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The American family has undergone a striking and well-chronicled transformation during the past three decades. Between 1960 and 1991, the proportion of children living in single-parent families (usually headed by their mothers) nearly tripled, from 9.1 percent to 25.5 percent. This shifting demographic tide has contributed to today's high rates of child poverty and welfare receipt: One out of every five children now lives in poverty, and more than one in eight receives welfare. These developments have pushed policymakers to focus increasing attention on child support as an essential source of income for poor single-parent families. The result has been a series of legislative measures designed to improve the performance of the nation's child support enforcement system (CSE).
Improvements are vital because most poor single parents currently receive little or no formal child support, and a more efficient enforcement system could collect much more money. It is also critical to understand, however, that efforts to increase the contributions made by noncustodial parents (usually fathers) are coming at a time when the labor market prospects of young men, particularly those with limited skills and education, have declined dramatically. This suggests that the payoff from tougher child support enforcement and its effect on child poverty and welfare receipt may be constrained by the inability of some noncustodial parents to pay.
The Parents' Fair Share Demonstration (PFS)(1) was created to address this problem. Designed to supplement previous antipoverty strategies, PFS is the first major test of programs that target employment and training and other services to a critical group: noncustodial parents of children on welfare who are unemployed and unable to meet their child support obligations. Its key goals are to increase these parents' earnings and to translate these earnings into child support payments that can reduce public welfare spending and, in the longer run, improve the lives of the children. PFS is funded by a consortium of federal and state agencies and private foundations, and is coordinated by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), a nonprofit social policy research organization. MDRC is also responsible for conducting a multifaceted evaluation of PFS.
This report examines the demonstration's pilot phase. The purpose of this phase, which began in mid-1992 and ended in early 1994, was to assess the feasibility of operating PFS programs, to determine whether a full-scale evaluation of the program's effectiveness is warranted, and to learn more about the PFS target population. The conclusion, based on more than a year of pilot operations in nine states, is positive: Despite a variety of start-up issues and some areas where continued improvement is needed, most of the PFS pilot programs operated relatively smoothly. The pilot phase was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation, the AT&T Foundation, the Northwest Area Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Labor, and the nine participating states: Alabama, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennessee.(2)
Overall, the pilot experience was promising enough to suggest to MDRC and funders that a rigorous test of the programs' impacts on noncustodial parents' employment rates, earnings, and child support payments, and on aspects of their children's well-being, would be worthwhile. Accordingly, a random assignment impact evaluation(3) is scheduled to begin in early 1994 in a subset of the pilot states.
This chapter starts by examining the policy context for PFS. The next sections describe how PFS was conceived and developed, the PFS service approach, and the purpose and goals of the pilot phase. The final section provides an overview of this report.
The Parents' Fair Share Demonstration is being mounted at a time when welfare reform and anti-poverty efforts are once again attracting the attention of federal and state policymakers. Like many recently-proposed or enacted measures, PFS attempts to supplement the reform efforts of the 1980s, in this case by focusing on the employment and training needs of noncustodial parents of children on welfare. This section describes the problems PFS seeks to address and previous efforts to confront these issues, and then discusses why additional steps including PFS may be needed.
The Parents' Fair Share Demonstration is designed to address a set of closely related problems that currently occupy prominent positions on the nation's domestic policy agenda: the high rates of poverty and welfare receipt among children in single-parent families; the lack of financial support provided to these children by their noncustodial parents; and the dramatic 20-year decline in the earnings of young men, particularly members of minority groups and those with limited education.
The statistical evidence in each area is sobering. One study found that half of all children born in the 1970s and 1980s will spend at least part of their childhood living with just one parent (usually their mother);(4) the poverty rate for female-headed families with children is nearly 50 percent.(5) More than 14 million Americans 9.5 million of them children now receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the nation's largest cash welfare program, which primarily serves single mothers and their children.(6)
High rates of poverty and welfare receipt among children in single-parent families can be attributed, in part, to the low levels of financial support provided by their noncustodial parents. In an era when two incomes are necessary to support most families, only slightly more than one-third of mothers living with a child whose father was absent received any child support in 1989, the most recent year for which reliable data are available. This rate was even lower for poor custodial mothers only about one in four received any payments and lower still for poor, never-married custodial mothers: Only one in seven received payments.(7)
Low payment rates may reflect the lack of a B societal commitment to child support enforcement. This, in turn, may help explain several serious gaps in the CSE system. For example, one study found that only 24 percent of never-married mothers receiving AFDC had established paternity for at least one of their children (paternity establishment is a prerequisite for obtaining a support order when a child is born to unmarried parents).(8) Another estimated that at least $15 billion in potential support goes uncollected each year, enough money to substantially improve the well-being of children.(9) However, given the alarming decline in real earnings and labor force participation among low-skilled young men over the past two decades, it is likely that many of the noncustodial parents who do not pay child support have limited labor market prospects and may need employment and training services and other assistance in order to meet their obligations. The average annual earnings of 25- to 29-year-old men without a high school diploma fell by more than 35 percent in real terms between 1973 and 1991.(10) This decline in the earning power (and hence "marriageability") of less educated men, according to some experts, helps explain the startling rise in out-of-wedlock births in the last two decades, which in turn is a critical determinant of poverty and welfare receipt.(11)
During the 1980s, most efforts to reduce poverty and welfare receipt among single-parent families relied on two parallel approaches: employment and training services and participation requirements for custodial parents on welfare (most of them mothers), and measures to improve the collection of child support from noncustodial parents (most of them fathers). These twin strategies are embodied in the Family Support Act (FSA), the major welfare reform legislation passed by Congress in 1988. Central to the act is the idea of "mutual obligation." On the one hand, parentsboth mothers and fathersshould be the primary supporters of their children. Thus, custodial parents who receive public assistance have a responsibility to participate in employment services and get jobs, and noncustodial parents have a responsibility to pay child support. On the other hand, government ha an obligation to provide services designed to promote self-sufficiency when individuals are unable to obtain jobs on their own.
