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Administration for Children and Families • 370 L'Enfant Promenade, S.W. • Washington, D.C. 20447

MD Delegate Hubbard Honored

FPLS Training Sessions

OCSE's 8th National

California Supreme Court Contempt Ruling

Case Registries and Their Effect on Courts

GAO Endorses Systems Certification Effort

The Impact of Child Support Following Divorce

President Signs Child Support Performance and Incentives Act

Making Your Web Site Useful

Nurturing Fatherhood

Slovak Republic Declared Reciprocating Country

"In the most outrageous cases, tough new law enforcement measures are needed."
.......OCSE Commissioner David Gray Ross

• Traveling across state or country lines with the intent to evade child support payments will now be considered a felony if the obligation has remained unpaid for a period longer than one year or is greater than $5,000; and

• When the obligation has remained unpaid for a period of longer than two years or is greater than $10,000, willful failure to pay child support to a child residing in another state will be considered a felony.

"In the most outrageous cases, such as these," OCSE Commissioner David Gray Ross said in reaction to the new legislation, "tough new law enforcement measures are needed."

The President noted in his remarks that the failure of fathers to meet their responsibilities to their children is one of the reasons single mothers go on welfare. Even in those cases where a family manages to stay out of poverty, a father's failure to pay child support can bring significant pressures to bear on mothers who are raising children by themselves. "When fathers neglect support of their children," the President said, "it aggravates all the other problems a family faces."

In welcoming OCSE Commissioner David Gray Ross to the signing, the President reviewed the gains made by child support over the past several years.

In 1997, the child support enforcement program collected a record $13.4 billion, an increase of 68 percent over 1992, when $8 billion was collected. Almost a million and a half more children are getting child support today than in 1992. And in 1997, paternity was established in 1.3 million cases, a figure two and one-half times greater than 1992's 510,000.

Also, since October 1, 1997, the beginning of OCSE's National Directory of New Hires, more than 1 million noncustodial parents who were delinquent in their child support payments have been located.

In 1997, the child support enforcement program collected a record $13.4 billion for children and families.

"Delegate Hubbard, "the Commissioner said in presenting the award, "has consistently been at the forefront of efforts to make Maryland's child support enforcement program a model of excellence on behalf of the State's children and families."

Attendance at each session is limited to 25 state and regional staff who have training responsibilities. Only one person from each state and regional office may attend a session. The state participants' hotel expenses will be paid by OCSE.

The goals are: to provide participants with information about the expanded FPLS and the child support requirements of welfare reform and how each affects state CSE case workers; to provide participant trainers with case studies and other information to help them train case workers; and to encourage state-level discussion of the anticipated uses of increased information as a result of FPLS.

Topics include: how FPLS is changing the way we do business; FPLS matching; access to FPLS; family violence and FPLS; CSENet and FPLS; child support requirements of welfare reform; automation; state new hire directories; the National Directory of New Hires; data transmission; the Federal Case Registry; state case registries; handling of IV-D and nonIV-D cases; SSN verification; and security and privacy. For more information call Leisa Coles at (301) 495-0400 X 265.

With the theme: "Meeting the Child Support Challenge-Children First," this conference promises to be the best yet. The agenda is designed for both state and federal child support professionals and will emphasize welfare reform changes, cross-program collaboration, training technology, and customer service.

In a very important decision, the California Supreme Court ruled that a noncustodial parent may be held in contempt when he or she fails to seek work to earn money to meet a support obligation.

The opinion, Moss v. Superior Court of Riverside County (1998) 17Cal.4th 396, arose out of a contempt citation for nonpayment brought against the father. Supervising Deputy District Attorney James P. Fullmer and Deputy District Attorney Glen O. Brandel petitioned for review after the Court of Appeal held that it was bound by an 1897 California Supreme Court decision (involving alimony) which held that a court could not compel a man to work to meet that obligation.

In its opinion, the Court examined what it assumed was the basis for the 1897 opinion: that to compel an obligor to work violated either the prohibition against involuntary servitude, found in the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, or the prohibition against imprisonment for debt, found in the California Constitution.

The opinion noted that the United States Supreme Court has found Thirteenth Amendment violations where the employment condition is equivalent to peonage, under which a person is bound to the service of a particular employer.

A support order, it noted, "does not bind the parent to any particular employer or form of employment. . ." The support obligation, being in no way comparable to peonage or slavery, "is among the most fundamental obligations recognized by modern society."

The prohibition against imprisonment for debt is found in Article I, Section 10 of the California Constitution. In a 1948 case, the Court found that the provision had been adopted to protect the poor but honest debtor and held that an employer who willfully fails to pay wages to his employees could be prosecuted for that crime.

The Court in the Moss opinion held that family support obligations are not ordinary debts. Even if they were, failure to pay the debt is entitled to an exception to the prohibition against imprisonment. Family Code section 4505 provides that an obligor parent alleging unemployment as a reason for nonpayment of child support may be ordered to seek work.

The Court found that this section expressed the clear intent of the legislature that nonpaying parents could be compelled to seek employment when necessary to meet the obligation.

