The previous chapter described elements specific to each of the five State projects. In this chapter we examine issues that were common across programs and across States. This chapter will address factors that appear to have facilitated the smooth operation of these demonstration projects. It will also describe issues that continue to challenge States. In either case, this is a discussion of what the staff and parents involved in this demonstration project have conveyed to us.
This implementation evaluation began with the understanding that the culture and work environment in child support enforcement is quite different from that of early childhood professionals. For example, the culture and environment of child support enforcement have long been based on a single mission: establishing paternity and collecting financial and medical support. This narrow focus on financial support is changing with the implementation of a new incentive structure that will reward States for actions other than collections. However, it will still be difficult for child support staff to address family needs more broadly due to large caseloads.
| With only one exception, financial support was spoken of as a male responsibility. It will be interesting to see if this changes as the result of TANF. |
In contrast, providers of care for young children often develop a more holistic perspective, one that considers young children’s development as something occurring within the complex interplay of family, community, and culture. As a result, Head Start and child care providers are as likely to think about a child’s health or a parent’s job as they are to think about the specifics of a classroom activity.
Is it possible for staff from such disparate organizations to come closer together? The answer at this stage is a qualified yes; some people are learning how to make it work.
| "Early on last year, Head Start did not want to have their name on anything that said child support. That has changed dramatically." This is a quote from a project coordinator. |
We found that most child care and Head Start staff went about this process in similar ways. They re-framed child support issues to fit within their existing world view. First, child support is important, they say, because children need certain tangible supports — such as food and medical care — in order to develop. (It is possible that the early childhood professionals’ focus on basic financial support was influenced by the fact that almost all of the parents in the programs we reviewed are low income.)
Second, early childhood professionals know that fathers are important to children for reasons other than money. Fathers can support children emotionally and psychologically as well as financially. It comes as no surprise that child care providers found fatherhood initiative activities the easiest to fit into their programs’ missions
Many early childhood professionals appear to be comfortable with their understanding of fatherhood initiatives, which involve the need for fathers and other male figures to be more engaged in children’s lives. Some early childhood professionals also seem to be comfortable with the assumption that they should be the ones responsible for making this happen. After all, said one woman, "that is what we do. We are in the business of mending families." When a second early childhood professional said something similar, we asked if she thought this should be part of her job. "Who better than us? As child care educators we deal with the children day to day. We see children rebelling when dad is not there." This process of bringing families together begins in a variety of ways.
| It is unfortunate that many States have just recently begun in-depth implementation of their fatherhood initiatives. Since the importance of getting dads involved is one topic upon which child support, Head Start, and child care agree, it seems likely that this part of the project will provide interesting results. |
Some early childhood professionals discuss traditional ways of bringing fathers into child care centers: fishing trips and fix-it days at the center. Others bring fathers in — and bring families together — by helping dads understand how important they are to their children.
One early childhood professional spoke of a preschooler who was exhibiting serious behavior problems in the classroom. No matter what classroom staff did, they could not get the child to stop hitting and kicking the other children. They understood that he was angry, and as time went on, began to suspect that part of his anger arose from the fact that his father was no longer in his life. The child care staff went to the father and told him to come visit his son because his son needed him. The father visited the classroom once and then he visited again. Each time the father was in the classroom, the teacher told us, the child’s face just lit up. They pointed out to the father the power that he had over his son. They began to give the father regular reports, explaining that his presence in his child’s life was changing the boy’s behavior and how that change was allowing the boy to have friends. "He needs you," we said. "After that, we started talking about shoes and clothing."
| Early childhood providers are clearly more comfortable with the non-financial parts of this effort, such as the fatherhood initiatives. States considering similar projects may wish to begin with non-financial activities. |
Only then, did the staff begin to speak of the need for child support. "So we’re bringing the family together, and once you bring the family together you will get the finances."
Discussing child support as one method of financial support was for some neither automatic nor easy. In one State, we conducted a joint interview with two early childhood professionals. One woman made her reluctance clear when she told us that even though she now talks child support, she uses different terms. "I still can’t bring myself to say the words."
