Special Improvement Project Grants (SIP) Awarded in FY 2005

This two-year grant responds to 2005 Priority Area 2: Improving Judicial/Administrative Child Support Enforcement Processes. The National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ) will create innovative resources to assist with achieving the goals of OCSE's FY 2005 - 2009 strategic plan that all children have parentage established, have support orders established, have medical coverage and reliably receive financial support from parents as ordered. State court judges are an integral part of the success of the child support system. The achievement of the strategic plan's objectives relies upon judges who are fully informed and actively involved in ensuring appropriate process service, reducing the number of default orders, setting appropriate quantum of child support orders, awarding retroactive support only for appropriate and reasonable periods, crafting support orders that adequately provide for the medical support needs of children, and taking a problem-solving approach to ensure that child support is a reliable source of income for families.

The proposed project will develop three tools: a bench card to improve court practice in service of process, default orders and retroactive support; a model order to improve court practice in medical support; and a publication containing recommendations on improving court practice in integrating problem-solving court principles into the child support docket. The project will then pilot the tools, evaluate their usefulness, and revise them. The finished products will be unveiled at two NCJFCJ-sponsored national judicial education programs and disseminated nationwide.

This three-year grant responds to 2005 Priority Area 3: Improving Child Support and Marriage Education Services for Ethnic and Culturally Diverse Populations. In an effort to promote desirable child support outcomes and better the chances for Alabama children's healthy development, the Alabama Children's Trust Fund (CTF), in direct partnership with the Alabama Child Support Enforcement Division (CSED), Alabama A & M University's Family Life Center in Huntsville (FLC), Auburn University, and the Alabama Healthy Marriage Initiative (AHMI) will support the further development of the "Family Connections in Alabama" (FCA) Special Improvement Project. The FCA project is utilizing the Family Life Center to target Huntsville (Madison County), Alabama due to the high need for improvement in child support outcomes in Madison County, the strong interest of the Child Support Staff in the county for this project, and the capacity of the FLC to successfully implement the project design.

The project will build on lessons learned from previous work in the state of Alabama around issues related to healthy marriages, family stability, and greater child well-being. This project will specifically target African-American and Latino non-married parents who are IV-D clients and who have a youngest child age 2 or younger. An innovative, multi-pronged recruitment and retention strategy will be utilized. Male/female teams and couple mentors from within the target communities will manage the program participation and delivery of the child support services information and marriage education (ME) services. Child support workers will provide educational sessions on child support services and will partner with project personnel to track objective measures of child support outcomes. In the first year 48 participants are expected to complete the program and 96 new participants are expected to complete the program in each of the following two years.

ME services include the newly-developed, research-based "Loving Couples, Loving Children" (LCLC) curriculum, appropriate for an ethnically diverse fragile family population and available in English and in Spanish. The Alabama Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ACADV) will provide training and continued support in the domestic violence protocol to be used in the project to ensure a "do no harm" policy. A rigorous evaluation methodology, involving a comparison group, will be used to examine the implementation process and project success in meeting the primary goals: effective delivery of child support enforcement services and healthy marriage education services. The grantee expects that lessons learned from the SIP grant will inform their efforts to develop a model program for Alabama and other states that serve to eliminate barriers that make it harder for ethnic and culturally diverse populations to seek child support assistance, establish paternity, and to form and sustain healthy marriages and families.

This seventeen-month grant responded to 2005 Priority Area 1: Customizing Approaches for Improved Customer Service. In order to be more responsive to families, mostly Hispanic migrant workers, residing in remote areas and facing multiple barriers to obtaining child support services, the Monterey County Department of Child Support Service created a Mobile Service Unit (MSU).

The mobile office provided comprehensive child support services by expert bilingual specialists. Staff were trained to be Notaries and administer genetic DNA tests in order to offer these additional services, as needed. The approach not only provided the personalized assistance needed by disadvantaged persons to navigate a process foreign to them, but alleviated the clients' fear of going to a government office. The project was designed to improve performance of the local child support agency, decrease default judgments, increase the support collected and avoid arrears buildup.

Services were advertised via flyers in various public facilities and markets with schedules of visits to the various sites. Staff attended service provider coalition meetings and gave other service providers their schedules and information about services offered.

Project Findings (from the Final Report)

The MSU was effective in providing a full range of services specifically tailored for the targeted population and in the client's language with full explanation of the forms and process involved. Most clients did not have access to transportation or time to take off from work to go to a local child support office, which was not conveniently located. The mobile unit helped address these problems.

A pre/post evaluation was conducted. Output data were collected for clients served by the MSU and clients served in the office. Here are several findings:

Customer contacts were increased as desired over the year prior to the project implementation and the MSU served 532 clients (295 custodial parents; 237 noncustodial parents). Increases were reported for Compromise of Arrears Program, Modifications, Stipulations, Service of Summons and Complaints and Genetic Testing.

