The child support program encourages responsible parenting, family self-sufficiency and child well-being by supplying assis-tance in finding moms and dads, developing paternity, developing, customizing and imposing support obligations and obtaining child assistance for kids. 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 collaboration between the federal govern-ment and state and tribal governments. It is administered by the Office of Child Assistance Enforcement (OCSE) and functions in all 54 states and areas and over 60 people. The program imposes and helps with consistent child assistance payments so that kids can rely on their parents for the financial and emotional support they need to be healthy and successful.OCSE is part of the Administration for Kid and Households (ACF) within the Department of Health and Person Solutions (HHS). ACF programs, including child assistance, attain favorable outcomes for children by attending to the needs and respon-sibilities of moms and dads. These programs serve many of the same families, with interrelated objectives to enhance kid and household wellness. Like other ACF programs, child support promotes two-generational, family-centered strategies to reinforce the capability of moms and dads to support and take care of their children and to reduce stress factors impacting poor and high-risk families and their communities. The kid assistance program is dedicated to the ACF goal of building the proof base and drawing from that research study to direct policy and practice to continuously enhance efficiency and boost child well-being. The kid assistance program is a government success story. In-deed, FY 2015 set a new record for attaining kid support pro-gram results. In FY 1977, shortly after the program started, the kid support program served less than 1 million cases and col-lected less than $1 billion.1 In FY 2015, nearly 40 years later, the child support program served nearly 16 million kids and gathered $28.6 billion in cases receiving child assistance services. In 2003, the Workplace of Management and Budget plan recognized kid Workplace of Child Support EnforcementThe Story Behind the NumbersAdministration for Kid & FamiliesU.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesDecember 2016A Great InvestmentThis special Story Behind the Numbers takes a closer take a look at patterns in child support program information and other data that affects the program. Through deeper understanding of the story behind the numbers, the series aims to inform policy and practice and strengthen program results.
This paper shows why the child assistance program is a great investment.
Office of Kid Support Enforcement2The Child Assistance Program is a Great Investmentsupport as one of the most effective programs in federal government.2 Ever since, the program has actually continued to make progress and develop to meet the altering needs of families, regardless of the difficult effects of the current financial downturn.In some ways, the child assistance program is extremely different from other social welfare programs. It does not move public funds to families as most social welfare programs do; it implements the personal transfer of income from moms and dads who do not deal with their children to the family where the kids live, thus increasing the monetary wellness of children and reinforcing the ties in between children and moms and dads who live apart. A lot of parents who do not cope with their kids want to support them. The kid assistance program exists to engage and help them. If moms and dads are unwilling to support their children who live apart from them, the program exists to enforce that responsibility.The kid assistance program is also various than a number of other social welfare programs in that it connects with both parents for the benefit of their kids. Nearly 16 million kids, 11 million mothers, and over 10 million fathers, or 38 million people, participate in the pro-gram.3 While program eligibility is not income-tested, most households in the program have restricted ways. Over half of custodial families in the kid support program have earnings below 150 per-cent of the poverty limit, while 80 percent have incomes listed below 300 percent of the poverty threshold.4 Roughly one quarter of noncustodial parents have earnings below the federal poverty level.5 The kid support program has actually developed over its 40-year presence from a concentrate on retaining kid support to recuperate welfare costs to a family-centered program. This development has been assisted by federal legislation and the changing requirements of families. The child assistance program depends upon reliable statewide automated systems and a broad range of strong enforcement authorities to get assistance for families. At the same time, the program acknowledges it must serve the whole family to attain the ultimate objective of enhancing the financial and emotional support of kids. An effective kid support program includes a mix of technology-driven processes, basic enforcement reactions, and specific case management to take full advantage of read more outcomes for ch