We asked her colleague why she was able to be an advocate for child support. What made the difference for her? She told us a story: When this collaboration first began, she was unhappy about having to work as an "enforcer." But despite her feelings, she kept going to training sessions. After all, she had to, it was part of her job. During those sessions she got a lot of written information about child support. As she read it, she began to think about her sister who lived in another State and about the difficulty her sister was having raising her children alone. Just feeding and clothing her children was a struggle. The early childhood professional with whom we spoke sent money to her sister on a regular basis. One day, after a meeting attended by the other early childhood providers who are also members of her State’s demonstration project, this early childhood professional sent her sister the written material on child support she had just received, and her sister applied. "I want you to know she is getting a healthy child support check as a result."
| Making a paradigm shift, changing your view of the world, is a personal matter. Each of us needs to come to it in our own way. |
In our site visits we found that early childhood professionals regularly used stories or personal narratives to respond to us when we asked them if working with child support enforcement was easy or difficult for them. With a few exceptions, they have come to feel more positive about their connection with child support. How they came to that position is a personal matter.
The use of personal narrative to describe behavior and attitude changes was not unique to early childhood professionals. Child support staff also used them. One child support worker tells her story this way: A very angry noncustodial parent came into her office, complaining about his support obligations going up due to an increase in his income. He mentioned that he was also having trouble finding child care close to his home for the times when the child was under his care. The worker asked him a few questions about his child care needs, gave him some information about the child care resource and referral that is part of the collaboration in her region, and watched the man’s attitude change to disbelief and then to gratitude.
Almost every early childhood professional with whom we spoke was able to describe the ways in which she changed her perspective about child support as the result of working with this demonstration project. Child support workers also changed their views about Head Start and child care programs, but it is not clear how extensive this change has been among all child support personnel.
A State child support staff person described it this way, "We were billed as a separate organization and we took great pride in being on our own. I think that has influenced a lot of how we worked. If we saw anybody as our partners, it was the courts and the attorney. We were always the step child. We were always looked at as kind of the hard core group. This isn’t unusual. Child support officers still have this perception."
Sites in the five States serve a richly diverse group of families. Sometimes it is culture that makes a group of families unique.
Staff members from all three partner agencies spoke of the need to individualize their work. Others described it as the need to "focus and tailor effort to the people you want to serve." Still others talked of diversification. Whatever it was called, most of the staff we spoke to at local sites spoke of the need for adaptation to local context.
For example, bilingual, bicultural staff at one site serve a primarily Latino population. Getting dads involved with children in this population is tough staff say because within Latino culture parenting may be viewed as a woman’s job. "We can be the same as some of the other cultures, but it’s just the way that you talk to men, the way you set up your meetings. Even the food that you bring to your meetings has a lot to do with that. Things like that." Staff at this site are able to be quite specific about what they need to do to work effectively with this group of families. Still, they need to know more. Is there research specific to this population, they ask.
| Culture, the age of parents, and blended families are examples of the diversity that must be taken into account. |
Early childhood professionals who work with Native American families must consider other issues. In Alaska, because subsistence is a concept that is central to Tlingit-Haida culture, there are conflicts between the families and the government as to what constitutes support. For a Tlingit, providing fish to the mother and children is providing support, and it is consistent with their culture. It is not consistent with their culture for the government to get involved at this level of support.
Sometimes groups are unique because of the age of their members. This is the case with teen parents. Early childhood professionals in a number of locations have cited the need to cover very basic parenting skills with young parents before moving on to issues of support. Still other early childhood staff spoke of the challenges of working with blended families and step-families. These early childhood professionals worry that, in cases where fathers have children by several mothers, children in one family or the other are not supported.
If developing a fit between the program and the families is essential, it is not always easy to achieve. "The cultural differences in our sites — I would not say that in itself has been a problem. But I don’t think anyone took into consideration how much extra time would need to go into different kinds of planning and figuring out how to reach out to different kinds of communities."
Almost without exception, this collaboration works most effectively in Head Start. In fact, the fit is so close that one project coordinator says it is almost as if it was tailored with Head Start in mind.
For example, we found that in Head Start programs it is common for much of the responsibility for this collaboration to fall to the family service worker, a person whose primary responsibility is working with families. FSW caseloads are small enough to permit fairly intense work with families. Part of the work of these FSWs or their equivalent is the development and monitoring of a family service plan for each family. Integrating questions on child support into this process has proved relatively easy.
| It is important to note that small work loads are not common for the partner agencies in this collaboration. For example, in one State, the Head Start family service worker has a case load of 34 families while the child support enforcement worker has a case load of 1000. The child care program did not have a position equivalent to either Head Start's FSW or child support's case worker. |
This collaboration suits Head Start in other ways as well. When we talked to telephone counselors at a child care resource and referral site, they spoke of their discomfort at having to ask personal questions about finance. This same discomfort, a fear of being intrusive, was raised by child care staff in many sites across the States involved in the project. We asked a Head Start FSW how she made peace with this issue. "I don’t worry about it. Part of my job is to be personal, you might say intrusive. I know my families well, and so over time, they become comfortable talking with me about a lot of personal things."