To this end, Title II of FSA creates the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) Program, which expands resources and requirements for state programs providing employment and education services to AFDC recipients. FSA's JOBS provisions were built on the results of careful evaluation research conducted during the early-to-mid 1980s, which found that relatively inexpensive pre-JOBS employment programs for AFDC recipients were modestly successful in increasing earnings, reducing welfare payments, and saving money for taxpayers.(12)
In a parallel effort, Title I of FSA includes a variety of measures designed to improve states' performance in establishing paternity for out-of-wedlock births and establishing and enforcing adequate child support orders. These steps were the latest in a series of legislative initiatives dating back to 1975 that have dramatically increased the federal role in child support enforcement.(13) FSA requires states to use consistent guidelines to set child support orders, to routinely withhold child support from the paychecks of noncustodial parents, and to improve paternity establishment rates, among other measures.
It is notable, however, that FSA's child support enforcement provisions were generally not linked to employment and training opportunities for noncustodial parents who lack the income needed to meet their support obligations. Thus, in contrast to the system of reciprocal obligations envisioned for custodial parents, noncustodial parents faced a one-sided obligation: They were required to pay child support, and government promised to enforce that obligation.
As states strive to implement the JOBS and child support enforcement provisions of the Family Support Act, state and federal policymakers are already looking ahead to further reforms. For example, they are considering ways to supplement JOBS with additional policies designed to improve the incentives for welfare recipients to go to work and stay employed. These include universal health care coverage, expanded Earned Income Tax Credits for low-wage workers, and formulas allowing AFDC recipients to earn more before their grants are reduced.
Similarly, while FSA's child support enforcement reforms are quite likely to bring about substantial improvement when they are fully implemented, policymakers are already developing additional measures to further strengthen the system. For example, some states have begun to require employers to report identifying information on all newly hired employees to CSE agencies. This procedure provides up-to-date information on noncustodial parents' whereabouts and income.(14)
In addition, it is becoming increasingly clear that new approaches are needed to handle child support enforcement in cases where the noncustodial parent is unemployed or sporadically employed. Reforms that focus primarily on tougher enforcement are likely to have a limited effect on this population for two main reasons. First, these noncustodial parents frequently live and work on the margins of the mainstream economy and are often extremely difficult to locate.(15) Ironically, an unintended result of tougher child support enforcement may be to push a group of low-earning, sporadically working men further into the underground economy, diminishing the chances that they will provide financial stability for their families or boost them out of poverty.
Second, even if they can be located, the enforcement system has few alternatives available to deal with noncustodial parents who cite unemployment as the reason for their failure to pay child support. Although jail may be appropriate for a noncustodial parent who willfully refuses to pay support, it is neither productive nor permissible to incarcerate a parent who truly does not have the means to pay.(16) In fact, some of the nonpayers who claim to be unemployed are actually working "off the books" (or changing jobs so frequently that the system cannot catch them) and refusing to pay support through the formal system. Others are indeed unemployed as might be expected given the economic trends described earlier and need help. Unfortunately, in practice, the courts and agencies charged with enforcing child support orders have few means at their disposal to determine the truth in specific cases, since available information on noncustodial parents' earnings is typically several months old.
Faced with these limitations, judges are often forced to resort to stopgap measures such as setting a "purge payment" an amount the noncustodial parent can clearly pay and ordering him to pay this sum or go to jail. The noncustodial parent may produce the payment to gain his release, and then return to the cycle of nonpayment. In other cases, judges may order noncustodial parents to seek employment and report back to court periodically, but many courts and CSE agencies are overwhelmed and unable to carefully monitor such "seek work" orders.
