States get creative with child support enforcement.

• Author: Myers, Teresa A.
• Position: Includes related articles on child support laws in relation to state programs

With reform under way, states are searching for new and better ways to collect child support.

Four years ago, the Urban Institute released a disturbing report on the nation's child support enforcement programs. The study found that only 38 percent of all single mothers received any child support in 1989. It also estimated that the gap between what was being collected and what could be collected under an ideal system was many billions of dollars.

Reports like this one and growing constituent complaints thrust child support enforcement to center stage in capitols across the nation. As legislators struggled to rectify the dismal collection numbers and force more parents to accept financial responsibility for their children, they resorted to new ways to establish and enforce child support orders.

By 1996, Congress decided to enact major changes as part of a sweeping welfare reform package. The law included dozens of pages of mandated reforms of state programs for child support enforcement. Failure to enact the required reforms could result in a complete loss of federal welfare funds. This breathtaking penalty was further encouragement for state legislators to sit up and take notice of child support, and many knew little about it. During the state legislative debates over the federal requirements, they were treated to a crash course on the failure of the nation's enforcement system.

Two years later, nearly every state has enacted a reform package based roughly on the federal mandates. And now that millions of people have left the welfare rolls, child support is more important than ever for low-income families. Despite steady improvements in state services in the last five years, the latest numbers confirm that there is still work to do: Only 20.5 percent of families in state caseloads received any child support in 1996.

"I don't think most state legislators needed to have a very broad knowledge of child support before the federal mandates forced us to examine our programs in more depth," explains Representative Matt Entenza of Minnesota. "In my mind, one of the unexpected benefits of having to swallow those mandates was that legislators had to better educate themselves about child support in order to wisely consider the legislation necessary under the mandates."

Armed with that education, state lawmakers and agency administrators continue to experiment with new and sometimes controversial methods of locating parents, collecting support and establishing paternity.

"I think we're looking for the next great child support idea," explains Representative Entenza, "and we're willing to be creative to get this money to the kids who need it. Some of us have been committed to this issue for a while, but now we also have the support, understanding and interest of our colleagues, who were initiated under fire during welfare reform. The kinds of reforms in the federal mandates were a good start in many ways, but now we have to look further."

LOOKING FOR IDEAS

Officials nationwide are casting about for ways to update and improve their child support programs and are looking to their sister states for ideas. Many innovations are not created explicitly in law, but stem from broad statutory authority and supportive legislative oversight. Many predate the federal mandates and already have a positive track record, while others are still in their infancy. Some build upon the federal mandates, but most are entirely outside the 1996 requirements. Whatever their origin, they have one thing in common: Legislators want and need to know about them. These initiatives and others like them are sure to generate the next round of legislative reforms.

PUTTING KIDS FIRST IN VIRGINIA

Virginia's KidsFirst Campaign has attracted a lot of attention in its first year, and with reason. Exasperated with growing delinquencies and the suspicion that many Virginia parents could afford to pay and chose not to, state officials got tough - really tough. For example, parents with outstanding warrants for noncompliance with child support orders were arrested, and new warrants were issued on many others. A second round of apprehensions and issuances brought in $4.4 million of overdue child support in September 1997. That November, Virginia introduced yet another attention-getting...