Best Practices / Child Education

Child Support, Child Care, and Head Start Collaboration: Innovations & Ideas

The Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement funded six demonstration grant projects in 1997-2000 to promote collaboration between the State child support, child care, and Head Start programs. Grants went to the following:

• Alaska: Too often the view from a State agency is that “our message” must be delivered in one way, in only one direction, and with centralized control over the message.

Recognizing the story behind Alaska’s number—a relatively small, culturally diverse population, living hundreds of miles from the State agency, and with transportation between towns possible only by boat or plane—Alaska designated a far-reaching collaboration with a sweeping range of State, local, and community agencies and organizations.

• Connecticut: To acknowledge that an “outsider” could run an interagency collaboration more effectively than a State agency requires mature thinking.

Connecticut took this leap and invited the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund (CWEALF), a community-based organization with strength in women’s issues and advocacy, to coordinate the State’s demonstration project, piloted at three ethnically diverse sites. It focused on fatherhood initiatives as well as on increasing low-income family participation in child support services.

• Illinois: Illinois learned early on that its collaboration partners focused on the financial and emotional support of children. Head Start’s added responsibilities—to inform families about and make referrals to child support services—afforded both agencies the opportunity to learn from and about each other and devise a referral system that served the needs of each. Two proposed pilot sites quickly expanded to more than five times the expected number.
• Maryland: Maryland’s existing collaborations included one at the State level between child support and child care programs—to implement strategies to ensure that Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Purchase of Care (POC) customers pursued child support—and, at the local level, between child support, child care, and Head Start.

To enhance the economic security of non-TANF families, Maryland’s collaborations were expanded to reach parents not receiving TANF or POC, encouraging them to establish paternity and collect child support to stay off welfare.

• Minnesota: Minnesota’s project challenged the traditional view that child support, child care, and Head Start programs each had a non-intersecting responsibility to and relationship with its clients.

The organizations involved envisioned a sophisticated system designed to provide a seamless delivery of services to families. A core team of State staff supported the resulting collaboration—each assigned to one of the project’s four regions—and implemented a formal relationship of cross-training, information sharing, and outreach efforts among all the programs.

• Missouri: Missouri’s goal was to provide information, service links, and problem-solving support to the largest number and widest range of families in a non-threatening, user-friendly way. Recognizing common outreach interests, the project partnered the child support office not only with Head Start and child care centers, but also with primary health care facilities to establish more than 30 “Parenting Corners” at four public sites throughout the State.

Parenting Corners provide literature and information to help teach parents about child support, child development, child care, primary health care, and other services. They serve as centers where parents can establish paternity, obtain health screenings, and receive referrals to service providers. They also serve as staging areas for positive parent/child activities intended to involve both custodial and noncustodial parents.

Kids in the Middle Educational Program – San Mateo, Calif.

An educational program operated by the county Family Service agency linked with the child support office, this bilingual (Spanish or English) educational program includes bilingual mediators. It is designed to help parents focus on their children’s needs while the family is going through divorce, separation, or other family transition.