Collections on current support orders obtained by the MSU were higher than for the main office (64 percent versus 55 percent). There were no significant differences in measures between the MSU and the main office in time elapsed to service of process, time to order, paternity established, or arrears payments. Cases with orders were lower for the MSU.

Customer service is another area in which it was clear that the MSU was valuable, from the total contacts and services provided, to the anecdotal evidence and testimonials. Project staff was very successful in collaborating with partners to utilize space convenient for the clients.

Due to the dire needs and constraints of the population served, completing and processing the paperwork required more time and effort than anticipated. Lengthy explanations and assistance were necessary for most clients. Fifty-five percent of the clients needed services in Spanish. Even though the MSU staff obtained Language Line services to provide interpreters for other languages, the services were not needed. Fewer clients were seen than projected.

Technical issues occurred causing some implementation delays. Fortunately, they were resolved by the information technology crew. The in-house selection of compassionate and competent bilingual staff was very important to put clients at ease and be able to communicate with them.

Expanding relationships with the community and other related programs, including law enforcement, benefited the project. Various services were provided for parolees by The Police and Corrections Team, which is a collaboration of local law enforcement jurisdictions and the State Parole Office. Staff from the MSU met with recent parolees to provide services as they transitioned back to the community. Office space was obtained by partnering with county libraries, Head Start, the Department of Social and Employment Services, county courthouse and county water district.

Despite the successes, the project was discontinued due to staff shortages and budget constraints.

The project is responsive to 2005 Priority Area 5: Improving Local Collaboration Strategies between Child Support and Community Agencies. The Center for Policy Research (CPR), a Colorado non-profit corporation, proposes to conduct a two-year project aimed at enhancing collaboration between child support and child welfare agencies. The project will involve the participation of child support and child welfare agencies in large urban jurisdictions in four states that have taken preliminary, innovative steps to improve collaboration between IV-D and IV-E agencies and are interested in building stronger relationships and enhancing coordination in shared cases. The four states that have agreed to participate are: California, Minnesota, New Jersey and Wisconsin.

The project will involve compiling information on how shared cases are handled in a large urban jurisdiction within each state; conducting a two-day conference with upper-level staff in IV-D and IV-E agencies to identify best practices, share information, discuss problems, and develop a specific action plan; and providing follow-up support and technical assistance to each jurisdiction to implement the agreed-upon action plan developed at the conference.

By examining the barriers to collaboration, identifying best practices, and supporting four active jurisdictions in pilot efforts to enhance collaboration and case coordination, this project promises to fill an informational void about effective methods of handling child welfare cases in the child support system. The project results will be widely disseminated to the child support and child welfare community through relevant publications, conferences and the preparation of a final report.

This two-year project responded to 2005 Priority Area 5: Improving Local Collaboration Strategies between Child Support Enforcement and Community Agencies. The Georgia State University Research Foundation proposed to facilitate a collaboration of interested partners to address the problems related to issues of unmarried teen parents between the ages of 17 and 20. The partners included several churches and faith-based organizations, representatives of the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), Juvenile Courts and Court support staff and associates in DeKalb and Fulton counties along with Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) personnel.

This Coalition imported the successful Parenting and Paternity Awareness (PAPA) project from the State of Texas. The AOC, OCSE, GSU law students and other associated legal professionals provided the technical assistance involved in adjusting the Texas PAPA curriculum to fit Georgia State laws and requirements. Two new Georgia laws related to Child Support were incorporated into the curriculum revision. The new laws included changing the method of setting guidelines for child support from a gross income model to a shared income model; the second law allowed fathers to legitimate their children by voluntary acknowledgement made contemporaneously with the acknowledgement of paternity.

This project had a goal of conducting a minimum of two training sessions each month for a total of 24 sessions. It was anticipated that 10 teen parents would be served in each session for a total of 240 participants. The program evaluation was to be based on data collected by several partner providers and from records of the Office of Child Support.

The program was to measure success using the following indicators: participants who 1) opened an OCSE case (who did not have a case previously); 2) established paternity; 3) established child support obligations; 4) increased amount and frequency of child support payments; 5) entered the Georgia Fatherhood Program; 6) entered the Georgia Child Access and Visitation Services program; 7) legitimated their child; 8) become engaged or married.

Project Findings (from the Final Report)

There were difficulties with the project implementation. The project seemed to change focus: 45 individuals from 29 agencies and community programs were trained as trainers for the PAPA curriculum while the plan had been to train teen parents, not partners. Two hundred fifty (250) participants were enrolled. However, it is not clear who trained whom or where the training sites were. There also were issues with the evaluation which was incomplete: no statistics were provided on how the program measured success for the indicators listed above for these 250 enrollees. The report indicated that in one class 8 of 12 fathers reported establishing paternity and legitimating their children.