Both of these problems are exacerbated by the lack of cooperation offered by both custodial and noncustodial parents, particularly in cases where the custodial parent receives welfare. Under federal law, AFDC recipients are required to transfer their child support rights to the state, which retains, as reimbursement for welfare expenditures, any child support collected on their behalf above the first $50 per month.(17) This means that, in many AFDC cases, neither the custodial nor noncustodial parent has a B financial stake in the outcome of the formal CSE process, and both have clear incentives to handle support informally, off the books, rather than to cooperate with the system (for example, purchases of gifts or necessities or assistance with childrearing).(18) Ethnographic studies and surveys have described the prevalence of informal and in-kind child support, but neither is counted by CSE agencies.(19) To make matters worse, many noncustodial parents are convinced that the CSE system is fundamentally unfair, claiming, for example, that their child support obligations often far exceed their ability to pay.
In this environment, it is perhaps not surprising that many CSE agencies, often swamped by caseloads of several thousand per worker, either formally or informally assign low priority to nonpaying cases in which there is no clear evidence of income, despite federal rules requiring them to "work" all cases.(20) Locating these noncustodial parents and processing their cases may be costly, and the payoff for this investment is usually minimal, in part because the enforcement options are limited to measures such as jail, purge payments, and seek-work orders. Unfortunately, this means that many AFDC child support cases receive limited attention, which sends an inappropriate message about parental responsibility.
Frustrated by this situation, local courts and CSE agencies in a variety of jurisdictions began to develop procedures that allowed judges to order noncustodial parents into employment and training programs when they cited unemployment as the reason for their failure to pay support.(21) In addition to providing courts with a new, more productive option for handling these cases, the new procedures had three other beneficial effects. First, they helped to uncover or "smoke out" unreported employment: Noncustodial parents often admitted that they were working and agreed to pay child support when faced with a program participation requirement that threatened to disrupt their work schedule. Second, those noncustodial parents who needed employment and training help could get it and, if they failed to follow through, the court now had an order (to participate in the program) that could be effectively monitored and enforced.(22) Third, the perception of a more balanced and fairer system based on mutual obligations had the potential to increase the level of cooperation by noncustodial parents, making it easier for CSE agencies to keep track of these individuals.
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The preceding discussion illustrates why there may be a great deal to gain by extending the Family Support Act's system of reciprocal obligations to noncustodial parents. This step could simultaneously provide assistance to noncustodial parents facing severe economic problems and increase the effectiveness of the CSE. Interest in rigorously testing this hypothesis led to the Parents' Fair Share Demonstration.
The roots of PFS can be traced to the earlier employment programs for noncustodial parents mentioned in the previous section and to a Family Support Act provision(23) that instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to issue waivers to up to five states to test the provision of JOBS services to noncustodial parents of children on AFDC who are unemployed and unable to meet their child support obligations.(24) In 1990, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Ford Foundation, and the AT&T Foundation joined forces with MDRC, HHS, and the U.S. Department of Labor to build a demonstration around this skeletal FSA provision. The Department of Labor's interest was stimulated by proposed amendments to the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), eventually passed in 1992, which pushed the nation's primary employment and training system to serve more disadvantaged populations such as the one targeted in the FSA provision.(25)
A preliminary research review by MDRC identified a host of challenging operational issues that were likely to confront large-scale programs linking child support enforcement with employment and training, and also confirmed that relatively little was known about the likely target group, the nature of successful employment and training interventions for men, or about conducting random assignment research in the CSE system. Given the dearth of knowledge and programmatic experience, the partner agencies proposed a cautious, two-phase structure for the demonstration that eventually became Parents' Fair Share. Under this approach, the project would begin with an 18- to 24-month pilot phase devoted to assessing the operational feasibility and promise of the PFS approach. If the pilot experience was successful, the partners would agree that the project should be extended to a second phase (referred to as "Phase II") including a full-scale evaluation based on a random assignment research design to accurately assess the effectiveness of PFS programs.
In April 1991, the Secretaries of HHS and Labor invited all states and territories to apply for the waivers described in the Family Support Act and for admission to the pilot phase of the Parents' Fair Share Demonstration.(26) More than 30 states requested application materials and 15 eventually submitted applications. The federal partner agencies reviewed the applications and, in November 1991, approved nine for inclusion in the PFS pilot phase.(27) The pilot programs referred to as "sites" are listed in Table 1.1.(28) Table 1.2 displays some basic information about the communities where PFS operates. As the tables show, none of the programs operates statewide; each of them covers either one or two counties including, in most cases, a medium-size city. The PFS population tends to be concentrated in the major city in each site. As Table 1.2 suggests, the PFS communities are geographically and ethnically diverse, and experienced a range of unemployment rates during the pilot phase. One of the pilot sites, Minnesota, began enrolling eligible noncustodial parents in March 1992. The others began enrollment by mid-summer of that year.
