Child Support and Child Welfare – Enhancing Agency Collaboration and Case Processing

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.

Every community faces some of the same problems in handling multiple-agency families, although, of course, every community faces unique challenges and opportunities as well. As part of the demonstration project “Child Support and Child Welfare: Enhancing Agency Collaboration and Case Processing,” the Center for Policy Research (CPR) brought together representatives of child support and child welfare agencies in selected, interested jurisdictions from eight states to work together to identify areas of mutual concern, ways to improve case processing and management, and generally to enhance interagency communication and
understanding.