This seventeen-month project responded to 2005 Priority Area 1: Customizing Approaches for Improved Customer Service. Episcopal Social Services (ESS), Wichita, Kansas’ Reliable Income for Kids Coalition (RIK) tested two proactive interventions, pro se legal facilitation and a customized system of arrears forgiveness, separately and in tandem. The chief goal was to make child support a reliable source of income by helping noncustodial parents comply with child support orders which they have been reluctant or unable to pay.

During 1995 through 2005, ESS operated a Support for Children Program designed to increase the amount of child support which reached families. As a court referral program, the Support for Children Program assisted noncustodial parents in overcoming the barriers preventing them from paying support. Funding for the Support for Children Program came from ESS operating funds raised from the community and from United Way. During 2004, the Program Director examined additional strategies for overcoming barriers, which included pro se legal facilitation and debt forgiveness as an incentive for regular and consistent payments by NCPs. The demonstration project, which began in October 2005, involved the application of these two new incentive strategies, in addition to the services of the ESS Support for Children Program provided using funds from the United Way, to the cases of IV-D noncustodial parents referred to the RIK project

The purpose of pro se facilitation was to provide education and empower a participant to address and resolve their child support issues. Services consisted of legal education provided through one-on-one meetings with a licensed attorney on contract with the Project for up to two and a half hours per participant. A variety of subjects was covered and participants were instructed on how to file motions and represent themselves in court on child support modifications, parenting time and custody issues.

The purpose of debt forgiveness was to establish a pattern of compliance and also give the noncustodial parent an opportunity to see financial benefit from making payments. Debt forgiveness was given in steps to provide continuing encouragement to make payments. Arrears forgiveness allowed participants to “earn” partial forgiveness of up to 30% of debt owed to the State of Kansas for in full and on time payment of the ordered amount for specified periods of time starting at 3 months of payment earning 5% forgiveness.

The RIK partnership, consisting of ESS, the local IV-D agency, the State District Court and Kansas Workforce Development cooperated to manage referrals, payment incentives, and outcomes. RIK offered free pro-se facilitation and legal education aimed at resolving a variety of child support legal issues and barriers coupled with arrears forgiveness incentives provided by the Kansas IV-D agency in exchange for consistent payment of support to a targeted group of IV-D noncustodial parents who were found in contempt of court. The purpose was to determine if providing these incentives, pro se facilitation and arrears forgiveness, affect the rate of payment. The approach included the establishment of four experimental groups to test the effect of each intervention separately, and in tandem, against the results from a control group. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four groups at the time of RIK enrollment. Signed case plans were developed for each participant and progress was tracked.

It is important to note that in addition to these two new interventions, all participants in all four groups, even those in the control group, were provided services through the ESS Support for Children Program funded by the United Way. Those services included Focus Classes on Cooperative Parenting, Life Skills, Budgeting and Money Management, and Kansas Family Law; access to the ESS job search lab and Employment Counseling; the assistance of a family support case manager to monitor job search activities and assist in removing barriers that may prevent employment.

Project Findings (from the Final Report):

An external evaluation of the RIK Project was performed by Mr. Robert Hull, Vice President for Research at the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation of Kansas. His report describes results that are encouraging and statistically significant. Data collected from November 2005 through April 2007, indicated that 207 participants who enrolled remained active in the RIK project.

Because the goal of the project was to make child support a reliable source of income, it is important to note that all statistics reported for this project, including total collections and rates of payment, are compiled only from the cases of IV-D noncustodial parents who paid their full monthly obligation amount in the month it was due. Of the 50 Group A participants who received pro se facilitation, 61% paid their full child support ordered amount; of the 50 participants assigned to Group B who received the opportunity to earn arrears forgiveness, 54% paid in full; of the 54 Group C participants who received both the pro se facilitation and the arrears forgiveness opportunity, 62% paid in full; and of the 53 control group participants who received neither pro se facilitation nor the arrears forgiveness opportunity, 51% paid in full. It should also be pointed out that a significant number of other participants made partial payments toward their child support obligations. Noncustodial parents who paid in full in all four experimental groups in the RIK project paid a total of $491,762 in child support during the project. Even though payment statistics for these participants before their RIK involvement was not gathered, it is reasonable to conclude that they had been paying little or no support prior to their RIK involvement since participants were referred to the RIK project because they had been found in contempt of court for failure to pay support.