| State | Location of PFS Program | Name of PFS Program |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | Mobile County (Mobile) | Mobile County Parents' Fair Share Program |
| Florida | Duval County (Jacksonville) | Duval County Parents' Fair Share Project |
| Massachusetts | Hampden County (Springfield) | MassJOBS Parents' Fair Share Project |
| Michigan | Kent County (Grand Rapids) | Kent County Parents' Fair Share Project |
| Minnesota | Anoka and Dakota counties (suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul) | Minnesota Parents' Fair Share Program |
| Missouri | Jackson County (Kansas City) | FUTURES Connection |
| New Jersey | Mercer County (Trenton) | Operation Fatherhood |
| Ohio | Montgomery (Dayton) and Butler counties | Options for Parental Training and Support (OPTS) |
| Tennessee | Shelby County (Memphis) | Tennessee Parents' Fair Share Project |
| State | County in Which PFS ProgramWas Located | Largest City in County | County Population (1988) | Population of Largest City (1988) | County Unemployment Rate (1992) | County AFDC Caseload (1991) | Percent Nonwhite in County (1988) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | Mobile | Mobile | 377,700 | 203,260 | 7.9 | 6,286 | 33.2 |
| Florida | Duval | Jacksonville | 646,400 | 609,860 | 7.0 | 11,405 | 26.8 |
| Massachusetts | Hampden | Springfield | 444,900 | 149,410 | 9.0 | 14,926 | 7.6 |
| Michigan | Kent | Grand Rapids | 477,500 | 186,530 | 7.0 | 10,031 | 9.1 |
| Minnesota | Anoka | --(a) | 228,200 | --(a) | 4.5(b) | 2,612 | 2.5 |
| Dakota | --(a) | 221,200 | --(a) | 4.5(b) | 2,182 | 2.1 | |
| Missouri | Jackson | Kansas City | 636,400 | 441,170 | 4.9 | 11,446 | 22.0 |
| New Jersey | Mercer | Trenton | 320,800 | 91,160 | 6.5 | 5,006 | 21.1 |
| Ohio | Butler | Hamilton | 271,500 | 65,050 | 6.5(c) | 4,370 | 5.7 |
| Montgomery | Dayton | 566,300 | 178,920 | 6.5(c) | 13,675 | 18.4 | |
| Tennessee | Shelby | Memphis | 809,600 | 652,640 | 5.7 | 24,266 | 44.4 |
| National average | -- | -- | -- | -- | 6.8 | -- | |
| SOURCES: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1988; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991. | |||||||
NOTES:
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Unlike several previous MDRC demonstration projects, PFS does not have a single, strictly defined program model. Too little was known about the PFS target population and the likely results of various service strategies prior to the demonstration to rely on a single, untested model. Moreover, while earlier projects were designed to test the effectiveness of a specific service model tailored to a relatively narrow target population and delivered in a small-scale program setting, PFS aims to test a new system of opportunities and obligations incorporating a large, diverse population of noncustodial parents through existing large-scale bureaucracies. This broad objective implies that no single service model is likely to be feasible in all locations or appropriate for all participants.
Despite concluding early on that a uniform program model would be inappropriate at this stage, MDRC nevertheless conducted extensive background research to lay the conceptual groundwork for PFS and identify promising service approaches. This effort included commissioning papers; consulting with a range of academic experts and practitioners in child support enforcement, employment and training, and other topics;(29) visiting the existing small-scale programs for noncustodial parents linked to CSE agencies and other community-based programs serving young fathers; holding focus group discussions with low-income noncustodial parents in three cities;(30) and reviewing past studies of employment and training programs that served disadvantaged men.
The background research led to three broad conclusions, which are discussed further in later chapters. First, the PFS population was likely to be diverse, and it was assumed that at least some of the noncustodial parents would require fairly intensive training and/or education in order to secure stable employment. However, it also seemed clear that these parents would be impatient to find jobs and income quickly because most would not be welfare recipients and many would face large child support debts. Second, employment and training services alone would probably not be sufficient to induce all noncustodial parents to participate intensively or to make a lasting difference in their employment and payment patterns; the program would also need to address other factors that lead many noncustodial parents to resist working and paying support regularly. Third, if the CSE system practiced "business as usual," noncustodial parents would be unlikely to remain involved with PFS and the likelihood of generating increased child support payments would be low. Changes would be needed to ensure that the noncustodial parents' support obligations reflected their ability to pay, both during and after their participation in PFS, and that CSE agencies could move quickly to translate earnings into child support payments and to respond when noncustodial parents failed to participate in PFS as ordered.
