Publications - Core Program Services

Parenting time is typically not addressed for parents in the child support system. At the same time, parents who were not married to each other at the time of their children’s birth do not have easy access to family court services, pro se resources and/or staff support available to divorcing parents arising out of their Read More

Since 1989, federal regulations require each state to provide presumptive guidelines (formulas) for determining the amount of child support awards and to review their guidelines at least once  every four years. Most states developed and adopted their initial guidelines in the late 1980s. States developed their guidelines based on similar premises and guidelines models and relied on a limited number Read More

Colorado has an opportunity to increase the monthly incomes of Colorado Works families as well as improve their paths to self-sufficiency by changing the State’s child support pass-through and disregard policies. Families eligible for Colorado Works, which is Colorado’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, have below-poverty incomes. When a family applies for Colorado Works, any payment toward the monthly Read More

The “Family Centered Services for Unwed Parents in the IV‐D Caseload” grant (90FD0141) was awarded to the Child Support Enforcement Division of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue (DOR) on September 30, 2009. The goal of the project, which was known locally as the Parent Support Program of Hampden County (PSP), was to develop, implement, and evaluate a program Read More

This Office of Child Support Enforcement Special Improvement Project was undertaken to examine the features of effective debt compromise programs and to generate empirical information on the outcomes they produce. To identify best practices, the Center for Policy Research (CPR) convened a two-day conference in June 2009 with representatives of eight states that have experience initiating and operating Read More

President Obama’s 2013 budget proposal requiring child support agencies to establish parenting time in all new child support orders is the most recent development in a nearly 25-year exploration of parenting time issues that the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) has pursued. This has included the OCSE Access and Visitation Demonstration Projects, begun in 1988, which experimented Read More

In 2009, the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, Division of Child Support Enforcement (DOR) applied for and received a Section 1115 demonstration and evaluation grant from the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE). The application was submitted in response to an OCSE initiative aimed at improving the ability of state child support enforcement programs to proactively address the effect Read More

The Niños Sanos demonstration project, which translates to “Healthy Children,” began in September 2007 and continued through August 2011. The project was funded by a Section 1115 demonstration grant through the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE). Through a collaborative effort between the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) Texas Child Support Division and the Texas Medicaid Read More

Funded by the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), the Court Order Parent Education (COPE) Project provided parents establishing child support orders with a brief informational orientation to their court orders. The project was conducted by the Child Support Division of the Texas Office of the Attorney General (OAG) in collaboration with the Domestic Relations Office (DRO) Read More

The Center for Policy Research (CPR) in Colorado plans to help state and local jurisdictions reduce delinquencies on child support cases by recommending they use best practices for debt compromise programs. Under an OCSE grant project, representatives from 10 sites—California; Illinois; Maryland; Hennepin County, MN; Ramsey County, MN; the state of Minnesota; New Mexico; North Dakota; Vermont; and Washington D.C.—met last June in Read More