U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services
370 L'Enfant Promenade, S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20447
Sample Models / Courts
These sample models demonstrate collaborations with courts.
Building a Better Collaboration: Facilitating Change in the Court and the Child Welfare System
The Child Victims Act Model Courts (VAMC) Project, funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), U.S. Department of Justice, is a major initiative of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges’ (NCJFCJ) Permanency Planning for Children Department (PPCD).
This nationally recognized project seeks to improve courts’ handling of child abuse and neglect cases by producing replicable innovations in Model Courts. A total of 25 Model Courts, representing urban, suburban, and tribal jurisdictions are participating and working collaboratively with their social service agencies and other systems professionals to achieve improvement goals.
The Model Courts are continually assessing their child abuse and neglect case processing, focusing on barriers to timely permanency, developing and instituting plans for court improvement, and working collaboratively to effect systems change. Each of the Model Courts is committed to taking a hard look at how well their…
Enhanced Parental Involvement Collaboration (EPIC)
The San Francisco Department of Child Support Services, San Francisco’s Local Child Support Agency (LCSA), in partnership with the San Francisco Unified Family Courts and its Family Law Facilitator.
The project initially was slated to run from July 1, 2004, to Nov. 30, 2005, and it was extended through June 30, 2006.
The EPIC project's alternative strategies were designed to…
Project Abstract
The San Francisco Department of Child Support Services, San Francisco’s Local Child Support Agency (LCSA), in partnership with the San Francisco Unified Family Courts and its Family Law Facilitator, conducted the Enhanced Parental Involvement Collaboration project (EPIC) in response to the Special Improvement Project’s 2004 Priority Area 5: Helping Noncustodial Parents (NCPs) Meet Their Child Support and Family Responsibilities.
EPIC, a 17-month project, developed, implemented, and evaluated the effectiveness of a number of alternative measures designed to reduce the number of default cases and/or the number of cases in which imputed income was used to establish child support orders. The alternative measures addressed the issues of notice to the noncustodial parent, and the educational, cultural, and economic barriers that prevent or deter noncustodial parents from participating in the establishment process.
The goal was to increase noncustodial parent participation in the establishment of paternity and child support obligations, and in turn reduce the default rate, reduce the amount of support arrearages, and increase the payment rates for low-income noncustodial parents.
The EPIC project’s alternative strategies were designed to enhance notice provision, address comprehension and literacy issues, increase outreach efforts and the amount of personal contact available to noncustodial parents, and to encourage the physical presence of noncustodial parents in court proceedings. The project evaluated the effectiveness of these alternative strategies by implementing them in half of the cases opened during the funding period and comparing their effects to the other half of the cases, which were processed according to existing procedures.
The EPIC project identified the following performance objectives to demonstrate their success: reduced default rate; reduced number of defaults using presumed/imputed income, resulting in more accurate orders; increased noncustodial parent participation in the child support establishment process; and increased payment rates among noncustodial parents. Measurements were taken at five key points in the noncustodial parent participatory process targeted by the alterative strategies: the period before a Summons and Complaint has even been filed; the service of process stage; the period of time directly after service of process but before the time for a default has elapsed; the stage of default eligibility (30 days after service of process); and the post judgment stage.
Milwaukee County’s Early Intervention Legal Advocacy Project
With funding from a Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement 1115 grant, the Wisconsin Bureau of Child Support and the Milwaukee County Department of Child Support Enforcement developed the Milwaukee Legal Advocacy Project.
This project provides legal advocacy and representation services to low-income, noncustodial parents who have new child support cases. It is designed to test whether providing these services will overcome two factors that often lead to adversarial or formal court proceedings:
By providing legal advocacy and representation services at the child support system’s front-end, the project hopes to reduce the need for adversarial action.
Objectives:
This project does use bilingual attorneys and has bilingual flyers.
Nineteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Lake County, Ill.
This court makes this information on child support available on its Web site:
Reducing Paternity Defaults with E’s: Encourage, Educate, Explain
This is a grant-funded outreach project to alleged fathers in Wayne County (Detroit, Mich.) through Wayne County’s Friend of the Court program.
Process servers give alleged fathers an information brochure and call back card when serving men who are receiving paternity papers in a Wayne County case. The brochure is in plain English and could be a model for Spanish-language audiences, too. The brochure states the following:
Contrary to Popular Opinion
