The child assistance program motivates accountable parenting, household self-sufficiency and child well-being by providing assis-tance in locating parents, developing paternity, developing, customizing and implementing assistance responsibilities and acquiring child support 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 collaboration in between the federal govern-ment and state and tribal federal governments. It is administered by the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) and functions in all 54 states and territories and over 60 people. The program implements and assists in constant child support payments so that children can depend on their moms and dads for the monetary and emotional support they require to be healthy and successful.OCSE becomes part of the Administration for Children and Households (ACF) within the Department of Health and Human Being Services (HHS). ACF programs, including kid assistance, accomplish positive outcomes for children by resolving the requirements and respon-sibilities of moms and dads. These programs serve a number of the exact same families, with interrelated objectives to enhance kid and family well-being. Like other ACF programs, kid assistance promotes two-generational, family-centered methods to enhance the ability of parents to support and look after their kids and to minimize stressors affecting poor and high-risk households and their neighborhoods. The child support program is committed to the ACF objective of developing the evidence base and drawing from that research to guide policy and practice to continually enhance performance and increase kid wellness. The kid support program is a government success story. In-deed, FY 2015 set a brand-new record for accomplishing child support pro-gram outcomes. In FY 1977, quickly 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 on, the child support program served almost 16 million kids and collected $28.6 billion in cases receiving kid assistance services. In 2003, the Office of Management and Budget acknowledged kid Office of Child Assistance EnforcementThe Story Behind the NumbersAdministration for Kid & FamiliesU.S. Department of Health and Human ServicesDecember 2016A Good InvestmentThis special Story Behind the Numbers takes a more detailed take a look at trends in kid assistance program data and other data that impacts the program. Through much deeper understanding of the story behind the numbers, the series aims to inform policy and practice and reinforce program results.
This paper shows why the kid assistance program is a great investment.
Workplace 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 evolve to meet the altering needs of families, regardless of the difficult effects of the current financial downturn.In some ways, the kid 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 private transfer of income from moms and dads who do not deal with their children to the family where the kids live, consequently 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 is there to engage and help them. If parents are unwilling to support their kids who live apart from them, the program is there to enforce that responsibility.The kid support program is likewise various than a number of other social welfare programs because it engages with both parents for the advantage of their children. Almost 16 million kids, 11 million moms, and over 10 million dads, or 38 million individuals, take part in the pro-gram.3 While program eligibility is not income-tested, many families in the program have actually limited methods. Over half of custodial households in the child assistance program have incomes below 150 per-cent of the hardship threshold, while 80 percent have earnings below 300 percent of the poverty limit.4 Approximately one quarter of noncustodial moms and dads have incomes below the federal poverty line.5 The child assistance program has evolved over its 40-year presence from a focus on maintaining child assistance to recuperate welfare expenses to a family-centered program. This evolution has actually been directed by federal legislation and the changing requirements of families. The kid support program relies on efficient statewide automated systems and a broad array of strong enforcement authorities to get support for households. At the same time, the program recognizes it needs to serve the whole family to accomplish the ultimate objective of improving the monetary and emotional support of here children. A reliable kid support program integrates a mix of technology-driven processes, basic enforcement responses, and specific case management to make the most of outcomes for ch