Code of Civil Procedure section 1209.5 states that proof of a child support order being made, filed, and served (or proof that the obligor was present in court at the time it was pronounced) and proof of noncompliance create a prima facie case of contempt. As noted by the Court of Appeal in In re Feiock (1989) 215 Cal.App.3d.141, inability to pay is an affirmative defense to the charge.

The Court held that California Family Code section 4505 provides that an obligor parent alleging unemployment as a reason for nonpayment of child support may be ordered to seek work.

Each state CSE agency must establish a State Case Registry (SCR) from which required data elements will be taken and transmitted to the FCR on a routine basis. Both the SCR and the FCR will contain information on persons receiving services from a state CSE agency. In addition, information on private (nonIV-D) orders entered or modified by a court or administrative agency on or after October 1, 1998, will become part of the FCR. State case registry access to nonIV-D orders may be established by linking local case registries of support orders to the SCR through an automated information network.

Information on all child support orders must be placed on the FCR and SCR registries, regardless of the context in which they are entered, including divorce actions and orders for protection from abuse.

Also beginning October 1, 1998, requirements for state centralized collections and payments will go into effect. These will call for joint efforts between the court systems, where much of the required nonIV-D data is, and the state CSE agencies that must submit the data to the FCR and implement new payment procedures. Court staff can play an important role by helping to design and implement an automated interface to transmit information from court records to their state's CSE system.

Developing an interface between state automated systems and the FCR begins with close coordination between the state CSE agency and the court system. Most agencies have already begun working with their local courts to identify how data will be transmitted to their system. To assist state officials in devising methods to collect and transmit data appropriately, FCR record layouts and privacy/security provisions have been made available to all state CSE agencies. Required FCR data elements include a case identification number and the name, date of birth, and Social Security number (SSN) of both the custodial and noncustodial parent. After October 1, 1999, each child's name, date of birth, and SSN will also be required.

Once the state mechanisms are in place, data will be transmitted by the CSE agencies to OCSE through a national communication network using CONNECT:Direct. A CONNECT:Direct link has been established between each state and the FCR. To guard against security breaches, data will be transmitted over secure and dedicated lines. In addition, all names and SSNs provided by the states will be verified by SSA prior to being placed on the FCR.

The success of the FCR depends on a strong partnership between the judicial and child support enforcement communities. To further this, OCSE Commissioner David Gray Ross has established a judicial work group comprised of State Chief Justices, trial court judges, and court administrators to facilitate interface between the courts and the CSE program. Additionally, OCSE's National Training Center is working with the National Center for State Courts on an invitational judicial symposium, to be held in Denver, September 17-19, 1998.

For more information about federal or state case registries, contact Philip Browning at (202) 401-5530; for information on judicial and court relations, contact Larry R. Holtz at (202) 401-5376.

• guidance for certification reviews complies with Family Support Act provisions and implementing regulations;

• OCSE is consistent in the way it administers certification reviews;

• OCSE analysts have used a consistent method for conducting reviews and for reviewing draft certification reports; and

• an increased workload (the number of reviews conducted in the first six months of 1998 equalled the number for all of 1997) did not affect the staffing or quality of the certification reviews.

For a free copy of the complete report, call the GAO at (202) 512-6000.

Research has found strikingly different economic impacts of divorce for men than for women and children. After divorce, women and children generally experience large drops in their standard of living, while men often experience gains. The economic hardship experienced by divorced women and their children, has prompted policy-makers to focus on child support as one way to help these families.

After divorce, mothers and their children would be substantially worse off without child support.

Immediately before separation, average monthly income for these families is $3,659. Monthly incomes fall for fathers and for mothers after separation, but the drop for mothers is much more precipitous: $2,387 for fathers, compared to $1,557 for mothers. Because mothers are more likely than fathers to assume physical custody of children, gender differences in needs adjusted income are even greater than diffferences in total income. After adjusting for household size, fathers on average are better off financially after separation than before, while mothers experience much worse income-to-poverty ratios.

Mothers also have much higher poverty rates than fathers after separation. Before separation, the family poverty rate is 11 percent. For fathers, this remains largely unchanged after separation. Among mothers, on the other hand, the poverty rate increases to 38 percent immediately after separation and remains above 30 percent over the following 18 months.

Benefits of Child Support

Although mothers and their children bear the brunt of the economic hardships of divorce, they would be substantially worse off without child support. Among the 57 percent of mothers who received any support 7 to 9 months after separation, the average amount was $439 per month--27 percent of their total income. While payment of child support had an important impact on the economic well-being of mothers and children, it did not cause substantial hardship among nonresident fathers. As a result of child support payments, the poverty rate among resident mother families fell from 39 percent to 27 percent--a drop of more than 30 percent. Yet, this resulted in an increase in the poverty rate of nonresident fathers of just three points: from 9 to 12 percent.

Overall, this paper finds that, despite changes in the employment of women and in child support policies, mothers continue to fare substantially worse than fathers following separation. However, the differences between mothers' and fathers' well-being following divorce would be much greater in the absence of child support. For further information call Judi Bartfeld at (608) 262-4765.

