Publications - Jessica Pearson

What child support agencies share in common with child welfare agencies is children. Not simply children in the abstract, but often the very same children from the very same families — very often, poor families. When child support and child welfare operate entirely independently, the end result can be poorer outcomes for families. Vital information known to one agency may be missing at another. Absent parents who might be a resource for a child may not be located. Parents with children in foster care may receive child support in error and face the prospect of making repayments. Or, child support may never be established even though it would help the family to reunify and be self-sufficient.

Many fathers who participate in fatherhood programs do not live with all of their children. They often seek help from fatherhood programs to navigate the child support system, determine how they can spend more time with their children, or improve their coparenting relationships. Unfortunately, it can be quite complicated for programs to provide this assistance, Read More

Coparenting between mothers and nonresident fathers is a consistent predictor of positive father involvement and is shown to have a direct positive impact on children’s behavioral outcomes. While many fatherhood programs attempt to improve coparenting relationships using father-only interventions, the information on their effectiveness is mixed. Couple interventions may be more effective than father-only approaches 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 Read More

On June 15-16, 2009, staff of the Center for Policy Research facilitated a meeting in Washington, D.C. to discuss concrete issues that states and local child support agencies must address in the design and implementation of debt compromise programs. The meeting involved representatives of debt compromise programs in the following state and local jurisdictions: California Read More

The Fatherhood Research and Practice Network (FRPN) examined state approaches to supporting fatherhood programs and including fathers in state agencies, departments, programs, and policies that affect children and families. The goal of the investigation is to stimulate replication of effective approaches in state settings. Our review covered four large-scale federal grant or demonstration programs dealing Read More

The purpose of an outcome evaluation is fairly straightforward. Conducting a rigorous outcome evaluation is not easy. Understanding the need for it is: Your funders, colleagues, and staff want to know if your program produced the intended results. It can be less obvious what a process evaluation will tell you or why it will be useful, but Read More

Oregon’s Interactive Parenting Plan (IPP) is the first comprehensive, interactive tool created to generate customized parenting plans. It is the result of a joint effort of many stakeholders, including representatives of the court, the child support program, the private bar, mediators, community organizations serving families with safety issues, and experts in the field of child Read More