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Giving Hope and Support to America's ChildrenThe first issue of Child Support Report came out three and a half years later, in January 1979. In that issue, Louis B. Hays, then Deputy Director of OCSE, said: We are privileged to be working in one of the most exciting programs administered at the Federal, State, and local levels. We have the rare opportunity to provide social and economic benefits to children and at the same time offer savings to the taxpayers.
I was struck by this sentiment, partly because I believe it to be true, but also because I came across it right after reading nearly the same thing in the President's letter. You should be very proud to be part of this critically important program, he says. You are, in truth, privileged to work in it.
And so we are. Let us remember, however, that privilege carries with it responsibility. To whom much is given, much is required. As we look back over the 20 years we now celebrate, we must ask ourselves: have we been equal to the task?
Until the 1970's, family lawincluding child supportwas largely a matter for the local courts. But when the CSE Program came into being in 1975, the federal and state governments' executive branches began to play a larger role. That role expanded as more requirements were enacted into law to improve the performance of the child support system.
The Child Support Enforcement Amendments of 1984 marked an important turn in the program. CSE agencies were now uniformly required to have and to use a range of exemplary enforcement techniques. These included withholding child support from the wages of noncustodial parents who were delinquent in their payments. And making services equally available to families who were not receiving payments from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program received renewed emphasis. With the 1984 Amendments, caseloads increased as the number of non-AFDC families served by the program grew sharply, from one-fifth of all CSE cases in fiscal year 1980 to one-half in 1993.
As a recent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study points out, from fiscal years 1980 to 1993 the caseload more than tripled, the number of orders established increased almost four times, and the number of noncustodial parents and/or their employers who were located grew sevenfold.
In this period of unparalleled program growth and change, when it would have been so easy to be overwhelmed, all of you in child support worked hard to meet the challenge. Examples of your success:
These results are a testimony to the hard work, skill, and steadfastness of all of you in Child Support Enforcement these past 20 years. And yet we all know that there is much more to be done if we are to meet the mounting needs of this nation's vulnerable children and families. Growth in out-of-wedlock births and a high divorce rate continue to add children in need of services to our caseloads. And there are manifest opportunities to increase further the number of paternities established and dollars collected each year.
My congratulations to you, and my thanks, on 20 years of exceptional achievement. Clearly, you who have known the privilege of serving have served well, by consistently providing hope and support to America's families. I know you will continue.
I am sorry that I cannot be with you in person to deliver my message on this auspicious occasion.
Two decades ago, I joined with Congress and the American people in responding to a critical need to help our vulnerable children. These were children who were, in increasing numbers, being abandoned emotionally and financially by a parent.
When, on August 11, 1975, I signed into law the legislation establishing the Federal Child Support Enforcement Program, its goal was clear: to relieve the suffering of these children. Today, at this 20th anniversary celebration of the National Child Support Enforcement Program, I reaffirm my commitment to this goal.
The Child Support Enforcement Program has, during the past two decades, abundantly demonstrated its effectiveness. The numbers alone tell a story all of us can take pride in: over $62.5 billion collected in support of children; over 4.5 million paternities confirmed; and over 11 million support orders established.
But Child Support Enforcement is much more than mere numbers. It is more than the mere saving of welfare dollars. There are now untold numbers of children who have the emotional, as well as financial, support of both parents because of the Child Support Enforcement Programbecause of your efforts and the efforts of those who preceded you.
You should be very proud to be part of this critically important program. You are, in truth, privileged to work in it. I commend you today for what you have accomplished on behalf of children, with confidence that tomorrow you will accomplish even more. The motto you have chosen for this celebration is apt: OCSE Giving Hope and Support to America's Children, 1975-1995. May I suggest that from this day forward it read: OCSEGiving Hope and Support to America's Children, Since 1975. God bless all of you.
Gerald R. Ford
Her first assignment will be with OCSE's Division of Consumer Services, developing methods to measure the quality of customer service. From improving relationships with key client groups to better understanding the needs and expectations of customers, Australia's CSA has focused over the last few years on delivering quality customer service.
In May this year, the CSA released the results of its first baseline survey to measure clients' perceptions of the service they receive, and Allyson discussed some of the findings at OCSE's Fifth National Conference in July in Washington, DC. This next year will be very exciting, with an opportunity to share ideas and learn more about innovative practices here in the United States, she says in an immediately recognizable and pleasing accent.