Based on these conclusions, states applying for admission to PFS were required to design programs that could build the capacity to serve at least 300 noncustodial parents during the pilot phase(31) and to ensure that these programs included four core components: (1) a diverse menu of employment and training services with a special focus on on-the-job training (OJT), (2) enhanced child support enforcement activities to ensure that the CSE system responds quickly and flexibly to noncustodial parents' financial circumstances, (3) peer support groups built around a curriculum stressing responsible fatherhood, and (4) opportunities for noncustodial parents to mediate disputes with custodial parents and others that may affect their child support payments. These four core components are discussed further in Table 1.3 and in subsequent chapters. Sites were also encouraged (but not required) to focus resources on recruiting noncustodial parents who had not yet established paternity in addition to working with individuals who already had child support orders but were not paying.(32) Beyond these basic guidelines, states were free to design programs to fit their own objectives and perceptions about the target population. As discussed in later chapters, this resulted in substantial variation across the sites, especially during the early months of the pilot. To help readers visualize how this complex and varied approach works, Chapter 2 begins with an illustrative case study and then describes the institutional arrangements in detail.
| EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING |
|---|
| The centerpiece of Parents' Fair Share pilot programs was a group of activities intended to help participants secure long-term, stable employment at a wage level that would allow them to support themselves and their children. Since noncustodial parents vary in their employability levels, pilot programs were strongly encouraged to offer a variety of services, including job search assistance and opportunities for education and skills training. In addition, since it was important to engage participants in income-producing activities quickly and to establish the practice of paying child support, pilot programs were required to offer opportunities for on-the-job training (OJT), which combines skill-building and immediate income. |
| ENHANCED CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT |
| A primary objective of Parents' Fair Share is to increase support payments made on behalf of children living in single-parent welfare households. This goal will not be met unless increases in participants' earnings are translated into regular child support payments. Although a legal and administrative structure already exists to establish and enforce child support obligations, pilot programs were encouraged to develop new procedures, services, and incentives in this area. These included steps to expedite the establishment of paternity and child support awards and wage withholding arrangements, and quick follow-up when noncustodial parents failed to participate in PFS as ordered, plus flexible rules that allowed child support orders to be temporarily reduced while noncustodial parents participated in Parents' Fair Share. |
| PEER SUPPORT |
| MDRC's preliminary research suggested that employment and training services, by themselves, might not lead to changed attitudes and regular child support payments for all participants. Thus, pilot programs were expected to provide regular support groups for participants. The purpose of this component was to inform participants about their rights and obligations as noncustodial parents, to encourage positive parental behavior and sexual responsibility, to strengthen participants' commitment to work, and to enhance participants' life skills. The component was built around a curriculum called Responsible Fatherhood, which was supplied by MDRC. Some of the pilot programs also included guest speakers, recreational activities, mentoring programs, or planned parent-child activities. |
| MEDIATION |
| Often disagreements between custodial and noncustodial parents about visitation, household expenditures, lifestyles, child care, and school arrangements and the roles and actions of other adults in their children's lives influence child support payment patterns. Thus, pilot programs were required to provide opportunities for parents to mediate their differences using services modeled on those provided through many family courts in divorce cases. |
The Family Support Act provision that led to PFS did not include any special funding for the programs for noncustodial parents or for the evaluation of these efforts that was also required. Thus, each of the states participating in the pilot phase received both a waiver allowing it to use JOBS funds to serve noncustodial parents of children on AFDC and a grant from the PFS foundation partners. States were also required to commit their own (or local) resources to the project. State and local spending and the foundation grants could be used to draw down federal matching funds under the JOBS (Title IV-F), child support enforcement (Title IV-D), or AFDC (Title IV-A) provisions of the Social Security Act.
During the planning stage and throughout the pilot phase, MDRC staff regularly visited all of the pilot sites to monitor program operations, identify operational issues, and assess technical assistance needs. Technical assistance has been provided in a variety of forms including a manual devoted to each of the core components; site visits by expert consultants focusing on developing and administering OJT positions,(33) operating effective job clubs,(34) and other issues; and two conferences for site staff: a kick-off conference covering a range of implementation issues and a training conference focusing on the Responsible Fatherhood curriculum, which is designed to lend structure and focus to the peer support component. In addition, midway through the pilot, senior MDRC staff visited each site for a Program Review devoted to identifying critical issues needing resolution. Each site was asked to develop a plan to address these concerns. Over the course of the pilot, MDRC's technical assistance identified and disseminated promising strategies; this process gradually resulted in a more uniform service approach that could carry over into Phase II of the demonstration.(35)
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As noted earlier, the pilot phase was designed to assess the operational feasibility and promise of the PFS approach and to learn more about the target population. The ultimate goal was to determine whether a full-scale evaluation of the effectiveness of PFS would be warranted. This section discusses the administrative challenge presented by this attempt to link child support enforcement with employment and training and the methods and data sources used to assess the feasibility and promise of PFS during the pilot phase.
PFS presented the participating states with daunting institutional and operational challenges. The PFS approach is complex and could not be implemented without the involvement of a variety of disparate organizations and officials, including CSE agencies, local JOBS and JTPA agencies, school districts, family courts, and nonprofit service providers.(36) These state and local partner agencies many of them large bureaucratic entities had to work together to develop new administrative systems to identify eligible noncustodial parents, connect them with appropriate program services, monitor their participation in these services, and, since PFS participation is typically mandatory, respond to noncompliance. Such systems require high levels of inter-agency collaboration, new management and staffing structures, and clear lines of communication.
