Child Support Report - March 1996

CSR: Your term as president lasts just a year. What's most important to you?

SB: Training, outreach/public relations, and customer service are the big issues for me this year. I've been involved with them at the state and local level in one way or another for my entire child support enforcement career. This is an opportunity to do something of national significance. Each is important. But right now the most essential -the great need- may be training. The complexity of the program, changes in law and regulation, new priorities, accountability to the public, turnover of staff - all of these intensify the need for training of state and local staff.

CSR: Do you think most child support staff see NCSEA as primarily a training organization?

SB: Perhaps not in the classic "platform" training sense. But we are heavily committed to and involved in training. This past year, in addition to our policy briefings and the annual conference, which is really just an enormous training effort - there were more than 65 workshops to choose from - we provided national training on paternity, the self-employed, UIFSA, and customer service. We also sponsored a very successful research seminar - a forum for idea exchange between child support researchers, policy-makers, and program directors.

CSR: What's planned for 1996?

SB: In February, we held our 9th annual policy briefing in Washington, DC. These briefings bring state directors together with congressional and administration officials and others to exchange views and learn more about issues that are crucial to the program. This year the topic was welfare reform. Following the briefing, we presented a two-day training conference on Establishing Paternity: The Vital Link. In August we hold our major event of the year, the annual training conference and exposition. The dates are August 25-29 in Louisville, Kentucky. So mark your calendars! Each year NCSEA's training committee surveys the states on their training priorities - to match offering to need. The results of the current survey are still being studied. Once we have completed our review, a number of regional and state training events will be scheduled.

CSR: Your survey of states' training needs could be viewed as one form of outreach.

SB: Yes and outreach can lead to training. At our national conferences, for example, we make space available for states to exhibit their publications and publicize what they're doing in outreach. It's a good way to support and encourage networking among states, a sharing of ideas, and it often results in identification of training needs and new ways to meet those needs. In Louisville, this August, we plan to put more energy into outreach to the media- video, audio, and print- to get our message out to communities in an effort to increase the awareness and understanding of child support enforcement. We need to let people know that we provide an excellent service and that we're more than bill collectors. Society must understand our role and what we're about.

CSR: Is that the idea behind the "Putting Children First!" campaign?

SB: Exactly. "Putting Children First!" is a national media campaign that was kicked off by the National Council of State Child Support Enforcement Administrators at NCSEA's 1995 conference in Kansas City. It reflects the very positive direction in which child support is moving nationally. Encouraging parents to place the support of their children above all else is a common goal supported by all the major child support enforcement organizations in the country - professional and advocacy groups. We all recognize that as important as the financial side of child support is, by itself it is not enough. In today's world, a child's opportunities may well be limited unless both parents involve themselves in nurturing and providing emotional support. Where there is commitment and caring by both parents, the children can only benefit. That is what "Putting Children First!" is all about. It's something we can all get behind.

CSR: Let's talk about NCSEA as an organization. How's its health?

SB: NCSEA is strong and getting stronger. We had one of our best years in 1995. More than 1,300 child support professionals attended our national conference in Kansas City. We expect even more at Louisville this year, where our theme will be "Putting Children in the Winners Circle." Our membership, which is at an all-time high, encompasses all aspects of the nation's child support program in both the public and private sectors. We have raised over $5,000 for the Children First" campaign selling T-shirts, coffee mugs, lapel pins, and other items. And, most importantly, I think - because an organization is really only as good as its people - we have a great group of people with tremendous energy and commitment to child support working to make NCSEA even better.

CSR:How would you describe NCSEA in a couple of words?

SB: Compassion and education. Compassion for the children and families who need our assistance; education for those who work so hard to provide that assistance.

CSR: Providing better service to customers is an important part of Vice President Gore's National Performance Review, a campaign to reinvent the Federal Government. Is NCSEA working this territory at all?

SB: Absolutely! We're very much aware of and in tune with the customer service movement. With the advent of central registries, child support enforcement is a whole new ball game. Everyone, in a sense, is our customer now. A big part of customer service, we think, is keeping in touch with our constituencies. We have, through our association, strong ties with state child support directors, family support councils and associations, and national organizations such as WICSEC and ERICSA. And, of course, we have a long-standing and mutually beneficial relationship with OCSE. We're also working hard to expand our base to include IV-A program staff, parents' and children's advocacy groups, employers, health organizations, taxpayers, and others. At Louisville, we'll be honoring some of our most important customers: caseworkers. Outstanding state caseworkers, nominated by their IV-D directors, will be recognized in a special ceremony of appreciation. Finally, while there's always room for improvement, we're very proud of the service we've provided over the years to our core customers - children and families. Everything that NCSEA does is aimed at improving their lives. We may not be able to change what is happening in our communities, but we can respond with personal dedication and commitment to the needs of those we serve. That's the spirit of NCSEA.