A supervisor of FSWs noted that initially her staff was reluctant to ask questions about child support. How did she handle it? She spent a lot of time listening to their concerns but convinced them to at least try visiting the families and raising the child support issues. She was there to talk to them when they returned to the center afterwards. Since the supervisor also carries a caseload of families, the FSWs are more inclined to value her perspective. Now questions about child support are a regular part of FSWs’ work with families.
| At the beginning of our study we thought of child support, child care, and Head Start as three separate and very individual entities. We came to regard child care and Head Start as having much more in common. This is not surprising, of course, since they both work in the field of early childhood. Still, it is important to acknowledge the contribution of different staffing patterns. |
The third partner, child care, generally has no designated staff who can readily focus on these kinds of new responsibilities. Instead, collaborative activities must be added to existing functions. For example, site directors speak of teachers who talk to parents when they drop off their children or of including child support topics into regularly scheduled events and parent meetings.
In Minnesota, staff at the child care resource and referral offices have devised their own approach to integrating child support issues into their existing jobs. They "take their cue" from the parents themselves, raising child support as an issue when parents mention that they have financial problems.
Early childhood staff are not unwilling to make this collaboration work. In fact, one project coordinator says that the biggest shift she has seen is in the attitude of child care center staff. Data gathered on site visits would seem to support her statement. However, without additional funding for personnel it is difficult to see how this collaboration could be equally effective in child care settings. Nevertheless, finding a solution is critical if more moderate-income families are to be included in this effort.
| Minnesota child support staff appear to have listened well to advice their partners have given them. When their partners told them that child support is the agency most in need of change, they concurred. They are now in the process of thinking about how to change. |
Most change has been uni-directional: components of child support have become integrated into the work of both child care and Head Start staff. The reverse has not always been true; in many cases child support personnel continue to perform their usual tasks without integrating components from the other agencies. One exception is Minnesota. There, through cross training, child support staff have learned about child care and Head Start. As a result, child support staff have been able to provide information and/or referrals when they have contact with parents who need assistance.
It must also be noted that while these five State projects have demonstrated that components of child care and Head Start can be integrated into child support operations, child support faces constraints similar to those faced by child care. There are relatively few child support staff members whose ongoing job responsibilities match the tasks of these projects. This constraint makes the placement of collaboration duties difficult within most child support organizations and calls for creative solutions by these organizations.
In general, we found both Head Start and child care staff comfortable with and adept at working within a wide variety of collaborative relationships. (As already stated, Head Start has the personnel to put this interest and skill into practice.) This was not consistently true for child support enforcement personnel.
We found some child support staff to be very competent at developing relationships in concert with staff from other agencies. We asked those staff members to tell us what made them so comfortable with this part of their work. One child support enforcement staff member at a local office had this to say: "Our director has always been interested in these kinds of relationships. As a result, by the time TANF and this grant came along, this DSS office already had many partnership agreements in place for the betterment of the citizens of this county." Their director had provided them with some good modeling and TANF and other Federal mandates had provided them with some experience.
For the most part, however, child support staff are new to this world of collaboration, and the learning curve has been steep. Many child support organizations in the demonstrations had to learn as they went along. They learned from their own mistakes, from their successes, and from the experience of their partners. This was particularly true during the early days of these projects.