The 104 participants in Groups B and C were able to earn forgiveness of State debt. Twenty-eight participants earned debt forgiveness of 5% of their State debt owed for consistent payment for 3 months; 7 participants earned 10% debt forgiveness for 6 months of consistent payment; 7 earned 20% for 12 months of payments; and 2 earned 30% debt forgiveness for 17 months of consistent payment. State debt forgiven during the project totaled $27,506.

The pro se facilitation and legal education process resulted in increased parenting time for the NCP and allowed the NCP to resolve other legal issues. Of the 104 participants in the two groups eligible for pro se facilitation, 54 individuals sought information and met with the facilitator. Of these, 17 filed motions with the court. Three filed motions to modify child support and two qualified for lower payments. Six individuals filed motions to change legal custody and all six motions were granted. Four filed motions to terminate current child support because of custody changes and all four were granted. Three of the four participants who filed motions for parenting time were granted specific parenting time with their children, while one case was referred for mediation.

Other notable results attributed to the RIK Project as a whole include:

• 74% of participants resumed or commenced paying child support payments within 90 days of enrollment;
• 66% of those unemployed upon entering RIK obtained employment within 90 days of enrollment; and
• 46% of participants seeking help with visitation problems (19 of 41) reported increased contact with their children.

Lessons Learned:

When comparing the payment rates from all four groups, the two groups that received pro-se facilitation either alone or in combination with arrears forgiveness had notably higher rates of payment over the control group and the group who received arrears forgiveness only.

This triangular interdisciplinary methodology consisting of a partnership among a faith-based organization, the local IV-D agency, and an enforcement contractor (in this case a District Court Trustee) showed itself to be a highly effective means of organizing more efficient customer service in the context of an incentives program.

Originally, the RIK project was designed to serve recently released felons as an additional pilot group, in addition to the NCPs who were referred by the Court Trustee, to study the affect of the interventions on “prisoner reentry” issues experienced by that targeted population. Although ESS established a relationship with the Inner Change Freedom Initiative, a Christian faith-based, pre-release prison program, to refer program participants, there were too few recently released felons to refer to properly constitute a pilot group and test the affect of these payment incentives. Several attempts were made by the grantee to increase referrals; however, they were not able to enroll a sufficient number of recently released felon NCPs.

RIK instituted for the first time in the State of Kansas a program of pro se facilitation for NCPs. RIK developed a “checklist” of NCP concerns which was used to compile a profile of barriers which concerned each NCP. This profile is useful in developing recommendations for use in programs which might want to replicate RIK services.

The Project Coordinator recommends that in advance of enrollment, NCPs should be screened in order that program case managers may learn which incentives are likely to be most effective for each individual. For example:

• pro se checklists indicated 35% of NCPs had visitation issues that they considered important legal barriers to payment, and 24% desired information on child support guidelines because they may possibly want to modify their orders. These NCPs may be best served by directing them immediately upon enrollment to a pro se facilitator.
• Though not originally identified as an evaluation element, the Project Coordinator noticed that noncustodial parents were not equally motivated by the prospect of earning arrears forgiveness. Only a few NCPs in the project with debt between $20,000 and $52,000 earned any arrears forgiveness while NCPs with arrears under $20,000 were much more likely to earn arrears forgiveness. The Project Coordinator observed NCPs in RIK who were earning wages slightly above the minimum wage who had high arrears as well as other debts. Through discussions with them and their case manager the Coordinator concluded that earning partial debt forgiveness was not as meaningful to these NCPs because they could not envision themselves ever paying off their debt. More investigation is needed into how debt forgiveness can be more effective for NCPs owing higher balances – perhaps offering higher percentages of forgiveness would supply the needed motivation, or studying how much a noncustodial parent owes to the State and how much to the custodial parent when applying this incentive to determine its effectiveness.

The Project Coordinator documented many instances in which a NCP received pro se facilitation but did not follow through with the filing of any motion to modify a support order or visitation schedule, or to enforce a visitation schedule. ESS highly recommends that future programs offering pro se facilitation obtain the cooperation of Judges to waive filing fees in order to encourage NCPs to participate in the legal process rather than continue to avoid payment as a response to these perceived legal burdens and barriers.

