Enhancing Interagency Collaboration and Client Cooperation

In order to improve the chance that families receive child support benefits, welfare reform laws require recipients of public assistance to cooperate with child support enforcement agencies (IV-D agencies) in establishing paternity and pursuing child support orders. The project known as “Enhancing Interagency Collaboration and Client Cooperation” provided the  Massachusetts Department of Revenue (DOR) an opportunity to study: the amount and quality of information that custodial parents at public assistance agencies (DTA) typically provide about the noncustodial parent for child support purposes; the subsequent actions taken by the child support agency in order to establish paternity and obtain a child support order; the effectiveness of placing DOR child support staff members in DTA agencies to address communication problems between the two agencies, improve information collection about noncustodial parents from clients, and increase the rate of “pursuable” child support cases.