Concern about conflicting messages was expressed across States. For example, we heard much talk about the kinder, softer side of child support enforcement. Child support posters portray fathers with young children holding onto their knees or of fathers and children holding hands and smiling at each other. In general, staff in the partner agencies thought these more positive messages were good. "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
| These illustrations of apparently conflicting messages can be viewed as opportunities for dialogue among the partner agencies to reach accurate understandings that can then be communicated to parents. |
Unfortunately, at the same time that these posters are being disseminated, "deadbeat dad sweeps," where fathers with high delinquencies were rounded up by law enforcement authorities, were taking place. A project coordinator spoke of the dilemma in this way: "It’s proved to be a problem because we are fighting tooth and nail to gain the trust of families and day care centers. You know I personally go out and do the training in our sites with the parents and I say we are not looking to put people in jail, it is about children. But the next day, when there is a sweep, it is hard to keep your trust." Project coordinators from the other States concur.
| The perception that child support messages conflict with messages from TANF is most apparent in child centers that serve low-income populations. |
Another cross-State concern about conflicting messages was the perception of a discrepancy between the message being portrayed by child support enforcement and the message currently being sent by TANF. Some providers described the message sent by TANF as one built upon self-reliance and independence from government subsidy. Child support, on the other hand, is seen by some as a movement back toward government care and stewardship.
Some concerns appear to be more State or site specific. One project coordinator, for example, spoke of a judge who suggests that after dads pay off child support arrears, moms should consider terminating the dad’s parental rights. "This does not seem to fit in with the culture of what’s in the best interest of the child."
Several States spent almost the entire first year of this three-year project training staff. In these States we heard staff commonly use personal narratives to describe what we came to regard as moments of personal change. Through these personal narratives they were able to describe one moment in time, one experience through which they began to see child support in a less than negative light.
| Training and information exchange is the starting point for changing attitudes and cultures. |
Staff training and information exchange were mechanisms used to begin modifying or changing a culture and longstanding attitudes that have been institutionalized. While the demonstrations have shown that some attitudes of current staff may change rather quickly, this shift is just the beginning of a longer process.
Project coordinators in these States spoke almost apologetically of the time spent preparing staff. It gave them, they said, a slow start. Will it also give them a stronger finish?
It appears that those States that spent the most time training their staff and working with staff from other agencies have seen the greatest change in staff attitudes about child support. Simply providing training on the mechanics of making referrals or completing forms does not appear to achieve the same depth of understanding or investment in the collaboration among partners. Finally, staff from all partner agencies must take part in this training and reflection in order to begin the process of cultural change.
| One early childhood professional described it this way: "First, you need to make sure this is what you want to do and be prepared for what is going to follow. Some of the parents will have many questions. Prepare yourself. Make sure staff is OK with it, don't just start right away. Don't start out by saying it's about child support, start out by looking at the family. Then look at your population and see if it would benefit them. If you decide to do it, be very careful with your approach. |
"If you could go back in time, what would you change about your approach to this project?" we asked some of the people we interviewed. Most of the individuals with whom we spoke indicated that they would change two aspects of their planning process.
A common refrain from project coordinators was the fact that they miscalculated the amount of time and resources they would need to devote to the demonstration. They cited several reasons for these under-estimations.
First, while they knew that developing and establishing relationships would take time at the beginning, they did not realize how much time it would take to nurture these relationships on a continual basis.
Second, staff turnover and change plagued most of the agencies. Among the most substantive changes were those of project coordinators, evaluators, sites, and site directors.
Third, it appears that many of the partners assumed it would be possible to develop one model for multiple sites. Fortunately, when this one-size-fits-all approach did not work, States slowed down and changed direction.
Opinions on precisely how to achieve buy-in from potential partner agencies were, in general, different for child support staff than they were for the early childhood providers.
Some child support staff advocated a "top-down" approach, identifying State-level staff as primary collaborators, then seeking their assistance to bring in the staff they administer or manage. Non-child-support staff felt the collaboration should start at the local level first and focus on developing community-based relationships.
Perhaps this advice typifies the fundamental differences between the child support and early childhood communities. Child support has historically worked within the confines of government in order to carry out its responsibilities. Thus, it is no surprise that child support staff would advocate for beginning a project such as this by meeting with leaders from other governmental entities.
In stark contrast, early childhood professionals look to their own communities to determine what services are required and whom to collaborate with to procure them. This reflects an orientation toward the unique characteristics of the individuals they serve, and extends to an approach that favors determining whether something works in their own world before expanding it to others.
Across both State and partner agencies staff have learned a great deal about what it takes to work together on issues of child support enforcement. Some States are concentrating their efforts on changing the attitudes of staff and parents about working together on issues of child support enforcement. Other States are spending more time on applying program design to individual populations. Staff from some agencies and States find this process of working together relatively easy. For other States and other staffs, working together was and still remains very challenging. In all cases, however, lessons are being learned that will guide the work of these five States as well as the work of other States who may choose to replicate these projects.
Last updated 3/1/00