This project is responsive to 2005 Priority Area 3: Improving Child Support and Marriage Education Services for Ethnic and Culturally Diverse Populations. The South Baton Rouge Christian Children's Foundation, Refined By Fire Ministries, Inc., Dixon Correctional Institute and the Louisiana Department of Support Enforcement Services are collaborating on a three-year project that will provide healthy marriage education and child support services to underserved ethnically diverse non-married, custodial and non-custodial parents. The overall goal of the project is to ensure that the children of these prisoners receive the support necessary for healthy development by strengthening the relationship between their parents and increasing the emotional and financial involvement of custodial and non-custodial parents in the lives of their children. The target audience is 90-120 inmates in Dixon Correctional's re-entry program who have less than a year before release. The program addresses barriers for unwed parents such as: a lack of knowledge about the importance of family stability, marriage and child support to child well-being; lack of healthy relationship and parenting skills and access to programs that promote family formation; and the child support obligations that do not stop when a parent becomes incarcerated. To address these problems, the project will focus on educating the inmates on the importance of family stability, marriage and child support and how they affect child wellbeing, increasing the skills of inmates in healthy relationship and parenting skills training before and after release, and assisting the inmate in establishing a relationship with Support Enforcement and taking responsibility for child support payments so that their families have a chance for healthy involvement after the inmate is released.

This two-year SIP grant responds to 2005 Priority Area 4: Health Care Coverage in Child Support Cases. This project is designed to reduce the number of uninsured children in Michigan. This will be done by automating the process of identifying child support orders that include healthcare coverage of the child and collecting data to enable state workers to assess the options available. Pertinent information (vital records, Medicaid eligibility, child support enforcement) that resides as unconnected data in the data warehouse will be cleansed and integrated. The grantee will also assist in securing the best option for healthcare coverage for the children. Once the at-risk children are identified, child support orders will be cross-checked with other state agency information to provide a complete health insurance profile of the family. This process will assist local enforcement agencies in targeting the non-custodial parents to provide the health care coverage required by court order. The grantee will utilize current technology and existing data as a foundation on which it could build a file-sharing system that makes use of state computing equipment and systems that are already in place. Utilizing data systems currently in place to enhance effectiveness and communication between agencies could be replicated in other states. The evaluation plan will focus on how many children gain healthcare coverage or improve their coverage as a direct result of the new process. The grantee will work with the Michigan Department of Human Services Office of Child support.

Project Plan

This two-year grant responded to 2005 Priority Area 2: Improving Judicial/Administrative Child Support Enforcement Processes. The project sought to assure that child support orders more appropriately address the circumstances of both parents by:

• improving service of process procedures;
• use of voluntary agreements to establish paternity and support; and
• improving access to the courts by using more culturally sensitive documents and by overcoming perceived obstacles to procedural justice.

The project’s title, "Reducing Paternity Defaults with E’s," emphasized three initiatives to improve paternity establishment by reducing the number of defaults:

• explaining the process to fathers;
• educating them on the importance of participation and the consequences of non-participation; and
• encouraging future participation.

These initiatives were implemented via a customer service liaison unit and by training process servers to be sensitive to the needs and fears of men on whom they serve papers. During the second year, the project performed a statistical analysis and conducted the final evaluation. The goal was to produce a gradual improvement that increased the number of answers to paternity complaints filed, thereby reducing default orders.

Background

Most paternity orders, approximately two-thirds, are entered by default because the men fail to appear in court on their cases. The hypothesis was that failure to appear resulted from lack of understanding the court process, and/or fear of the legal process. Default paternity orders might result in paternity being established when the man is not the biological father; default support orders, based on little or no information, may result in an amount that may be more than the father can pay, leading to large arrears that may never be fully paid.

The basic approach to reducing the number of default orders was to talk with alleged fathers two times early on:

• When the alleged father was served with paternity papers, the contractual, private process server would attempt to EXPLAIN the paternity process to them, EDUCATE them on the importance of appearing in court, and ENCOURAGE them to participate in their case. A one-page "Answer" form was handed to the man to admit being the father or request a genetic test. It also asked for personal information about the man. Additionally, a project brochure and "Hotline" calling card were provided.
• Within two weeks, one of two contractual "Hotline" representatives would call the alleged father by phone in order to further explain, educate and encourage. Additionally, these "Hotline" representatives collected relevant data from experimental and control cases for evaluation purposes.

The service-of-process and "Hotline" operation took place basically during the first year. The second year focused on identifying and reviewing case data and compliance data in control cases, and compliance data in experimental cases. These data were: paternity established or excluded; default or non-default; type of service of process; plaintiff present or absent; helpful support information; income withholding information; support information on both parties; consent; mediation.

Methodology

The methodology for this project included, among other things, identifying and selecting experimental and control cases and their orders.

• Experimental cases were those tracked during the first year of the project when the process servers and "Hot Line" representatives tried to explain, educate, and encourage. The total pool of experimental cases was 5,206. This number was reduced to 3,483 cases where paternity was established and processed to a final order during the first year of the project.
• Control cases were those processed before the project was initiated in May 2006 and represented the standards for case data and order compliance for paternity cases filed in 2004 and 2005. A pool of 3,101 cases was identified. The actual control cases were randomly selected from this total population, keeping in mind the proportion of service types (personal service or alternate service). This number was reduced to 1,285. At about two-thirds, the proportion of personally served vs. alternately served control cases was equivalent to the corresponding ratio for experimental cases.

