**INTRO**

My research focused on the population of low-income non-custodial
parents who are too poor to fulfill their child support orders. As most
of you are well aware, changes in the mission of the child support
system over the past decade have enabled agencies to pay special
attention to these fathers and tailor enforcement to their needs. This
has been done in two main ways. The first is to address the underlying
reason for non-payment and the second has been to lower orders to
increase payments. While both strategies have shown some effectiveness,
I chose to focus my recommendations on that long-term goal of increasing
ability to pay. But before I go into those recommendations, first I
would like to provide justification for addressing this population at
all.

**WHY?**

Firstly, poor NCPs make up 1/3 of the total child support payer
population.

And they are not only a large portion, but their families are the most
in need of child support, especially as many leave welfare.

And lastly, studies have shown that those fathers who pay more are also
more likely to be involved in their child's lives.

**WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO INCREASE ABILITY TO PAY?**

On a grand scale, perhaps the greatest efforts to address the poverty of
NCPs have been the series of responsible fatherhood demonstrations run
with the support of the OCSE over the past decade. Although these
demonstrations are a step in the right direction, they failed to
significantly increase payments and therefore had little effect on child
outcomes.

I have identified two main reasons that these demonstrations failed to
produce the desired outcomes. The first is low recruitment and
retention. Across the board evaluations cite difficulty recruiting
participants and then keeping them in the program as the main barriers
to success.

The second is low post-enrollment wages. As you can see from these chart
here, participants in both Parent's Fair Share and the OCSE RFP had
post-enrollment earnings below the poverty line.

**HOW CAN WE DO IT BETTER?**

In order to better serve low-income NCPs, I propose that child support
agencies, with the OCSE's guidance, address both of these previous
handicaps.

In order to increase both the number of fathers involved and ensure that
they complete the program, participation should be mandatory and
enforced by the courts. For the most part, participation in these
programs has been voluntary and even in the Parents Fair Share
demonstration when it was mandatory, NCPs faced no consequences for
failing to show up or dropping out before completing the program. At
some sites only 5% of those summoned showed up for their hearing with
the court or administrative agency. [^1] Further, a third of those who
did show up and were mandated to participate never attended the
program.[^2]

Unfortunately, enforcing mandatory orders requires significant attention
from judges and the court system to follow up with these NCPs. Because
many judges see serious criminal cases as well as child support cases,
those of low-income NCPs are often low on the list of priorities. One
way some districts have been able to move NCP cases to the forefront is
by creating separate dockets tailored to child support cases. These are
known as "Fathering Courts." One of the longest running Fathering Courts
is in Jackson, County Missouri, where collections increased by over \$2
million dollars. Inspired by the success of this court and others like
it, Washington DC recently started a fathering court of it's own this
past spring.

While Fathering courts will help increase participation in employment
services, they will not necessarily increase earnings. This will depend
on the nature of the employment services to which NCPs are connected. In
the past, programs have largely provided job search services.
Unfortunately, the only jobs that such searches produce for most
low-income NCPS are low-paying and often temporary jobs. They are a
particularly disadvantaged population with low skill and education
levels as well as a high incidence of criminal history. In order to have
these programs be effective, they must focus on increasing the
employability and wage-earning potential of NCPs. This will require a
focus on training and education rather than job-search. I call this the
wage-growth approach to employment services.

**RECOMMENDATIONS**

In order to implement this dual model of mandatory participation orders
and wage-growth employment programs, states and local agencies, with the
support of the OCSE will have to take certain initiative.

1\. The first step would be to establish Fathering Courts. This will
require strong relationships with your local judiciaries and could be
facilitated by grant money from the OCSE. States and local agencies
should investigate this relationship-building and grant opportunities as
a first step.

2\. States and local child support agencies should also lobby for a new
and improved set of responsible fatherhood demonstrations. One of the
most direct ways this can be achieved is to support the Responsible
Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act which was introduced by senators
Bayh and Obama this past June which provides money specifically for
employment programs for low-income NCPS.

[^1]: Doolittle, F. and S. Lynn. *Working with Low-Income Cases: Lessons
    for the Child Support*

    *Enforcement System from Parents' Fair Share*. Manpower
    Demonstration Research

    Corporation, NY.(1998) cited in [OCSE Responsible Fatherhood
    Programs: Client Characteristics and Program Outcomes]{.underline}
    (September 2003) 71

[^2]: Doolittle and Lynn cited in [OCSE Responsible Fatherhood Programs:
    Client Characteristics and Program Outcomes]{.underline} (September
    2003) 72.