughter, Mr. Jones has "a second chance to be the responsible parent ... that he now appears ready to be."

Ms. Jones sees her job as a "blending of social work, psychology, and collections-a whole lot of hats to wear." Also, the single parent of an 8-year-old son knows what it's like to have a parent absent from the home.

And it was Ms. Jones who went to Kennedy with the case's outcome, "because we always hear the bad news," she says. "I was just sharing the good news."

OCSE Healthy Marriage Initiative Projects

Child support is a Federal/state/local partnership to help children and families by pro- moting family self-sufficiency and child well-being. It ensures assistance in obtaining support for children through locating parents, establishing paternity and support obligations, and enforcing those obligations. OCSE Healthy Marriage Initiative projects seek to enhance the effectiveness of the program by testing new approaches to integrating the promotion of healthy marriage and parental responsibility into the child support program.

1115 Waiver Demonstration Projects

These grants, administered under section 1115 of the Social Security Act, provide matching Federal monies for demonstration projects that expand on current child support programs. The projects are funded using the child support formula grant matching rate of 66% Federal and 34% State. Though varied in services provided, all projects emphasize the importance of healthy marriage to a child's well-being, as well as financial stability, increased paternity establishment, and child support collections.

• Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Nampa: Healthy Marriages and Responsible Fatherhood.
• Illinois Department of Public Aid. Chicago: A Child Support Demonstration Project to Help Families Build and Maintain Healthy Family Relationships and Marriage.
• Louisiana Department of Social Services. New Orleans: The Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Community Demonstration Initiative.
• Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Boston: Building Healthy Marriages and Family Relationships.
• Michigan Family Independence Agency. Grand Rapids: Healthy Marriages & Healthy Relationships.
• Minnesota Office of Child Support Enforcement. Minneapolis/St. Paul: Minnesota Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Initiative.

Special Improvement Projects (SIPs)

These grants fund non-profit organizations (including faith- and community-based) and state, local and tribal agencies to improve child support outcomes.

Healthy Marriage Grants

• Alabama - Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention Board/The Children's Trust Fund of Alabama. Montgomery: Family Connections in Alabama.
• Iowa - Bureau of Collections, State Department of Human Services. Des Moines: Connecting Child Support to the Community to Secure Improved Outcomes for Children.
• Ohio- Better Together. Cleveland Heights: The Marriage Coalition.
• Pennsylvania - Family Formation and Development. Allentown: Lehigh Valley Healthy Marriage Coalition (LHMC), Community Services for Children (CSC).
• Iowa - Bureau of Collections, State Department of Human Services. Des Moines: Connecting Child Support to the Community to Secure Improved Outcomes for Children.
• Tennessee - Department of Human Services. Memphis (Shelby County): Promoting Parental Responsibility and Healthy Marriage.
• Wisconsin - Opportunities Industrialization Center. Milwaukee: Parental Responsibility and Promoting Healthy Marriage.

Colorado and Texas Give Other States Access to Their Web Sites

By: Karen Anthony

Interstate case processing has entered a new era thanks to two state child support agencies that have given caseworkers in other states access to their Web sites. While it is not unusual for a state child support Web site to have the payment history and disbursement available to parents, it is a very new concept to give access to that type of information to child support caseworkers in other states.

Colorado and Texas opened their Web sites to caseworkers within the last few months and the number of caseworkers requesting access has risen steadily. In addition to payment information, caseworkers are allowed to view enforcement and case information critical in case management. At last count, Colorado registered nearly 200 caseworkers and Texas registered 60 from 20 states with the number growing each week.

Colorado caseworkers report that they have so many cases in common with Texas that they log on to the Texas site first thing in the morning, and keep the access open all day. Caseworkers responding to the Colorado site say they find the Web access very helpful when working on interstate case reconciliation. Curtis Rose, Technical Manager of the Automated Child Support Enforcement System of Colorado, says, "We are excited about the possibility of offering real-time case and financial information for child support workers outside of Colorado. We believe everybody wins with this kind of online access."

With months of experience behind them, both Texas and Colorado are "open for business" to a wider audience of caseworkers. (Registration is limited to caseworkers only.) Barry Brooks, Assistant Attorney General in the Child Support Division of the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, is the gatekeeper to the Texas Web site. He can be contacted at barry.brooks@cs.oag.state.tx.us for registration instructions and security agreements. To review CO's registration and privacy disclosure procedures, view the www.childsupport.state.co.us/home/indexIndex.jsp and then "CSE Workers."