The complexity of this task was magnified by the fact that the two main organizational partners the employment and training providers funded by the JOBS and JTPA systems, and the CSE system (i.e., the CSE agencies) had little history of collaboration and few incentives to expend resources on the PFS target population.(37) Moreover, their missions and organizational cultures are fundamentally different. PFS asked these systems to reconcile their divergent perspectives, make major changes in their standard operating procedures, and focus their efforts on a long-neglected group. Given these challenging circumstances, the ability of the sites to create coherent, smoothly operating programs was far from certain.
The greatest changes were demanded of CSE agencies. Many observers have described how a mixture of financial and organizational factors have pushed the CSE system to focus on maximizing immediate support collections.(38) CSE agencies are generally unfamiliar with the notion of making short-term service investments in noncustodial parents in the hope of increasing their ability to pay later. In fact, as noted earlier, many of these agencies deemphasize cases that seem unlikely to yield immediate collections. Moreover, some CSE agencies see themselves as representing the custodial parent or the state in an adversarial process and Bly resist measures that are seen as "coddling" noncustodial parents. PFS pushed the system not only to identify and take action on these cases, but also to invest in the noncustodial parents by temporarily reducing their child support obligations while they build skills.
Employment and training providers are, in principle, much more familiar with investing in the human capital of individuals. However, the key systems that provide employment and training to the disadvantaged, JOBS and JTPA, have had limited experience working with very disadvantaged men or providing the kind of skill-building services sought by PFS. Most JOBS programs have served primarily female AFDC recipients and have provided mainly relatively brief activities such as job search workshops. The JTPA system, driven for many years by performance standards stressing low costs and high placement rates, has been criticized for underserving individuals facing severe barriers to employment and for emphasizing short-term services. PFS asked these systems to engage a new population and to offer a broad menu of employment-related services, including some fairly intensive training.
Fortunately, the key changes sought by PFS were generally consistent with recent federal efforts to reorient the relevant major systems. For example, the Family Support Act and subsequent regulations require CSE agencies to take appropriate action on all cases within prescribed time frames, and to ensure that child support obligations are periodically updated to reflect the changing economic circumstances of parents. These reforms are the latest in a series of federal measures that aim to transform child support enforcement from an adversarial, court-based system with substantial case-by-case discretion to a more standardized, uniform function.
At the same time, both FSA's JOBS provisions and the 1992 amendments to the Job Training Partnership Act pushed local employment and training providers to serve more disadvantaged populations with longer-term services. For example, under the new JTPA rules, 65 percent of the adults served in each local Service Delivery Area (SDA) must have at least one of seven barriers to employment identified in the law, and performance standards for local programs have been expanded to focus on other outcomes in addition to employment and earnings (for example, acquisition of basic skills). Similarly, the JOBS legislation was designed to push state employment programs for welfare recipients to stress education and training services to a greater extent than had typically been the case under the pre-JOBS program.
Although these federal measures supported the overall thrust of PFS, they did not ensure smooth implementation. As with any attempt to change large, decentralized systems, the federal efforts only gradually affected local practices and organizational cultures. Thus, in many respects, PFS was still cutting against the grain. A key objective of the pilot phase was to determine whether these considerable institutional obstacles could be overcome.
Given the challenging circumstances described in the previous section, the operational feasibility of the PFS approach was in doubt. In order to gauge the ability of the key systems to change and collaborate in PFS, MDRC sought to answer a set of "threshold" questions about each of the pilot sites, using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data sources described in the next section. The key questions included:
MDRC began by addressing these questions for each site individually. However, in order to determine whether a random assignment evaluation was appropriate, it was also necessary to assess whether at least three to five of the nine pilot sites were B enough to move forward to Phase II.
Beyond basic feasibility, MDRC sought to determine whether the PFS approach was promising; that is, whether it showed the potential to "make a difference." PFS seeks to set off a chain reaction of impacts. Ideally, employment and training, peer support, and mediation will produce changes in the attitudes and human capital of participants, which will lead to higher employment rates and earnings. This will both raise the living standards of participants and with the assistance of enhanced CSE activities increase the size and regularity of their child support payments. Alternatively, the PFS mandate (i.e., the requirement to participate in the program) might help to smoke out previously unreported earnings, leading directly to greater formal child support payments. In either case, increased child support payments could lead to welfare savings and, ultimately, to higher incomes and better lives for children.
The pilot phase was not designed to determine whether PFS is actually producing these impacts. Patterns of employment and child support payments among noncustodial parents are dynamic; thus, job placements and child support payments made by PFS participants might have occurred even if the program did not exist. A randomly selected control group of noncustodial parents who do not participate in PFS would be needed to isolate the effects that are attributable to the program.
In gauging the strength of the PFS services and mandate during the pilot phase, it was critical to examine whether participants and institutions appeared to behave and operate differently than they did before PFS existed. At a minimum, PFS must provide a package of services and a participation mandate that is discernibly different from what would be available to control group members if there were a random assignment evaluation. Otherwise, a random assignment test might not be worthwhile. This meant assessing whether noncustodial parents who were referred to PFS were sufficiently engaged by the program's employment and training and peer support activities to suggest that the first links in the impact chain described earlier might be affected.(39) Similarly, it was important to look for signs of institutional change and innovative programmatic strategies that signaled that the key partners had gone beyond "business as usual." PFS would be considered promising if it succeeded in providing a package of services and incentives that are not typically available and engaging individuals who would not otherwise have been active.
