Publications - Nancy Thoennes

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.

The Colorado Pathways to Success Program is a multi-phased program funded by the Children’s Bureau with the aim of developing new initiatives aimed at preventing youth homelessness among current and former foster care youth aged 14-21. This report outlines the key intervention components of the model and reviews the evaluation, lessons learned, and preliminary outcomes 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

In 2013, the Colorado Department of Human Services, Division of Child Support Services (CSS) underwent a name change from Child Support Enforcement to Child Support Services. Along with this shift in name, a shift in perspective and priorities took place. Child Support Services began a transformation in agency culture toward a family-centered approach. As part Read More

This report is part of an ongoing evaluation of the Stand Up Colorado social change initiative. Stand Up Colorado is a campaign aimed at preventing relationship violence (RV). The overall evaluation of the campaign will include both process and outcome components. This report focuses on the baseline survey that was conducted as part of the 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