CSR: Thank you.

To achieve certification, a system must perform all Title IV-D requirements within legislative timeframes, be operational statewide, and encompass all political subdivisions within the state. This is no minor undertaking. The process of implementing such a system represents years of effort by child support workers and state officials, striving together to develop a system which effectively and efficiently meets the needs of clients.

Delaware's Automated Child Support Enforcement System (DACSES) has been in statewide operation since 1987. Delaware was the second state in the nation to receive a pre-Family Support Act certification, in July 1988, and has now repeated this achievement by becoming the second state to be certified as meeting the automation requirements of the Family Support Act of 1988. [Barbara Paulin, Delaware's IV-D Director, credits the system's recent Family Support Act system enhancements with a dramatic 17.7 percent increase in child support collections over the previous year.]

Georgia's Support, Tracking, Accounting and Reporting System ($TARS) is unusual in that it was completed 45 days ahead of the schedule established in 1993. $TARS automation has significantly accelerated child support payment processing: checks are now cut 5 nights a week rather than weekly, and the average turnaround on child support payments has been reduced by approximately seven days. In addition, $TARS' automated W-4 new hire interface produces a thousand matches a month, which speeds up and facilitates the wage withholding process.

Virginia's Automated Program to Enforce Child Support (APECS) is a system transfer which replaced two obsolete automated child support systems. APECS has been in statewide operation since March 1994, with remarkable improvements in program performance. The number of paternities established on behalf of nonAFDC single mothers increased 39 percent in the second quarter of 1995 when compared to the same quarter of 1994. During the same period, the number of noncustodial parents ordered to make child support payments increased 60 percent, and the number of liens placed against property owned by delinquent parents increased 132 percent.

Like Delaware, the State of Washington chose to enhance, rather than replace, its existing certified system, the Support Enforcement Management System (SEMS). SEMS, which has been operational since 1985, received a pre-Family Support Act certification in July, 1992. The system has a high level of automation and excels in automated locate and automated forms generation. Washington is widely acknowledged to be a leader with respect to the use of electronic funds transfer/electronic data interchange.

If you would like further information, call Carole Maloney at (202) 401-6495.

Carole Maloney is a Computer Specialist with the Division of Child Support Information Systems.

The CalKids program offers a comprehensive range of health care benefits with guaranteed coverage and no medical exclusions for all enrollees. Covered services range from pre-natal and well-baby care, office visits, and health screening exams, to prescription drug benefits and hospital care.

Initial insurers are Blue Shield of California and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. Sarah Krevans, Kaiser Permanente vice president and area manager said, "We are very excited about this new program. CalKids makes it easier for noncustodial parents to comply with a court order to provide health insurance because of a low rate of $72 per month per child when they join Kaiser Permanente." Dr. Robert Forster, Blue Shield's chief executive for the central region, noted that CalKids is the first program of its kind in California to make low-cost individual HMO coverage available to dependent children served through a county child support agency.

The idea for CalKids originated with Dick Williams, County IV-D Administrator and Deputy District Attorney, who said that the program was designed to provide health coverage to the 130,000 children currently being served by the County's Bureau of Family Support. He pointed out that the program not only offers continuous medical coverage for the County's "at risk" children, it also may provide substantial cost savings to the State and Federal governments by supplanting Medicaid costs.

In discussing how CalKids will work, Mr. Williams explained that the court will require employers to withhold medical insurance premiums from obligors' wages and forward those premiums to a designated Third Party Administrator (TPA). Sacramento County Family Support has contracted with West Coast Administrators to serve as CalKids TPA. The company will facilitate enrollment and ongoing coverage with the health insurance providers.

Additionally, the court will be able to order self-employed obligors to participate in providing health insurance to their children because the negotiated premium for the plan's coverage is less than $80 per month per child, thus satisfying the "reasonable cost" requirement. The self-employed obligor will be required to forward the monthly premium amount to the TPA. Group underwriting for insurance coverage has become possible because the children's eligibility for CalKids will be based solely on criteria that are unrelated to the child's health. Additionally, geographic and demographic limitations inherent in many employer-related plans become less important as a result of the CalKids statewide coverage requirement.

Sacramento County Family Support staff will monitor individual policy/case activity via a PC interface with the TPA's database. A built-in grace period of approximately 45 days will allow time for staff to follow up on missed premiums on a case-by-case basis.

Jan Scully, Sacramento County District Attorney, who called a press conference to announce the project, said, "By greatly reducing the cost of dependent health coverage for working parents, the program hopes to enroll at least 3,000 of the County's children during the first year." Already several other counties in California have expressed interest in implementing the CalKids program in their service areas, and it is expected that the project will eventually go statewide.

