Addressing Visitation Problems in Child Support Offices: The Tennessee Experience

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 with the delivery and evaluation of programs in seven states to address access issues; the State Child Access and Visitation Grant Programs, begun in 1997, which involve annual awards of $10 million to states and territories to help support programs that further noncustodial parents’ access to and visitation with their children; and Section 1115 demonstration and evaluation grants awarded in 2004 to Colorado, Florida, Georgia, and Texas, and in 2005 to Tennessee, to explore ways of integrating access and visitation services with regular activities of the child support agency. This article describes the results of the Tennessee Parenting Project, the OCSE award to Tennessee.

Pearson, J. & Davis, L. (August 2012). Addressing Visitation Problems in Child Support Offices; The Tennessee Experience. NCSEA Communique.