The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is committed to supporting the economic and social well-being of children and families. ACF programs aim to empower families, support the development of children, and encourage strong, healthy communities.
This guide provides a listing and details of services for fathers and families.
The nation's Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program is a federal/state/tribal/local partnership to promote family self-sufficiency and child well-being. In most states, approximately half of all child support orders are established and enforced by a federal and state financed child support enforcement entity known as the IV-D program (from Title IV-D of the Social Security Act). About one-third of all children in the United States will receive some assistance from CSE and approximately 58 percent of CSE cases involve never-married parents. Services are available to a parent with custody of a…
Spending positive time with both parents promotes child well-being and is associated with better child support outcomes. Unmarried parents do not have systematic access to assistance in establishing parenting time orders, so stateand local child support programs have sought to address this service gap. This fact sheet highlights states and countiesthat coordinate the establishment of child support orders and parenting time agreements. Family violence safeguardsare always a critical component when addressing parenting time. (Author abstract)
OCSE recently launched Parenting Time Opportunities for Children, a pilot program to give child support agencies grants to develop, implement, and evaluate procedures to establish parenting time orders along with new child support orders. The goal is to learn more about how the child support program can safely and effectively give families opportunities to establish parenting time orders, thereby improving child well-being overall and related child support outcomes. This fact sheet introduces OCSE's Parenting Time Opportunities for Children grantees. (Author abstract)
This document is to guide family services practitioners and fatherhood advocates in Minnesota as they work with fathers. The hope is that this information will help identify when an unmarried father is facing an issue that has important legal considerations or ramifications and provide some brief information. This is general educational information and not advice on any particular situation. More in-depth information on these topics can be found in the Unmarried Fathers? Guide to Paternity, Custody, Parenting Time and Child Support inMinnesota, at…
Welfare reform endorsed the notion that both parents should support their children financially, regardless of which parent a child lives with. Accordingly, the reforms emphasized work for custodial parents and strengthened states' ability to enforce child support laws. This approach has increased the number of working single mothers and raised child support payments. It has done less, however, for the children of the 2.5 million nonresident fathers who are poor and do not pay child support. To ensure support for these children--many of whom receive welfare--reformers must view nonresident…
Many, if not most, foster children are living apart from their fathers at the time they are removed from their homes. Once removed, these children experience even less contact with their noncustodial fathers. The dearth of fathers in the lives of foster children is of mounting concern as efforts to expedite permanent homes for these children intensify and there is greater recognition of fathers' contributions to family stability and children's healthy development. Consequently, in recent years, legislative and policy changes affecting child support and child welfare have placed new emphasis…
Federal policies are promoting father involvement in families to improve developmental, academic, and economic outcomes for children. This information packet provides an overview of issues related to fatherhood initiatives for providers and consumers of social services. It includes a fact sheet of statistics about effects of fatherlessness, a summary of policies and legislation, and lists of references and web resources. The innovative Georgia Fatherhood Program also is profiled.
Part of a series of fact sheets that discuss how and why the child support program provides innovative services to families across six interrelated areas to assure that parents have the tools and resources they need to support their children and be positively involved in raising them, this fact sheet focuses on ways in which the child support program can help prevent the need for its services by promoting responsible childbearing and parenting choices and by raising awareness--especially among teenagers--of the financial, legal, and emotional responsibilities of parenthood. Examples of how…
