Family Initiatives

The Family Initiatives (FI) section of the Child Support Division acts as a catalyst for family-centered child support. FI leads special projects and ongoing programs that enhance the Child Support Division’s ability to respond compassionately and effectively to the changing needs of families and children in Texas. Family Initiatives works in collaboration with community and faith-based organizations, courts, schools, legal aid providers, and other public agencies. These programs lead the nation in efforts to promote responsible fatherhood, conduct parenting and paternity education, increase non-custodial parent access to children, and provide services that encourage stable family formation.

Family Initiatives activities focus on three areas:

• Father and Non-custodial Parent Involvement – programs and policies for fathers and non-custodial parents that strengthen their financial and emotional contributions and encourage active participation in the child support process;
• Shared Parenting – programs, resources, and policies that encourage cooperative parenting relationships as part of the child support process; and
• Forming Families and Youth Education – prevention and early intervention efforts that promote healthy family formation, encourage responsible parenthood, and decrease the need for adversarial child support enforcement.

Father and Non-Custodial Parent Involvement

Non-custodial Parent Choices

NCP Choices provides enhanced child support case compliance monitoring and employment services for non-custodial parents linked to a TANF/Medicaid case who are unemployed or underemployed and are not compliant with their child support obligations. Participation in the program is mandatory as ordered by IV-D Associate Judges in the 10 sites currently funded by the Texas Workforce Commission. NCP Choices is expanding to five new sites in Spring 2009. NCPs ordered into NCP Choices have, on average, made no payments in the eight months prior to program entry and pay an average of $176 per month after program entry. Evaluation results show this as an overall 57 percent increase in child support payments for NCPs participating in this program as compared to a control group of NCPs in the OAG caseload. Find out why NCP Choices is one of the largest and most successful NCP child support/employment programs in the nation.

Services for Incarcerated Non-custodial Parents

Family Initiatives works with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), and county jails to deliver education and resources to incarcerated parents about paternity and child support issues that impact their lives while incarcerated and upon release. The OAG distributes thousands of the Incarcerated Parents and Child Support Handbook each year. The handbook covers the basics of paternity and child support and provides an inquiry form for incarcerated parents that allows the parent to receive information regarding case status, paternity establishment, and communication with their children.

Family Initiatives staff is conducting a pilot in a limited number of child support field offices to develop and test procedures and policy recommendations for modifying child support orders for incarcerated NCPs. The pilot also includes training of TDCJ Access to Courts supervisors (law librarians).

In Development: Veterans Family Support Project

The goal of this project is to ensure that veterans are provided with assistance and resources to successfully manage family and child support issues they face upon return to civilian life. The issues that will be addressed include child/medical support, paternity, parenting, and family reunification in an effort to ease the transition from military to civilian life.

Shared Parenting

Federal Access and Visitation Program

The Access and Visitation (A&V) program promotes non-custodial parents' access to and visitation with their children through a variety of shared parenting projects. Although federal regulations do not allow the Office of the Attorney General to use child support funding for legal services about custody or visitation disputes, the OAG does receive limited special funding to provide assistance in these matters.

The OAG administers the federal Access and Visitation grant program by awarding funds to community-based organizations. The services provided under these contracts include early intervention, co-parenting education, mediation, and enforcement.

The A&V program also provides funding for public education materials promoting cooperative parenting after divorce or separation. These materials are distributed through local courts, county domestic relations offices, OAG child support offices, and community/faith-based social service organizations. Parents establishing child support orders or seeking Access and Visitation services receive a My Sticker Calendar: A Kid's Guide to Shared Family Time. This award-winning calendar is a tool for parents and children to use to track and plan time the child spends in each parent’s home. The calendar features artwork by children across the state. sU

The OAG maintains an online A & V directory of programs and service providers across Texas designed to facilitate shared parenting after separation or divorce. Parents, counselors, and other professionals can search the online directory by zip code, county, or service provided.