Project Findings

• Experimental cases paid 48% of current support; control cases paid 32%.
• Non-default men in experimental cases paid 61% of their support; non-default men in control cases paid 48%.
• Defaulted men in experimental cases paid 32% of their support while defaulted men in control cases paid only 18%.
• The overall non-default rate was 53%, a number significantly higher than the traditional one-third (2,749 non-default orders entered out of 5,206 total orders).
• A total of 481 men in the experimental group were excluded from being the father via genetic testing, which is 9.2%. There were no comparable data on men in the control group, because by definition the control group included only cases where paternity orders had been established.
• There were 1,383 out of 1,749 non-default orders when phone contact was made. The conclusion was that speaking with defendants via the "Hotline" greatly increased the likelihood that they will appear with the resultant reduction in paternity defaults. And most of the phone conversations (67%) were initiated by men calling the "Hotline," which demonstrates that giving the "Hotline" calling card to the men was very instrumental in establishing phone contacts.
• Experimental orders had average support amounts consistently lower than the average control orders. Thus, the more appropriate and affordable support orders were entered in the experimental cases, which in turn led to better payment.

Lessons Learned

• Barriers to contacting the men by phone
  • Did not have his phone number.
  • Had wrong phone number.
  • Man never answered/had no voice mail.
  • Man never called back after leaving him a message.
  • Man was never home.
  • Man had cell phone only with limited minutes.
• Talking to men early on - explaining, educating and encouraging - the men will take the opportunity to:
  • Better understand their rights and responsibilities.
  • Be excluded as legal fathers via genetic testing.
  • Participate in the process.
  • Show their true income and ability to pay child support.
  • Discuss issues about the child with the court/mother.
  • Discuss custody and parenting time.
  • Understand that mediation is available to help work out any differences about how to raise the child.
  • Better realize the importance of supporting their children.
  • Get off to a better start with their support obligation.
• Main components to replicate this project:
  • A trained process server to get the man’s attention, provide a one-page information sheet, a one-page "Answer" form, and a special phone number for the man to call for more information.
  • A dedicated phone line with voice mail.
  • A paternity expert to give the man the knowledge he needs to understand the process and why he should appear for his hearing.
  • A script as part of the training.

This three-year grant responds to 2005 Priority Area 3: Improving Child Support and Marriage Education Services for Ethnic and Culturally Diverse Populations. The project will investigate the efficacy of integrating healthy marriage content into Family Support Education (FSE) programs targeting African American and Latino families; develop and test an educational intervention on healthy marriage formation for unmarried African-American and Latino parents participating in two Michigan counties, Pontiac and Saginaw; and disseminate program curriculum, lessons learned and other information to early-parenting programs statewide and nationally. Child support enforcement (CSE) education will be integrated as a key theme throughout the project strategies. Educational materials will be developed that reflect current CSE goals and policies in consultation with Michigan CSE staff and the Friends of the Court (FOC) in Michigan.

An experimental design using a program and comparison group will assess program impact and effects. An important project hypothesis is that exposure to a culturally sensitive protocol will yield increases in the targeted knowledge, attitude, skills and relationship quality, i.e., key marital readiness indicators. The project anticipates recruiting 75 participants from each of the two project sites, Saginaw and Pontiac, and from each of the two control sites (two different counties with similar demographics) for a total of 150 in the program group and 150 in the control group. Objective measures of child support payment rates, paternity establishment and marriage rates will be tracked among both groups and compared.

This three-year grant responds to 2005 SIP Priority Area 3: Improving Child Support and Marriage Education Services for Ethnic and Culturally Diverse Populations. The project goal is to ensure that the best interests of children remain central to their parents' lives by teaching parents essential parenting and relationship skills and expectations concerning child support responsibility and providing legal and emotional support to children. The grantee will work with the St. Louis Healthy Marriage Coalition to train instructors in the Family Wellness curriculum and offer the Family Wellness program to underserved ethnic and culturally diverse never-married, divorced, or separated parents in specified St. Louis zip codes. The project will train 40 Family Wellness instructors in Year 1 and 40 in Year 2. It will serve 210 families in Year 1, 285 in Year 2, and 430 families in Year 3 in 4- to 6-week (one hour per week) workshops offered quarterly in each year. Participants will be recruited from various social service agencies (e.g., TANF office, child support, job training programs, churches). Transportation stipends and child care will be provided.