Allyson will visit a number of state programs and some of ACF's regional offices in the coming months meeting staff and getting acquainted with how we do business in the States. Some of you may be lucky enough to talk with her in person. Also, in addition to other duties, she will write articles for CSR, to give U.S. readers a sense of how business is conducted down under. Allyson can be reached at (202) 401-4639.
Philip W. Odiorne, now 84 years old, was Maine's first director of child support enforcement, long before federal legislation established the program nationally. From 1947 until his retirement in 1972, Mr. Odiorne headed a legal unit of Maine's Department of Health and Welfare (DHW), the organization responsible for old age assistance and nursing homes, as well as child support enforcement. With no staff in the early years, Mr. Odiorne was responsible for the entire state of Maine, which was divided into seven districts.
The legal unit was begun by DHW Commissioner David Stevens as a means to generate revenue. Stevens, a former town manager, is remembered by Mr. Odiorne as one of the finest managers and public servants I ever knew.
In those days, due to very strict requirements, relatively few families were eligible for AFDC. Needy families not eligible for AFDC depended on their municipality for assistance. Stevens felt that child support collected from fathers whose families were on AFDC could be used to assist these other families, reducing demands on the town's treasury.
According to Mr. Odiorne, the idea was extremely unpopular with the Department's Bureau of Social Welfare, which had responsibility for AFDC. Bureau officials, who had authority to block Mr. Odiorne's access to AFDC recipients, thus denying him needed information, looked on the scheme simply as a way to take money from one poor person to give to another and frequently withheld their cooperation.Much of Mr. Steven's and Mr. Odiorne's efforts in the early years were spent in convincing the Bureau, Maine's legislature, and municipal judges, who didn't like the long, drawn-out cases, that child support enforcement was worthwhile. Orders were generally very low, with the primary judicial remedy being jail.
According to Mr. Odiorne, men convicted of failure to pay support routinely served six months to a year and had to pay their jail board in full before they could be released.
Locating absent parents across state lines was especially difficult and time-consuming in those early days when there was no computer technology. Even the cost of long distance phone calls was prohibitive. Mr. Odiorne said that locate was carried out mainly by writing letters to employers and the Selective Service System. Since the use of Social Security numbers was severely restricted, searches were by name only and matches hard to come by.
Colburn W. Jackson, Maine's current IV-D Director (hired by Mr. Odiorne in 1963), recalls: Phil Odiorne started from scratch and overcame tremendous resistance to lay the foundation of a very solid child support enforcement program in Maine. He knew every detail of every casewas a virtual walking encyclopediaand by the time I started, there was an organization in place that enabled us to be successful right from the start of the federal legislation.
The key to a strong child support enforcement program, then and now? Phil Odiorne says: Good, stable people who are interested in support.
That's an increase of 1,324 percent. (See the Collections and Expenditures graph, below.) Administrative expenditures, the cost of doing business, also increased over the same period of time, though at a lesser rate.
The average yearly increase in distributed collections between 1976 and 1984 was $211 million. After substantial changes made to the program by the 1984 Amendments and the 1988 Family Support Act, yearly increases in collections between 1985 and 1994 jumped to more than $749 million.
The total IV-D caseload (see graph, below) grew by 794 percent between 1976 and 1994, increasing at an annual rate of 14 percent. The average increase in caseload was 740,000 per year through 1984 and 1.1 million per year from 1985 to 1994.
Cases with collections (see facing page for graph and for graphs on absent parents located and paternities established), grew at a rate of 412 percent between 1976 and 1994. The yearly average increase in cases with collections was 66,000 cases per year through 1984 and 221,000 per year from 1985 to 1994.
The number of absent parents located (including address, employer, assets, or other sources of income) grew at an overall rate of 1,511 percent between 1976 and 1994. The average yearly increase was 77,000 per year through 1984 and 325,000 per year from 1985-1994.
Paternity establishments had the largest increase over the years -- 2,377 percent between 1976 and 1994. The average increase in paternities established was 24,000 per year through 1984, and 37,000 per year from 1985 to 1994. This is significant because the number of out-of-wedlock births and the percentage of never married women on welfare continue to increase.
In 1992, Washington State's Division of Child Support (DCS) began using Electronic Mail (E-Mail) as a means for staff to communicate with one another. This system piggybacked on the already existing Local Area Network (LAN) in each office and thus was fairly simple to implement. Found to be quite useful, E-Mail quickly replaced paper memos as a means to share information within offices.