Access and Visitation Hotline and Web site

The Texas Access and Visitation Hotline is the only service of its kind in the nation that provides non-custodial and custodial parents with free phone access to attorneys who provide legal information and assistance related to child custody and visitation issues, as well as paternity and child support information. Hotline attorneys do not represent parents. Rather, they provide explanations of legal orders; provide tools and guidance for resolution of child access issues; and answer parents' questions regarding possession and access orders, custody, paternity and child support. The toll free number 1-866-292-4636 is answered in English and Spanish, Monday - Friday from 1 to 7 p.m. The hotline has a corresponding Web site, www.txaccess.org, where parents can download sample materials and tools for assistance with child access issues.

Parenting Order Legal Clinic (POLC)

The Parenting Order Legal Clinic project was developed by Family Initiatives in collaboration with the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Access to Justice Foundation (TAJF) to offer free, monthly legal clinics to assist all parents with questions about possession time (visitation), rights and responsibilities as parents, and when court is necessary to enforce possession orders. Legal Aid and volunteer attorneys with extensive family law experience lead the clinics with support from Child Support Division assistant attorneys general who answer child support and paternity establishment questions. POLC is operates in many locations across the state.

Find the clinic nearest you.

Forming Families and Youth Education

Parenting and Paternity Awareness (p.a.p.a.)

p.a.p.a. is an evidence-based, educational curriculum designed for secondary school students and young adults that teaches the rights, responsibilities, and realities of parenting and stresses the benefits of sequencing parenthood after a person has completed his/her education, started a career, and is in a stable, committed relationship. Key themes in the curriculum focus on the importance of responsible fatherhood, the value of paternity establishment, the legal realities of child support, the financial and emotional challenges of single parenting, the benefits of both parents being involved in a child's life, healthy relationship skills, and relationship violence prevention.

The Office of the Attorney General is offering the 2008 edition of the 14-session curriculum and training at no charge to teachers, school counselors, school nurses, teen parent program staff, and parent educators in community-based programs. The p.a.p.a. curriculum is the method by which school districts comply with state law passed by the 80th Legislature requiring high school health to include a parenting and paternity awareness curriculum.

The OAG is coordinating with TEA and Regional Education Service Centers to train teachers, nurses and counselors. Community-based organizations and larger school districts who wish to schedule training directly with the OAG can complete this form and e-mail it to OAG employee Kate Wiseheart.

• View the calendar of upcoming p.a.p.a. trainings.
• Watch the p.a.p.a. introduction video.

No Kidding: Straight Talk From Teen Parents

The No Kidding project trains and equips young parents to deliver this four-part paternity and parental responsibility curriculum to students in middle and high schools in Austin and El Paso. No Kidding educators receive extensive training on paternity, child support, and parental responsibility. No Kidding Interns emphasize the challenges of parenting as a teen, explain the real costs of raising a child, highlight the legal issues parents face, and stress the value of both parents being involved in a child’s life. The program is implemented through local collaborations of community based organizations, school districts, and the OAG. View the No Kidding video

Strong Start - Stable Families (SSSF)

SSSF is a federal child support waiver project designed to test a new approach to prenatal services that specifically includes the expectant father and engages both parents in a range of medical and social services that promote positive birth outcomes, healthy couple relationships, paternity establishment, responsible fatherhood, and economic stability. Services provided as part of this intervention include Centering Pregnancy classes for couples; prenatal education on paternity establishment, child support, and parenting; team parenting and relationship skills; and connection to employment services and relationship violence prevention services. SSSF is being implemented in partnership with the Baylor College of Medicine Teen Health Clinics located in Harris County.

Building Strong and Healthy Families in Texas (BSHF-T)

BSHF-T is a federal child support waiver project operating in Houston and San Angelo that provides intensive family and couple support to unmarried parents who are expecting or recently had a child. The project works to support healthy couple relationships, encourage paternity establishment, and increase parenting skills and knowledge. The project evaluation, conducted by Mathematica Policy Research, measures the impact of services on couple marriage rates, family stability, and child well-being. Local partners in the project are Healthy Family Initiatives of Houston and Healthy Families San Angelo.

For more information:

For more information about Family Initiatives, please call 512/460-6400.