Oregon Parenting Time Opportunities for Children: Evaluation of the Mediation and Oregon Parenting time Grant

Under a Parenting Time Opportunities for Children (PTOC) grant from the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), the Oregon Department of Justice engaged 20 mediators throughout the state to provide free mediation services to parents served by the child support agency. All of those served lacked a parenting time order and were interested in developing one. Domestic violence awareness and safety planning were key themes in the PTOC awards. Through the PTOC grant, mediators received training on domestic violence and the child support agency stressed that, as one brochure said, “mediation is not a safe choice for everyone.” Mediators were also encouraged to use Safety-Focused Parenting Plans as needed.

The evaluation of PTOC was conducted by the Center for Policy Research (CPR) of Denver, Colorado. The evaluation involved the generation and analysis of information from a variety of sources: data forms completed by mediators for each case in which at least one parent appeared for mediation (n=317), surveys completed by parents at the time of their initial mediation session (n=185), telephone interviews conducted with parents about their mediation experiences (n=25), and a data extract generated from the automated child support system for all cases where parents generated parenting plans either through mediation (n=118) or on their own (n=255). In addition, CPR developed, administered, and analyzed online surveys about PTOC for mediators (n=15) and child support case managers (n=191), and conducted focus groups and interviews with representatives of both groups.