Child advocacy organizations have proven the value of using data to make the case for policies and programs to improve the lives of children and families. Many state governments have also embraced the open data movement by using data portals to promote government transparency and increase data access. Child advocacy organizations and state governments can leverage open data to improve the lives of children and families. This brief describes the changes to current practice required on both sides to accomplish this goal. (Author abstract)
The final impact report on the National Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED) was released on March 14, 2019. The primary goal of the intervention was to improve the reliable payment of child support in order to improve child well-being and avoid public costs. Key outcomes related to noncustodial parents’ (1) child support orders, payments and compliance, as well as attitudes toward the child support program; (2) work and earnings; (3) sense of responsibility for their children.Over 10,000 noncustodial parents with difficulty meeting their child support…
This final report summarizes implementation and impacts of the Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services (BICS) demonstration. The goals of the demonstration were to use insights from behavioral science to develop interventions that could improve child support services and increase parent engagement, and to encourage the rapid-cycle testing of these strategies, leading to further improvements. In the process, the project hoped to build the participating child support programs' capabilities in behavioral science and evaluation and support these and other child support programs in…
The Behavioral Interventions for Child Support Services (BICS) project aims to improve federally funded child support services by increasing program efficiency, developing interventions informed by behavioral science, and building a culture of rapid-cycle evaluation. In the state of Washington, the Division of Child Support (DCS) is responsible for establishing and enforcing child support orders. For the BICS intervention, DCS aimed to foster a more cooperative relationship with parents during the order establishment process, in order to increase collections in the short term and…
The purpose of this information memorandum (IM) is to strongly encourage all human service agencies including child welfare agencies, courts, offices of child support enforcement, offices of public assistance, offices of child care, Head Start programs and family and youth services programs to work together across governments to jointly create and maintain an environment that prioritizes father engagement as a critical factor in strengthening families and adopt approaches to enhance paternal involvement in all family support and child welfare related programs. (Author abstract)
Research in behavioral economics has shown that small changes in the environment can make it easier for people to act and make decisions that support their goals. For example, research suggests that small changes to make processes easier — such as simplifying application instructions, prepopulating forms with available required information, and streamlining procedures — can improve human services program design and outcomes. The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project used behavioral insights to address issues related to the operations, implementation, and efficacy…
This report presents interim impact and implementation findings of seven transitional jobs programs from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration. Two of the sites in that study — in Atlanta and San Francisco — are also a part of ACF’s Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration. The two studies closely coordinated beyond the shared sites, including shared reports, common data collection instruments, and other ongoing collaboration.The report shares early results in the areas of implementation, employment outcomes, recidivism, and child support payment…
The Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project is the first major opportunity to use a behavioral economics lens to examine programs that serve poor and vulnerable families in the United States. The project applies behavioral insights to issues related to the operations, implementation, and efficacy of social service programs and policies. The goal is to learn how tools from behavioral science can be used to deliver programs more effectively and, ultimately, improve the well-being of low-income children, adults, and families. This report presents findings from a…
Low-income, nonresident fathers owe a disproportionate amount of child support arrears, creating potential challenges for these fathers and their family relationships. This article uses mediation analysis to provide new evidence about how and why child support debt is related to paternal involvement using information from 1,017 nonresident fathers in the Fragile Families Study. Results show that child support arrears are associated with nonresident fathers having significantly less contact with children, being less engaged with them in daily activities, and providing less frequent in-kind…
This impact report from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project presents findings from four tests of behavioral interventions intended to increase the percentage of parents who made child support payments and the dollar amount of collections per parent in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. These findings demonstrate that low-cost, low-effort behavioral interventions can improve child support outcomes. However, interventions that are more intensive may be necessary to increase overall child support collection amounts, perhaps because some parents have a limited ability to…
