The purpose of this report is to provide early findings on the implementation of five State-initiated demonstrations designed to explore collaborations between child support enforcement, Head Start, and child care programs. In Fiscal Year 1997, the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) awarded funds to the State Child Support Enforcement Agencies of Alaska, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, and Minnesota to develop State-specific approaches for promoting and facilitating access to child support services. At the time that information was gathered for this report, States were at the end of the first year or at the beginning of the second year of a three-year funding period.
Implementation findings from this study include the following:
In sum, the early findings on implementation indicate that the demonstration projects are making progress in meeting the goals of the demonstration. These findings indicate that partner's agencies have gained an enhanced understanding and trust, the first goal of the demonstration. The knowledge base of Head Start and child care staff about child support services has broadened; while in turn child support staff have learned about Head Start and child care programs. In some circumstances, however, constraints lessened opportunities to learn.
Progress has also been made on the project’s second goal, increasing the access of families to child support services through the cooperation and assistance of child care and Head Start programs. Early findings indicate that these demonstration grants have increased the willingness and ability of Head Start and child care staffs to collaborate with child support agencies. It also appears that there is already much agreement about the third goal — increasing child support staff’s understanding about the importance of fathers’ non-financial involvement in the lives of their children. An important task remaining for the demonstrations is to find ways that child support staff can assist child care and Head Start staffs in increasing voluntary establishment of paternity and payment of support.
This report is organized into four chapters and two appendices. Chapter I, the Introduction, provides a discussion about some of the federal mandates that have contributed to the expanding climate of collaboration. Also included is a presentation of the methods used to gather and analyze the data.
Chapter II, State Reports, presents descriptive information and early findings specific to each of the five States. Each State Report describes the location of that state’s demonstration, the demonstrations’s overall objectives, its participant characteristics and major design factors, the sequence of events in project design and implementation, the services and activities provided, the successes, the stumbling blocks, changes in attitudes and behavior of staff, and replication considerations. The chapter concludes with a summary matrix of some of the key features across demonstration sites and specific contact information for each State project coordinator.
Chapter III, Lessons from the Field, extends the discussion begun in Chapter II through a presentation of findings or themes common across States. Included in these lessons or themes are the facts that there is some evidence of attitude change among staff in the partner agencies, the fact that program design must be specific to local context, and the fact that collaboration appears to be most effective when integrated into existing programs. Chapter III also addresses the different levels of comfort Head Start, child care and child support staff have when it comes to working with collaborative projects and explores some of the conflicting messages being sent to the public from the child support community.
Chapter IV, Reflections, examines progress made toward meeting the three original goals of these collaborative demonstrations and mentions several policy issues that can make successful collaborations difficult.
The report also includes two appendices. Appendix A provides the text of the collaboration memorandum signed by the Office of Child Support Enforcement with the Head Start Bureau and the Child Care Bureau. Appendix B provides materials developed by the partners in the five states to facilitate their collaborations.
Last updated 3/1/00