Web sites abound and meet a variety of needs. They provide an efficient vehicle to present a consistent message about services and programs. Web publication saves printing costs, and referring students and other callers to the web site can reduce staff time answering common program questions. But the key question remains: how useful does your audience find the information provided?

"Web useability"-lingo used to define what makes a web page useful-provides some common answers for content development on the web. Of primary importance, content needs to be relevant, timely, and credible. Graphics can assist in providing information or in navigating the site. Testing your web pages on your audience can provide feedback for improvement.

The key question:

How useful does your audience find the information provided?

To be useful to an Internet audience, a web site must deliver entertainment or knowledge or improve the way its audience accomplishes some important task. The members of your audience need to quickly get where they want to go, find what they're looking for, and do what they want to do.

Using common news-oriented writing skills can enhance content developed for the web. Answer the key questions first and write concisely. Identify key items by:

• Highlighting words;

• Using meaningful sub-headings;

• Bulleting lists; and

• Dating materials and providing links to other web pages that may be of interest to your audience.

Often the materials made available on web sites by government agencies cannot be rewritten for a web audience. Policy or audit procedure documents, for example, are written to educate an audience about an activity. These documents follow different writing styles, but stylistic aids can still be employed within them to help the audience find key items.

Graphics

A picture is worth a thousand words but only if used wisely. Graphics can provide valuable information about the material in quickly accessible ways and can help the members of your audience find where they want to go. Poor use of images, however, can be a hindrance. Web pages that dazzle the viewer can be distracting and can hide important information. Also, over-reliance on images may turn an audience away because each image included in a page will increase the time it takes to load. In designing your web site:

• Only use graphics critical to content;

• Limit images used solely for visual appeal;

• Keep the total size of all images on a page to less than 30K;

• Use graphic bullets purposefully; and

• Supply alternate text for graphic navigation buttons.

Feedback

Useability testing, a process for getting feedback from your audience on your web materials, provides input on web page design and content. A variety of methods, varying from simple to complex, are available to test the usefulness of materials.

Given the opportunity, your audience will provide feedback about the materials presented. If audience members cannot find the information they want, they will tell you. A feedback mechanism in web materials can be as simple as an e-mail address.

The host computer for your web pages can provide a log of audience activity. Web log analysis through commercial off-the-shelf products yields information about the members of your audience and the information they want. The analysis can identify which pages are accessed most or least frequently, track the number of pages your audience views before leaving the site, and identify the type of Internet accounts your audience is using.

Other methods of testing include observing a representative group of volunteers navigating through the materials, conducting a treasure hunt of your materials with a representative group, and surveying your customers. If you would like more information about web sites, contact Margreta Silverstone at (202) 401-4596.

Concern about child well-being has pushed the study of fathers beyond research on nonmarital childbearing, child support, and child poverty to the investigation of father involvement (quality and quantity) and its effect on children and families. This growing body of research has called into question a popular assumption that the primary contribution fathers make to their children's lives is financial support.

"I believe that all children can benefit from the involved presence of a father in their lives."
....................Vice President Al Gore

The Forum's review indicated that fathers are absent from the lives of many children and that both father absence and father presence affect child and family development in multiple ways.

Some fathers spend considerable time with their children, of course, but many men do not live with their children and/or are not highly involved in their children's lives. Divorce and nonmarital childbearing have reduced the amount of time that many fathers spend with their children over the course of childhood, and nearly half of nonresident fathers do not see their children during the course of a year.

The review found that marriage confers important health and economic benefits to parents and to the children the married couples raise. But in many instances marriage is delayed or foregone. This is particularly true in disadvantaged populations, where economic constraints and changing values and norms have increasingly distanced marriage as a viable option.

The Forum's review also found that the absence of their biological father from the home has adverse consequences for children's school achievement, labor force attachment, early childbearing, and risk-taking behaviors. Family structure makes a difference, even when income is taken into account. While most children raised by Dad alone or Mom alone make a successful transition from childhood into adulthood, having both parents is better than having one parent.

Research that separates father involvement from mother involvement indicates that fathers have an independent effect on child well-being. For example, the father's parenting style, level of closeness, monitoring, and other family processes affect the child's development.

The positive effects of father involvement have been a fairly consistent finding in studies of two-parent families. Now there is a growing body of research showing that financial support and the positive involvement of a father, including cooperation between parents, increase positive outcomes for children who do not live with both of their parents.

Copies of "Nurturing Fatherhood" can be purchased for $19.95 from Child Trends, Inc., 4301 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20008. The executive summary of the report is available at www.childtrends.org.

The full text of the report is available at: http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/fathers/fhoodini/html.

The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Health and Human Services have declared the Slovak Republic to be a foreign reciprocating country for support enforcement for children and custodial parents in cases which involve the two nations.

Services must include the establishment of paternity and support orders for children and custodial parents, enforcement of support orders, and collection and distribution of support payments under such orders. Requests for services may be sent to the Center for International Legal Protection of Children and Youth, Spitalska 6, P.O. Box 57, 814 99 Bratislava, Slovak Republic.

For further information about the Slovak Republic reciprocity declaration or other international child support matters, contact Stephen Grant, OCSE's International Child Support Officer, at (202) 260-5943.