Publications - Program Innovations

In October 2009, the Tennessee Department of Human Services (DHS) was awarded a grant from the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) to develop, implement, and evaluate a program providing employment, parenting time, and case management services to low‐income, unwed parents in the child support program in three Tennessee judicial districts: the 11th (Chattanooga), 20th (Nashville), and 26th Read More

First and foremost, this article does not —and cannot— provide a clear direction for medical child support under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (only Congress and rule makers can). What this article does is describe how states currently address medical support in their child support guidelines and how these provisions compare to ACA provisions. In 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

Child Support Program and Parenting Time Orders: Research, Practice, and Partnership Project OCSE has funded some demonstration and evaluation projects and grants in the area of parenting, and some states use funding available through the State Access and Visitation (AV) Program to support parenting time services for unmarried parents in the child support program. However, Read More

The Tennessee Department of Human Services, Child Support Division (CSD) was one of seven states to receive a grant from the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) in 2009 to conduct a project in support of the Prisoner Reentry Initiative (PRI), a collaborative effort by federal agencies to reduce recidivism by helping returning offenders find work and access other  critical 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

The Colorado Compromise and Cooperation Project, which operated in Denver and Larimer counties, was designed to develop, implement, and test procedures to promote payment of current support and/or arrears among noncustodial parents (NCPs) who owe back-due child support, reduce child support arrears balances, and close cases, where appropriate. Each county targeted NCPs with arrears who had been formerly incarcerated or 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