Philliber Research Associates will conduct (1) a process study that tracks recruitment and referrals, the demographic characteristics of participants, and customer satisfaction, and (2) an outcomes study that assesses whether the program meets the following goals: 80% clients referred complete Family Wellness; 80% of parents improve their commitment to meet financial obligations to children; 60% improve their ability to parent; 60% improve their relationship with the other parent; and 60% of non-custodial parents improve personal responsibility in one of four areas (employment, formal/informal child support, time spent talking with custodial parent about child(ren), time spent with child). The process study data will come from customer satisfaction surveys; outcome study will use pre- and post-surveys of participants and attendance logs.

This project responded to 2005 Priority Area 1: "Customizing Approaches for Improved Customer Service." The grantee focused on customizing child support strategies for incarcerated noncustodial parents (NCPs) with child support obligations and significant child support arrearages in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. The project featured an innovative pre-release and post-release case management model designed to facilitate child support education, referrals and enrollment in relevant Workforce Investment and TANF programs and job readiness activities that exist both inside and outside of the county correctional institutions. The project was built upon national and local best practices in the areas of ex-offender employment strategies and low-income NCP programs and leveraged key services, technology and expertise in the community targeting this population.

The primary goal of this project was to facilitate full-time employment for ex-offender NCPs immediately upon release, in order to increase their capacity to pay child support on a regular basis. A secondary goal was to improve the coordination of services among correctional institutions, the local child support enforcement (CSE) agency, the Workforce Investment Board and community service providers.

To accomplish these goals, Goodwill Industries worked in collaboration with the Allegheny County Family Division (CSE), the Allegheny County Jail Collaborative which consists of the Allegheny County Department of Human Services, the Allegheny County Jail, the Allegheny County Health Department, and the University of Pittsburgh. The goal was to develop a service delivery model targeting incarcerated NCPs for inclusion in regional Workforce Investment Act and related supportive service programs. The Special Improvement Project (SIP) grant funded outreach, assessment, referral, case management, and child support education services for Project SCALE participants. The employment and training services provided to Project Scale participants were funded from other sources (this is not a matchable IV-D expense).

Project Findings (from the Final Report):

GOAL 1 - Screen 240 low-income and culturally diverse NCPs for program enrollment in the first three quarters of the program (10/1/05 through 6/30/06) and enroll 75 participants. The two major reasons that incarcerated participants were not enrolled involved either not having a child support obligation and/or the participant was scheduled to be incarcerated for a long period.

Screening and enrollment into Project SCALE occurred primarily during the second and third quarters of the grant (1/30/06 through 6/30/06). The project exceeded that goal by screening 347 individuals (107 more than planned). The project also exceeded the enrollment goal of 75 participants, enrolling 76 parents by the end of the 3rd quarter and adding 5 more in the 5th quarter. Overall, 81 parents were enrolled (6 more than anticipated).

GOAL 2 - Secure a substantial and significant increase in child support payments by the program participants. Prior to enrollment, 57 (70 percent) SCALE participants did not pay child support and 24 (30 percent) were partial payers of child support.

This increase was measured in two parts. The first part of the goal involved motivating 40 percent of participants not paying child support between pre-incarceration and program completion to make a child support payment. As a result of program participation, forty-four of the non-payers of child support made at least one child support payment by the conclusion of the program. This was a 78 percent payment rate which significantly exceeded the 40 percent goal.

The second part of the goal involved increasing the rate of child support collections for individuals with a history of partial payments by 20 percent over a six-month period following employment, based on the 6 months of child support history prior to incarceration.

Twenty-three of the 24 partial payers increased the amount of child support paid. For this group, the total amount collected pre-enrollment was $18,892.43 compared to $32,419.09 post enrollment. This was a 72 percent increase in the rate of child support collections, 52 percentage points higher than the initial program goal of 20 percent.

At the end of the program, the total additional child support payments by all participants was $49,103. This total increase occurred from October 2005 to April 2007.

GOAL 3 - Facilitate child health coverage through wage attachable employment of program participants.

Wage attachable employment was achieved for 63 (78 percent) of the participants. However, only 1 participant of the 63 who attained this success had an employer who provided health care benefits. The large number of positions that did not provide health benefits is due in part to the types of jobs attained and, to a larger extent, to the change in the economic structure of the Pittsburgh area where more employers are hiring temporary or contracted workers. Furthermore, 9 participants were unable to achieve wage attachable employment because they were employed in, or terminated from, non-taxable jobs and were not paying child support.

GOAL 4 - Utilize multi-media technology to provide the target population with an assessment of barriers in the areas of basic needs, housing, wellness, employment and training and with child support and custody presentations regarding obligations, options and rights related to child support and custody issues.

