The child support program motivates responsible parenting, household self-sufficiency and child wellness by offering assis-tance in finding moms and dads, establishing paternity, developing, modifying and imposing assistance responsibilities and getting child assistance for children. The program was enacted in January 1975 as Part D of Title IV of the Social Security Act (P.L. 93-647). It runs as a robust partnership in between the federal govern-ment and state and tribal governments. It is administered by the Workplace of Child Assistance Enforcement (OCSE) and functions in all 54 states and territories and over 60 people. The program enforces and assists in consistent child assistance payments so that kids can rely on their moms and dads for the financial and emotional support they require to be healthy and successful.OCSE is part of the Administration for Kid and Households (ACF) within the Department of Health and Person Provider (HHS). ACF programs, including child support, attain positive results for children by resolving the needs and respon-sibilities of moms and dads. These programs serve a number of the same families, with interrelated objectives to improve kid and household well-being. Like other ACF programs, child assistance promotes two-generational, family-centered methods to strengthen the capability of moms and dads to support and care for their children and to minimize stress factors affecting poor and high-risk households and their communities. The child assistance program is devoted to the ACF goal of developing the proof base and drawing from that research study to guide policy and practice to constantly enhance efficiency and increase kid wellness. The child support program is a federal government success story. In-deed, FY 2015 set a brand-new record for achieving child support pro-gram outcomes. In FY 1977, shortly after the program began, the child assistance program served less than 1 million cases and col-lected less than $1 billion.1 In FY 2015, almost 40 years later, the child assistance program served almost 16 million kids and gathered $28.6 billion in cases receiving child support services. In 2003, the Workplace of Management and Spending plan acknowledged kid Office of Child Support EnforcementThe Story Behind the NumbersAdministration for Kid & FamiliesU.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesDecember 2016A Excellent InvestmentThis special Story Behind the Numbers takes a better take a look at trends in child support program data and other data that affects the program. Through much deeper understanding of the story behind the numbers, the series aims to inform policy and practice and strengthen program outcomes.
This paper reveals why the child support program is a great financial investment.
Office of Child Assistance Enforcement2The Kid Assistance Program is a Good Investmentsupport as one of the most efficient programs in federal government.2 Ever since, the program has continued to make progress and develop to satisfy the changing requirements of families, despite the difficult impacts of the current economic downturn.In some ways, the child assistance program is really various from other social welfare programs. It does not move public funds to households as the majority of social welfare programs do; it enforces the private transfer of income from parents who do not deal with their kids to the family where the kids live, therefore increasing the financial well-being of children and strengthening the ties between children and parents who live apart. Many parents who do not deal with their children wish to support them. The kid support program is there to engage and assist them. If parents hesitate to support their kids who live apart from them, the program exists to implement that responsibility.The kid support program is also different than a number of other social welfare programs in that it interacts with both parents for the advantage of their children. Almost 16 million kids, 11 million moms, and over 10 million daddies, or 38 million people, take part in the pro-gram.3 While program eligibility is not income-tested, the majority of households in the program have actually limited ways. Over half of custodial families in the child support program have incomes below 150 per-cent of the poverty threshold, while 80 percent have incomes below 300 percent of the poverty threshold.4 Approximately one quarter of noncustodial parents have earnings listed below the federal poverty line.5 The child support program has developed over its 40-year existence from a focus on keeping child support to recover welfare costs to a family-centered program. This development has been directed by federal legislation and the altering needs of families. The child support program depends upon efficient statewide automated systems and a broad variety of strong enforcement authorities to acquire assistance for households. At the same time, the program acknowledges it needs to serve the whole household to accomplish the ultimate goal of improving the financial and emotional support of children. An here efficient child support program incorporates a mix of technology-driven processes, standard enforcement responses, and individual case management to maximize results for ch