In developing a research strategy for the pilot phase, MDRC sought to obtain the data necessary to address all of the key issues that might affect the decision about whether to move forward to Phase II, while preserving resources for the random assignment evaluation, when vital research questions can be addressed in the context of an experimental research design. In addition, given the lack of previous research on programs of this type, the pilot phase presented an important opportunity to test a variety of research methods and data collection strategies.
The resulting research and data collection plan for the pilot phase provided important information but was also limited in some respects and did not address many relevant or interesting questions. For example, three vital data sources that MDRC hopes to use in Phase II administrative records on noncustodial parents' earnings and custodial parents' AFDC payments, and surveys are not part of the pilot phase research effort. Nevertheless, a variety of qualitative and quantitative data sources were used in the pilot phase analysis summarized in this report, including:
The qualitative data used in this report (field research, interviews, etc.) cover the entire pilot phase through the late summer/early fall of 1993. Most of the quantitative analyses focus on noncustodial parents who were referred to PFS (i.e., completed the BIF) by February 28, 1993, and examine participation in PFS activities and outcomes during the four months following referral for each individual.
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The rest of this report describes the experiences of the PFS sites during the pilot phase. Chapter 2 introduces the sites and their service approaches, discussing some of the institutional issues that affected the development of PFS at the local level. Chapter 3 describes the PFS population, using a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. Chapter 4 provides general information on the scale of the pilot programs and the patterns of participation in PFS activities. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 focus on the three main components of PFS peer support (an unexpectedly powerful and engaging element of the program), enhanced child support enforcement, and employment and training describing the sites' implementation experiences in each area. The final chapter, Chapter 8, looks ahead to Phase II of the demonstration and identifies some of the broad policy questions implied by the pilot experience.
1. Throughout this report, Parents' Fair Share (or PFS) refers to the approach, the demonstration, or both, depending on the context. Also, the terms PFS "site(s)" and program(s) are used interchangeably. [Back To Text]
2. This report has been written mostly in the past tense because it describes PFS structures and activities as they were operating during a particular point in time the pilot phase of the demonstration. However, all of the PFS programs that were in the pilot phase are still in operation, although not all of them will be part of the next phase of the demonstration. [Back To Text]
3. In such an evaluation, individuals who meet the eligibility requirements of the program being tested are randomly assigned to one of two groups: A program group, whose members have access to the program, or a control group, whose members do not have such access. The impact of the program is assessed by comparing the experiences of the two groups over time. [Back To Text]
4. Bumpuss and Sweet, 1989. [Back To Text]
5. House Ways and Means Committee, 1993. [Back To Text]
7. U.S. Bureau of the Census. These data do not distinguish between formal and informal support payments. [Back To Text]
8. Barnow, 1992. More than half of AFDC families are headed by never-married mothers. [Back To Text]
9. Garfinkel and Oellerich, 1989. This study uses data about the characteristics of custodial parents to estimate the earnings of noncustodial parents, and then calculates the amount of support the latter would be ordered to pay under several common formulas used to set child support awards. [Back To Text]
11. Wilson, 1987 [Back To Text]
12. Gueron and Pauly, 1991. [Back To Text]
13. Congress created the federal child support enforcement program under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act in 1975. Under the legislation, each state was required to establish a child support enforcement (CSE) agency (often referred to as a "IV-D agency") to pursue paternity and child support for all children receiving AFDC and for non-AFDC children upon request. Prior to that point, child support had been almost exclusively a state and local issue. [Back To Text]
14. In the absence of this information, CSE agencies generally rely on quarterly wage data reported to state Unemployment Insurance agencies. These data are usually at least six months old by the time they are available. [Back To Text]
15. For a detailed discussion of this issue, see Bloom, 1993. [Back To Text]
16. In theory, when failure to pay child support is a civil, rather than a criminal, matter, jail cannot be used to punish a noncustodial parent for not paying child support. Jail can be used to compel a parent to pay, but only when he has the means to do so. However, this distinction may be blurred in practice because a court may determine that a noncustodial parent is "voluntarily" unemployed and thus has the capacity to pay support. In addition, extended or repeated nonpayment of child support can become a criminal matter, opening up the possibility that jail will be used as punishment. [Back To Text]
17. Seven states currently apply "fill the gap" AFDC budgeting rules to child support. Under these rules, AFDC recipients may keep child support they receive up to the state's "standard of need" (the amount of money deemed minimally adequate to meet a family's basic needs). Since the need standard is typically higher than the AFDC grant amount, this policy may allow custodial parents to keep more than $50 per month in child support. [Back To Text]