Andrea Pearce, Program Manager for ACF's Child Support Enforcement Branch in Region IX said, "We are very pleased to see that, after a tremendous effort on the part of the County, public and private agencies have come together to provide a means of getting adequate health care coverage for dependent children. We are anxious to watch how this program works and to see what impact it will have on parents' ability to provide health insurance coverage for their children."

To obtain more information about the CalKids program, contact Dick Williams, Administrator, Sacramento County Family Support Division, 20 Bicentennial Circle, Sacramento, CA 95826. Mr. Williams can be reached by phone at (916) 386-6476.

John Schambre is a Program Specialist at ACF's Office of Family Security in the San Francisco Regional Office.

The Administration has proposed legislation which would establish a new federal role in international child support enforcement. Pending enactment, however, the State Department, in consultation with the Office of Child Support Enforcement, has continued to facilitate bilateral agreements between states and other nations and to otherwise strengthen the international child support system.

On November 23, 1994, the Irish government passed the "Maintenance Act, 1994," which sets up an interstate child support system in Ireland similar to that established by URESA and UIFSA in the United States and authorizes the Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs to designate qualifying jurisdictions for reciprocity. Effective May 1, 1996, all U.S. states will be considered by Ireland to be reciprocating jurisdictions for the enforcement of child support obligations.

The newly established Irish Central Authority for international child support matters is headed by Mr. Michael Gleeson of the Department of Equality and Law Reform, 43-49 Mespil Road, Dublin 4, Ireland. This department employs lawyers in Ireland's twenty-six county law centers who will provide, without a means test, free services for foreign child support applicants.

For copies of the Irish Act and for further information about international child support, contact Stephen Grant: OCSE, 370 L'Enfant Promenade SW, 4th Floor, Washington, DC 20447. Stephen can be reached by telephone at (202) 260-5943.

By most measures, the increase in nonmarital childbearing has escalated since 1980, although the pace of increase has slowed since 1991. For example, the risk, as measured by the rate, increased from 29.4 per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15-44 years in 1980 to 45.2 in 1991 and 1992, a 54 percent rise. Other measures of nonmarital childbearing also rose sharply during the recent period. The number of births rose 86 percent, from 665,747 in 1980 to 1,240,172 in 1993. Because this increase occurred during a period of relatively stable fertility for all women and declining fertility among married women, the proportion of all births to unmarried women rose from 18.4 percent in 1980 to 31.0 percent in 1993.

Birth rates for unmarried women by age have risen sharply for women in all age groups, but particularly among women in age groups 20 and older. Rates are still highest for women aged 18-19 and 20-24 years. As a consequence of the steep rise in rates for older women, teenagers accounted for only 30 percent of all births to unmarried women in 1993, compared with the 40-50 percent level observed until the early 1980's. Despite this decline, unmarried mothers are still much more likely to be teenagers than are married mothers; only 5 percent of married mothers were under age 20 in 1993.

Unmarried mothers tend to be disproportionately poorly educated. Some of this disparity is linked to their generally younger age profile. Even when births to mothers aged 20 and older are examined separately, however, at least one-third of unmarried mothers were reported to have less than a high school education compared with 13 percent of married mothers. Also, among unmarried women aged 20 and over, women with less than a high school diploma are at least 3 times as likely to have a baby as unmarried women with some college.

Changes in the sexual behavior of unmarried people have contributed to the increased nonmarital birth rates. Sexual intercourse has occurred at an increasingly earlier age for both men and women, and the proportion postponing sexual initiation until marriage has declined. Despite some improvement in contraceptive practice during the 1980's, about 1 in 10 unmarried women aged 15-44 still become pregnant each year. This translates into about 2.8 million pregnancies among unmarried women. The vast majority of these pregnancies are unintended, and, in 1991, nearly half ended in abortion. Further contributing to the rise in nonmarital births is the sharp decline since the early 1960's in the proportion of unmarried pregnant women who marry before the child's birth.

Health factors available from the birth certificate also show the generally less favorable status of unmarried mothers and their babies. Unmarried mothers are less apt to receive adequate prenatal care, more likely to smoke during pregnancy, and less likely to gain adequate weight during pregnancy. As a consequence of these and other factors, babies born to unmarried women are at elevated risk of low birthweight. This elevated risk persists even when data are classified by maternal age, educational attainment, adequacy of prenatal care, smoking status, and weight gain.

If you would like further information, call Stephanie Ventura, at (301) 436-8954 X8131.

Stephanie Ventura, M.A., is a Demographer with the Natality, Marriage and Divorce Statistics Branch, National Center for Health Statistics.

"Dads Count" has been selected to compete for national honors at the August 1996 NCSEA Conference in Louisville, Kentucky.

Congratulations to the Merced Family Support Division for an exceptional achievement. If you would like further information about "Dads Count," call James Lomax, Public Outreach Coordinator for the Family Support Division, at (209) 385-7675 X 3931.