Date: April 10, 1995
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Michael Kharfen, ACF (202) 401-9215

HHS Announces Child Support
Enforcement Reinvention Underway

HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala announced today that the nation's child support enforcement program has launched an initiative to promote improved performance, service quality and public satisfaction in the program.

"The urgency of our task has been stressed by many," said Mary Jo Bane, assistant secretary for children and families. "This initiative to set goals and measure results will strengthen our ability to ensure needed support for millions of children and is in keeping with the president's mission to make government work better for the American people."

As a two-year pilot project under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), the Administration for Children and Families' Office of Child Support Enforcement will work to develop effective partnerships with all states. To support the initiative, about 30 state and local child support programs have volunteered to initiate improvements.

"We recognized the need for significant improvement in the child support system, and have gained support for reinvention. We will work closely with our state and local partners to help them accomplish their objectives in these demonstrations," said David Gray Ross, deputy director, Office of Child Support Enforcement. "We have much work to do, but today we are taking a big step forward to help children."

Highlights of some demonstrations follow:

In California, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento counties will, respectively, try to improve cooperation of welfare mothers in identifying and locating alleged fathers; explore the feasibility of group medical insurance for children whose parents do not have work-based insurance; and provide employment counseling to noncustodial parents. In a statewide demonstration, California will provide seed money to stimulate innovations in child support operations to boost collections.

In Illinois, the Chicago (Cook County) program will streamline the child support referral process under a "one-stop shopping" concept so that unemployed noncustodial parents can become quickly employed and pay their child support.

The Michigan project will attempt to improve child support program management by using a new contracting process under which state reimbursements to prosecuting attorneys and Friends of the Court will be results based.

The demonstration in New York is part of a regional initiative, that includes New Jersey and to a lesser degree, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Key projects are in improving collections of child support arrears by obtaining access to better information on parents' financial assets, and developing criteria to measure the effectiveness of paternity establishment activities.

A regional project in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska will improve service delivery, initiate results-oriented performance measures and conduct training.

Ohio's demonstration will measure the state's overall child support program performance. It will evaluate the effectiveness of improvements made in the past three years to correct program deficiencies.

Nearly 30 percent of all births in the United States are to unmarried parents. In FY 1993, almost 3.5 million children in the child support enforcement program needed legal paternity established. In that year only 554,204 paternities were established, a 7 percent increase over 1992. Child support collections in 1993 reached a record $8.9 billion. GPRA activities are designed to help increase paternity establishments, awardestablishments and collection of support.

The federal/state child support program is one of about 70 federal programs designated by the Office of Management and Budget as pilots under GPRA.

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Government Performance and Results Act
Child Support State Demonstrations Descriptions

• Arizona--Automation to Improve Locate Function Arizona proposes to improve the function of locating absent parents by implementing a computerized process to obtain and/or verify Social Security numbers of noncustodial parents. Contact: Iuliana Vaughn, 602-274-7646
  
  
• Arkansas--Employment for Noncustodial Parents Arkansas proposes employment counseling as an alternative to incarceration for young, unemployed noncustodial parents unable to pay child support because of their inability to get or maintain a job. Contact: Judy Jones Jordan, 501-682-6169
  
  
• California--"Enterprise Fund" California proposes to use state investment funds as an "enterprise fund," to provide seed money to local operations for the purpose of increasing child support collections.

For all California projects, Contact: Leslie Frye, 916-654- 1556

• Sacramento County--Medical Insurance Availability Sacramento County proposes to form partnerships with private sector medical insurance providers to make medical insurance available for children when parents who are obligated to pay for medical insurance do not have access to it through their employment.
  
  
• Los Angeles County--Incentives for Paternity Establishment Los Angeles proposes to pay incentives to AFDC custodial parents for providing more accurate and timely information to the CSE agency. Extra incentives will be paid if the information results in a court order within six months after opening the case.
  
  
• San Francisco--Employment Counseling/Identifying Assets/Intake Interviews San Francisco proposes to use state investment funds to hire a training and employment specialist for the CSE office to counsel unemployed noncustodial parents.
  