A Thanksgiving Holiday Donation

The District of Columbia Child Support staff collected $220 to give to two families for Thanksgiving. Each family received a financial donation of $110. The families found permanent housing and were able to move from The Family Forward Transitional Shelter. The first recipient of the donation is a single mother with five children. Only one child lives with her, while the other four are in foster care. All of her children were able to spend Thanksgiving Day with her. The other recipient is also a single mother and one child living with her. Her other children are grown.

Additional Reciprocating Nations

DCL-04-46 announced four new Federal level international reciprocity agreements on child support. Switzerland and the additional Canadian Provinces of New Brunswick, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut have each been declared a "foreign reciprocating country" (FRC ) for child support enforcement purposes by the United States.

On Oct. 6, 2004, the Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State, published a cumulative public notice on completed Federal reciprocity declarations in the Federal Register (69 FR 59980). You may find this Federal Register notice useful in proceedings where the existence of a reciprocal relationship is at issue.

State IV-D agencies should now provide these FRCs the same services provided pursuant to other intergovernmental and interstate requests. Outgoing requests for services should be sent to the FRCs' respective Central Authorities. A list of contact information for these jurisdictions is available online in the Intergovernmental Referral Guide (IRG). The DCL, Federal Register Notice, IRG, and other important information are available through the OCSE International Resource link on the OCSE Website at http://www.f.hhs.gov/programs/cse/international/index.html. Also, the Department of State, in collaboration with OCSE, provides general information on international child support enforcement on its Web site. Links are available on the international resources page.

Additional guidance on Switzerland and other FRCs will be forthcoming after collaborative discussions on forms, policy, and procedural matters have been concluded.

New Data on Out-of-Wedlock Births

In 2003, nearly 35 percent of all births were to unmarried women, according to the HHS National Center for Health Statistics. That's up from 11 percent in 1970, though the rate of increase has slowed since 1995, when 32 percent of births were out-of-wedlock. Births to unmarried teens have declined since the mid-1990s. Further information can be found at ww.cdc.gov/nchs/births.htm.

How Can We Be Better?

By: William Honrath

The law is often a blend of the therapeutic with the adversarial. Nowhere is this more evident than in the area of family law, particularly when the best interest of the child is the standard to be upheld. In an age of ever-shrinking budgets and burgeoning caseloads "doing better with less" has become a harsh reality as opposed to a trite truism in family courts across the country.

Attorney Jon Lehman, Child Support Director in Racine, Wisconsin, wanted to know how we can be better when it comes to protecting the best interests of the children entitled to the financial support of their parents. One idea he came up with was a joint training conference between the Wisconsin Child Support Enforcement Association attorneys, and the Wisconsin Family Court Commissioners Association. In Wisconsin, family court commissioners are quasi-judicial officers who provide expedited process under the IV-D Program for paternity, child support establishment, and enforcement. Wisconsin has a strong judicial, as opposed to administrative, based IV-D program. As a result, knowing and appreciating how the different participants in the system function, including their specific duties and responsibilities, is a prerequisite to improving the delivery of services available through the IV-D Program. Our legal system is adversarial in nature. In addition, there are necessary separations between the judicial and executive branches and functions of government. Cooperation between the different branches is indispensable to achieving the best results, particularly where families are concerned.

In September 2005, acting on Attorney Lehman's proposal, approximately 100 of Wisconsin's family court commissioners and an equal number of child support advocates will hold a joint training conference in scenic Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The goal is to exchange ideas and information and hopefully find new ways to improve Wisconsin's Child Support Program. Proposed topics include a IV-D primer, ethical considerations for advocates and judicial officers under the IV-D Program, and setting meaningful child support awards.

In addition to the continuing legal education credits the conference will provide, participants will have the opportunity to meet colleagues from across the state who do the same type of work, provide the same type of services, experience the same types of problems and frustrations, and who share a commitment to improving our child support services. Planners are also in discussion with the Wisconsin Bar Association's Government Lawyers Division, as a possible sponsor for advocates and commissioners' social hour to give the participants the opportunity to interact in a relaxed and informal atmosphere and to compliment the legal training. As well as being lawyers who provide vital services to the public, commissioners, and child support advocates, we are demonstrating a willingness to work together to try to be better at what we do.