18. The incentives may be different in cases where the custodial parent anticipates leaving the welfare rolls shortly. Cooperation may be seen as more beneficial in these situations because, after she leaves AFDC, the custodial parent can receive the full amount of child support that is paid. In addition, as just noted, "fill the gap" AFDC budgeting rules allow recipients to keep more than $50 in child support per month. [Back To Text]
19. See e.g., Sullivan, in Lerman and Ooms, 1993. [Back To Text]
20. These case prioritization patterns may be attributable, in part, to the federal financing formula for child support enforcement, which uses federal funds to pay for a large proportion of administrative costs and allows states to keep much of what they collect. Moreover, special incentive payments are made to states with high ratios of collections to administrative costs. Many have suggested that this system discourages states from working with difficult cases, such as those requiring paternity establishment (see, for example, Meyer, 1992). However, recent federal regulations flowing from the Family Support Act require states to take appropriate action on all cases within prescribed time limits and to improve their paternity establishment performance. [Back To Text]
21. Early programs were developed in Memphis, Tennessee; Prince Georges County, Maryland; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Ocean County, New Jersey; Tampa, Jacksonville, and Tallahassee, Florida; and six Ohio counties, among other locations. Several of these programs were later adapted to meet the requirements for entry into PFS and subsequently became part of the demonstration. [Back To Text]
22. Unlike an order to pay child support, which can be complied with only when income is available, an order to participate in a program is within reach of any noncustodial parent who is physically able to show up at program activities. Thus, when a noncustodial parent fails to comply with such an order, he can be held in contempt of court. [Back To Text]
23. Pub. L 100-485, tit. II, sec. 201(b), as codified in 42 U.S.C. 682(d)(3). [Back To Text]
24. Normally, JOBS services are available only to AFDC recipients. [Back To Text]
25. Interest may also have been stimulated by the Jobs for Employable Dependent Individuals Incentive Bonus Program (JEDI), Title V of the Job Training Partnership Act, which provides states with bonus payments for serving noncustodial parents of children on welfare who begin to pay child support after receiving JTPA services. The JEDI legislation has been passed but not funded .[Back To Text]
26. States were also permitted to apply for the waivers without applying for admission to PFS. States choosing this alternative were required to develop and fund an evaluation of their proposed PFS program, and were not eligible for special demonstration grants (discussed below). No states chose this option. [Back To Text]
27. Five of these states were granted waivers under the Family Support Act provision described above. Four others were granted similar waivers under separate authority. [Back To Text]
28. In this report, the PFS sites are usually referred to by the name of the state in which they operate. However, since the Ohio and Minnesota sites cover two counties each, these programs are sometimes referred to by the name of the county. [Back To Text]
29. Many of the practitioners participated in a special conference in July 1990 focusing on the recommended components of a PFS service package. [Back To Text]
30. These focus group discussions are summarized in Furstenberg, Sherwood, and Sullivan, 1992. [Back To Text]
31. The requirement to serve 300 noncustodial parents was based on early estimates regarding the size of the research sample that would be required for statistically reliable estimates of program effectiveness in a random assignment study. [Back To Text]
32. Most of the pre-PFS programs focused on noncustodial parents who had been ordered to pay child support but were not doing so. However, as noted earlier, the majority of custodial parents receiving AFDC have no support order, often because paternity has never been established for some or all of their children who were born out of wedlock. Thus, the PFS partners encouraged states to seek ways to use PFS to bring more noncustodial parents into the CSE system, for example, by offering employment services to fathers who have not established paternity for a child receiving AFDC. By their very nature, these "early intervention" programs would have a more voluntary character (at least initially), while "late intervention" programs serving parents who were in default on existing support orders would be mandatory. [Back To Text]
33. Under JOBS or JTPA, on-the-job training arrangements, a private employer receives a publicly funded wage subsidy to defray the cost of hiring and training a disadvantaged individual. [Back To Text]
34. Job clubs are short-term group activities that teach job-seeking and job-keeping skills. Participants often begin with some classroom instruction and then move to active, supervised job search. [Back To Text]
35. MDRC's research and technical assistance activities are supported directly by the foundation and federal partners. [Back To Text]
36. JOBS, JTPA, and CSE are all decentralized systems for distributing federal (and, in some cases, state and local) public funding to local operating agencies). All three systems are governed by federal guidelines and oversight, but administrative structures and operational practices differ greatly across jurisdictions. [Back To Text]
37. The institutional structure of PFS is explained in detail in Chapter 2. [Back To Text]
38. See, for example, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1990. [Back To Text]
39. In addition, the services must be intensive in order to have the potential to smoke out unreported earnings. [Back To Text]
40. The MIS does not cover all PFS activities. For example, orientation and individual meetings with case managers are not included. [Back To Text]
41. When completing the BIF, staff were asked to identify one child support case that had triggered the referral to PFS. If the noncustodial parent had more than one case and no single case had triggered the referral, staff were asked to randomly select one case. [Back To Text]
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