Brief
This resource provides an overview of the Colorado Parent Employment Program (CO-PEP). CO-PEP focuses on helping noncustodial parents overcome barriers to employment in order to increase child support payments. An assessment of the program is underway.
Brief
Community partnerships can help fatherhood programs in many ways. They can increase the range of available services, enhance recruitment and retention efforts, and help fathers gain access to employment and training opportunities. Forming an effective partnership with the local child support agency can be particularly helpful for programs working with noncustodial fathers who are struggling to maintain regular child support payments. This case study describes the development of such a partnership in a rural area of central California (Merced County) and provides an overview of lessons…
Brief
Low-skilled men, especially minorities, typically work at low levels and provide little support for their children. Conservatives blame this on government willingness to support families, which frees the fathers from responsibility, while liberals say that men are denied work by racial bias or the economy--either a lack of jobs or low wages, which depress the incentive to work. The evidence for all these theories is weak. Thus, changing program benefits or incentives is unlikely to solve the men's work problem. More promising is the idea of linking assistance with administrative requirements…
Brief
New York launched a pilot employment program to help parents behind in their child support in four communities between 2006 and 2009. The program was part of the state's Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative. Our evaluation found that the program's combination of employment assistance, case management, and other support services substantially increased the earnings and child support payments of disadvantaged parents who were not meeting their child support obligations.
Brief
The federal government created the child support program in the 1970s to secure financial and medical support for children whose parents live separately. Today, the program collects $32 billion per year in child support payments and serves more than 16 million children and families. Still, about 35 percent of child support obligations go unpaid each month. Parents who do not pay often lack the ability to do so, due to unemployment, disability, incarceration, or other (sometimes multiple) barriers. These parents leave a significant amount of child support unpaid, and collecting that support…
Brief
This research snapshot from the Behavioral Interventions to Advance Self-Sufficiency (BIAS) project presents findings from the Cuyahoga tests, which 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 pay. (Author abstract modified)
Brief
Many programs for low-income fathers involve partnerships with multiple agencies to help recruit and serve more fathers, offer a broader array of services, and even gain access to new funding streams. In this brief, we summarize findings from the Strengthening Families Evidence Review (SFER) on forming and maintaining such partnerships. The SFER, a systematic review of family-strengthening programs serving low-income fathers or couples, was conducted by Mathematica Policy Research under contract to the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and…
Brief
This Policy Brief will summarize the "Children First Child Support Reform Act of 1999" and the "Fathers Count Act of 1999." Although these bills did not become law this legislative session, they are likely to be contended with in similar forms in future sessions. This brief is intended to clarify the actual provisions of each bill in order to facilitate a clear understanding of the specifics in future debates on such provisions. The "Children First Child Support Reform Act of 1999," sponsored by Senator Herb Kohl, was referred to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance but was not acted on in…