In the first quarter of the grant, the team created a PowerPoint presentation titled "Child Support and Custody - Questions and Answers for Incarcerated or Recently Incarcerated Individuals." This PowerPoint was presented at conferences, to all Project SCALE participants and to 91 other individuals in the Allegheny County Jail to inform them on the subjects of child support, arrears and Project SCALE. The PowerPoint presentation was also provided to other States working with incarcerated/previously incarcerated obligors.

GOAL 5 - Measure enhancements to the current service delivery system.

Project SCALE fostered many partnerships that enhanced the existing service delivery system for this population. The project initiated a participant recruitment process at the Allegheny County Jail and Goodwill Community Corrections Center. Furthermore, in conjunction with Allegheny County Family Division, Project SCALE received preliminary approval on an arrears forgiveness component from the Pennsylvania State Bureau of Child Support Enforcement.

The project also worked with the Allegheny County Family Division on the design and implementation of an early release program and began referrals for released inmates who had been placed in employment on an as-needed basis to the Fathers Collaborative Law Clinic for child support modifications, mediations and visitation matters.

Lessons Learned/Next Steps

1. Developing a program to ensure that previously incarcerated obligors will meet their child support obligation is possible. For example, 96 percent of all partial payers increased the amount of child support paid after participation in the program.
2. Many previously incarcerated obligors are eager to participate in the program. This completely voluntary program exceeded its target for participation.
3. Health care is very difficult to obtain for the type of employment obtained by the study participants.
4. Behavioral change is critical to the success of participants. The participants had to learn how to deal with frustration. For example, if a government employee does not treat the NCP with respect or fairness, NCPs are encouraged to contact the supervisor rather than "put a brick through the window."

The program has ended but the lessons learned are being incorporated into other projects managed by Goodwill Industries of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In addition, the PowerPoint presentation provided to clients "Child Support and Custody-Questions and Answers for Incarcerated or Recently Incarcerated Individuals" was shared with other Region III States including Delaware, the District of Columbia and Maryland. Please contact Michael Olack from Goodwill Industries OLACK@goodwillpitt.org to request the PowerPoint presentation.

This project is responsive to 2005 Priority Area 3: Improving Child Support and Marriage Education Services for Ethnic and Culturally Diverse Populations. The grantee proposes to conduct a three-year project that will provide African-American custodial and non-custodial parents, age 18 and over services that will enable them to strengthen the family unit and create a healthy, stable family. The proposed project design is based on the Strengthening Families' findings generated from studies conducted of programs that focus on strengthening the relationship between unwed parents and to help those who are interested to prepare to enter and maintain a healthy marriage. The proposed program will address factors that affect couples and their children and consist of three components: assessment, marriage education and relationship skills and support services to enhance marriage ability.

On an annual basis, the Healthy Parents, Healthy Families, Healthy Children program will be available to 100 participants for up to six months. As a result of the proposed program the parent relationship will improve and child support payments will increase by 10% from enrollment to program completion. Participants will access services that will enable them to improve their life and that of their family resulting in an overall improvement in the well-being of the child. Families Under Urban and Social Attack will collaborate with community resources, including the Office of the Attorney General, Child Support Division to ensure that the target population is reached and the appropriate services are delivered.

This project was submitted in response to 2005 Priority Area 5: Improving Local Collaboration Strategies between CSE and Community Agencies, and will allow the Texas Office of the Attorney General's (OAG) Child Support Division (CSD) to conduct a two-year demonstration and evaluation project to test strategies designed to enhance the knowledge and understanding of unmarried, new parents concerning the importance and legal significance of paternity establishment, the legal rights and responsibilities they have as parents, and the value of family stability and healthy marriage to the well-being of their children. The project will be conducted at two local pilot sites through intensive face-to-face contact and on a statewide basis through the mailing of information to all parents who have executed an Acknowledgment of Paternity (AOP) during the fiscal year.

The OAG/CSD will capitalize on the "magic moment" of birth by mailing the new parents identified on an AOP a packet of information describing the benefits children receive from a stable family environment, the importance of father involvement, and the range of public agency services available to them as new parents. In addition to the statewide outreach efforts, the OAG proposes to contract with hospitals to conduct personal outreach to new or expectant unmarried parents at two local hospital sites by using hospital staff and trained volunteers. Through this personal outreach, new parents will be informed of their legal responsibilities to support their child, of the resources available to them to fulfill those responsibilities, and of the value of marriage and stable families for child well-being.

The value of healthy marriage and parental responsibility outreach will be determined by: measuring the number of paternities established by parents receiving project services as compared to a similar sample of parents receiving no services, the number of parents receiving program services who request additional healthy marriage information, the number of parents expressing satisfaction with program materials emphasizing healthy marriage and paternity establishment, and the timing of child support cases opened among parents receiving services as compared to parents receiving no program services.