  
• Colorado--Measuring Overall Program Performance Colorado proposes to improve and measure all aspects of program performance with particular emphasis on outcome measures identified in the proposed Work and Responsibility Act of 1994. Contact: Kathryn A. Stumm, 303-866-2214
  
  
• Delaware--Integrated AFDC Unit Delaware proposes to establish a separate, integrated unit co- located with AFDC, utilizing staff versed in all aspects and functions necessary to establish child support orders in AFDC cases. Contact: Barbara A. Paulin, 302-577-4863
  
  
• District of Columbia--Paternity Establishment The District of Columbia proposes to form a cooperative alliance between the CSE agency and governmental and private sector organizations to increase and expedite voluntary paternity establishment. Contact: Kenneth Hill, 202-724-5610
  
  
• Idaho--Measuring Overall Program Performance Idaho proposes to focus on and measure all aspects of CSE program performance. Contact: Teresa Kaiser, 208-334-5711
  
  
• Illinois--Employment Counseling/"One-Stop Shopping" Illinois proposes to establish a unit to address employment needs of noncustodial parents and to streamline processes, including interviewing and cooperative agreements. Contact: Norris Stephenson, 312-793-3295
  
  
• Iowa--Review and Adjustment Iowa proposes to monitor and evaluate the cost effectiveness of using a centralized operation to review and adjust the amounts of child support orders. Training and staffing will be by AFDC recipients and PROMISE JOBS participants. Contact: Jim Hennessey, 515-281-5580
  
  
• Kansas--Medical Support Kansas proposes to improve delivery of medical support services through a variety of efforts, such as outreach, training CSE staff in the legal and business principles of health insurance, and establishing better working partnerships between public and private industry. Contact: James Robertson, 913-296-5206
  
  
• Massachusetts--Redesign of CSE Business Practices Massachusetts proposes a business process reengineering project in which aspects of child support functions and customer service will be evaluated for efficiency. Improvements will be incorporated in the overall program and the automated state system. Contact: Jerry J. Fay, 617-727-4200
  
  
• Michigan--Reconfiguring Cooperative Agreements/Program Contracts Michigan proposes a new contracting process with prosecuting attorneys and Friends of the Court which will base reimbursement on results rather than on activities performed. Contact: Wallace Dutkowski, 517-373-7570
  
  
• Minnesota (Hennepin County)--Measuring Program Performance Minnesota proposes to measure program performance based on the outcomes of paternity establishment, review and adjustment of child support orders, medical support enforcement, private investigative contracts, and employment program for noncustodial parents. Contact: Barry Bloomgren, 612-348-3939
  
  
• Missouri--Paternity Establishment Outreach Missouri proposes a community-based approach in increasing paternity establishment by enlisting the assistance of other government agencies, schools, churches and community organizations. Contact: Marilynn Knipp, 314-751-4002
  
  
• Mississippi--Privatization Mississippi proposes to measure the effectiveness of contracting with a private company to provide child support enforcement services. Contact: Carolyn Bridgers, 601-359-4863
  
  
• Nebraska--Reinventing a Rural, Multi-County Office Nebraska proposes to reinvent a rural, multi-county child support office with a small staff through a series of measurable changes and improvements. Contact: Mary Ann Miller, 402-471-9390
  
  
• New York-- Full Collection, Asset Identification New York proposes to measure the impact of revisions to the current IRS full collection process, should such revisions be made, and to improve collections of arrears by access to better financial and other asset information. Contact: Joan Keenan, 518-474-9081
  
  
• New Jersey--Expansion of Provisions of Child Support Recovery Act and Paternity Establishment New Jersey proposes to share procedures and case selection criteria with other states in Region II in order to increase the number of cases suitable for submission under the 1992 Child Support Recovery Act to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The state also proposes to develop a birth facility/hospital- based model which permits electronic processing of voluntary paternity acknowledgements, notification of births, parent information and other data essential to assist in establishing paternity. Contact: Marion Reitz, 609-588-2354

• North Carolina--Designing Performance Standards North Carolina proposes to design new performance standards following the implementation of a program-wide automated system by measuring the effect of automation on productivity and service delivery. Contact: Michael Adams, 919-571-4120
  
  
• Ohio--Measuring Overall Program Performance Ohio proposes a quality control assessment project to evaluate the effectiveness of program improvements implemented within last three years and incentives on program performance. Contact: Loretta Adams, 614-752-6561
  
  
• Pennsylvania--Intensive Enforcement of Difficult Cases Pennsylvania's Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) proposes an intensive system of monitoring and enforcement of cases where the noncustodial parent is a self-employed or independent wage earner. Its "Zero Tolerance" program aims to develop procedures to ensure compliance with court orders within 40 days of entry. Contact: Max Baer, 412-355-3529
  
  
• South Carolina--Teen Pregnancy Prevention/Parental Responsibility South Carolina proposes to initiate a teen-age pregnancy prevention program that will focus on parental responsibilities for children's financial support. Contact: Larry J. McKeown, 803-737-5870
  
  
• Virginia--Welfare/Child Support Interface Virginia proposes to develop performance indicators which measure and improve both program effectiveness and public accountability for the interface between welfare and child support agencies in rural, suburban and urban areas. Contact: Michael R. Henry, 804-692-1501
  
  
• Wyoming--Program Office Restructuring Wyoming proposes to improve program efficiency and collections through a series of management, reorganization and automation changes. Contact: James R. Mohler, 307-777-7193

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