Best Practices: Washington State Collection Efficiency Model

Goal: Implement a mechanism to assist the Washington State Division of Child Sup- port (DCS) to meet rising performance expectations and better utilize limited resources.

Description: The Collections Quality Improvement Team concluded that the Division needed a method to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of specific collection processes. The E-Model was created to do this evaluation. It also provides the basis for establishing an improved method to prioritize resources and to maximize performance. Potential benefits achieved from the implementation of statewide efficiency measures include the following:

• Identify areas in need of process improvement.
• Assess training needs of staff,
• Encourage ongoing experimentation,
• Focus on activities, resources, key outcomes, and,
• Support possible standardization of workload and processes.

The E-Model Reports are expressly designed to report on collection actions and processes that impact key Division outcomes. The reports provide data at the Support Enforcement Officer level, the Unit and Supervisor level, and the Field Office level. Each report includes activity for the month as well as historical presentations of activity for previous months.

The E-Model was developed to total specific incidents of a collection-related event or action, multiply that number by a weighed factor, and give a point total for the event. The point total is divided by the number of full time equivalents (FTEs) in the unit or office being evaluated, yielding an average points-per-FTE. This provides a basis for comparing one unit with another unit, one worker to another worker, or one office to another.

The report is divided into three major sections:

1. Work by Volume: This category represents the outcome measurement of the E-Model. The general objective of the Division is to increase the number of paying NCPs as much as possible; other incentive measures and key outcomes will also increase accordingly. This category breaks out NCPs into paying, partial-paying, and nonpaying categories but gives positive credit for all NCPs with obligations. Positive credit is given for nonpayers because they represent work that must be done whether there is payment or not.

2. Positive Considerations: This section of the report represents two basic categories of information - direct collection actions (i.e., specific forms that may result in the receipt of money), or the results of direct collection actions (i.e., determining if money was received after the form was sent). Positive points are also awarded for all orders entered for the month. Collection actions cannot begin until a support order exists. The weighted factor for each category generally relates to the importance of the action in the collection effort.

3. Negative Considerations: This section of the report generally contains reporting categories that can influence collections by ineffective utilization of staff time. These categories represent work processes that impact collections such as hard-to-collect cases.

Results: Data for the seven-month period for all Field Offices was submitted to the DCS Management and Audit Program Statistics (MAPS) Unit for correlation analysis. The MAPS evaluation indicated a strong correlation between the outcome measurement - Percentage of Paying NCPs and Efficiency Points. The Correlation Coefficient for these two measures ranged from .77 to .94 for the 10 field offices.

Based on the analysis, and the very positive increases in collections and collection actions, Division management directed that the E-model be used Statewide as a tool to improve and evaluate collection processes. E-model results are a part of the annual evaluation of all collection staff, supervisors and managers.

Several innovative unit collection projects have been initiated by the Field Offices because they now have a tool to measure the success (or failure) of new ideas and projects. These include: segmented and specialized caseloads, e.g. caseloads containing only 'hard to collect' cases; assigning less productive staff to work as a team with more productive staff; and caseloads centered on other State social programs, for example, the Work First program.

The E-Model has given management the ability to measure the 'before and after' of collection performance.

Location: This project was developed in Olympia and has been implemented in all DCS offices throughout the State.

Funding: Regular IV-D funding was used.

Replication Advice: DCS recommends that other agencies that use this model include all facets of collection efforts. If a tool or remedy is available, the model should measure the utilization of that tool.

NOTICE

OCSE reports that 13 State IV-D agencies received funding for Section 1115 demonstration projects. The awards were made pursuant to the announcement under DCL-04-51 of March 30, 2004. The new grants were awarded in six priority areas:

• Ohio - Involving NCPs early to gain their compliance with orders and make regular payments.
• Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and Texas - Integration of the Access and Visitation and Child Support Enforcement Programs.
• District of Columbia, Florida, and Massachusetts - Improving case referrals from TANF to the IV-D agency to improve performance in one or more incentives.
• Iowa, Nebraska, and Tennessee - Using the Australian model to avoid debts by grouping NCPs by level of likely cooperation.
• Delaware - Stabilizing the IV-D Paternity Establishment Participation Rate and improving data reliability.
• Georgia, Minnesota, and West Virginia - Furthering the child support mission to ensure that all children receive financial and medical support from their parents.

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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