In 1994, the DCS LANs were tied together in a Wide Area Network (WAN). This system gave DCS staff the ability to share E-Mail within a particular office and with any individual in any other DCS office. This was accomplished by setting up an asynchronous gateway in each officea computer which gathers the mail destined for other offices and arranges for it to be transferred over a phone line using a modem.
Here's how it works in Washington. Let's say that Bob works in the Spokane office. Bob is a member of a workgroup, which has members in Spokane, Seattle, and Everett. He wants to send an E-Mail message to everyone in this workgroup about a document they are preparing together as a team. On his PC, Bob has already set up a personal group," called UIFSA, which contains the individual addresses of each person in the workgroup.
So, Bob simply sends a message to UIFSA on his PC. The message says, Please take a look at this draft and reply with comments by Friday. By pressing another button he attaches a copy of the draft he is asking them to comment on. Bob's PC takes the message and, along with the draft, delivers a copy to each person in the UIFSA group.Two members of the group work in Bob's office. They get a copy of the message and the draft immediately. Two of the other three team members work in other DCS offices, so their mail gets caught in the asynchronous gateway. The gateway dials the number for Seattle and delivers that person's copy. Then it dials Everett and does the same.
The last team member is at OCSE Region X, which is not on the DCS WAN system. But she can be reached through Internet E-Mail. Her copy gets sent to the Internet mail gateway at DSHS headquarters in Olympia. From there it goes out over the Internet to the Region X office.
The beauty of the system is that all this gatewaying, transferring, modem dialing, sorting, and delivering is invisible to the user. With sophisticated technology backing them, DCS staff, sitting at their desks, can send and receive E-Mail to or from anywhere in the world as simply as sending a note to a co-worker upstairs in the same building.
The potential of this system is extraordinary for communications between staff in IV-D agencies. By using Internet E-Mail, a Washington State DCS caseworker can communicate with a caseworker in another state more efficiently than by letter and more economically than by phone.
Even agencies without Internet E-Mail can still be reached if they have a fax machine. DCS WAN also has a fax gateway integrated with the E-Mail system.
So, if Bob needs to send a status request to another state, rather than prepare and mail out a hard copy of form FSA200, he can prepare it on his PC and send it to the other agency using the same E-Mail system he uses to send the rest of his mail.
The WAN fax gateway will pick it up and turn it into a fax, dial the other state's fax machine and deliver Bob's message, allowing him to use the same efficient, paper-free system to communicate with another state as he uses to E-Mail his colleague upstairs.
For additional information, contact: Aaron Salo, Washington State Division of Child Support, Program Implementation Team, PO Box 9162/MS 45860, Olympia WA 98507-9162. Voice: (360) 586-3162; fax: (360) 586-3274; e-mail: piteam Network Data Mover
For more than a year OCSE tested the system by sending data between ACF's computer and the IRS computer in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Additional testing during the past six months has involved the transmission of data between OCSE and the State of Maine. In June, live data was successfully transmitted to Maine, completing the testing period. The system is now ready for states to request and use.
What is Connect:Direct?
It's a mainframe to mainframe data transfer procedure which moves
large volumes of data between two computer systems, eliminating
postage costs and the time involved in mailing tapes or cartridges.
ACF is currently sharing the Social Security Administration's (SSA)
dedicated lines in transmitting the data.
SSA is linked directly to all 50 state departments of human services. The linkage from SSA's computer center to these 50 departments is referred to as a Hub hook-up, of which each state has one. Hubs can communicate with SSA, other Hubs, or their Spokes (think of a bicycle wheel hub and its spokes), but a Spoke can communicate only with the Hub in its state.
The Hub, then, forwards data received from a Spoke to the intended destination.In states such as Massachusetts or Texas, where CSE is not part of human services, participation with Connect:Direct is still feasible.The CSE program can make an arrangement with the SSA Hub to provide a copy of the tape to them; or they could elect to become a Spoke, with their own dedicated line to the SSA Hub.
Connect:Direct will eliminate manual mailing and processing of tapes and cartridges. ACF encourages states to begin immediately to use Connect:Direct with all federal systems currently operated at the National Computer Center.
How Do I Get Hooked Up?
For information concerning hook-up and operating procedures,
contact the person associated with the appropriate ACF computer
system. For Tax Offset, 1099, and JOBS: Stephen Lee at (202)
690-7056; for the Federal Parent Locator Service and the
Enumeration Verification System: Alvee Harrison at (202)
690-6484.
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