HHS News Release

HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala announced today that the nation's child support enforcement program has launched an initiative to promote improved performance, service quality and public satisfaction in the program.

"The urgency of our task has been stressed by many," said Mary Jo Bane, assistant secretary for children and families. "This initiative to set goals and measure results will strengthen our ability to ensure needed support for millions of children and is in keeping with the president's mission to make government work better for the American people."

As a two-year pilot project under the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), the Administration for Children and Families' Office of Child Support Enforcement will work to develop effective partnerships with all states. To support the initiative, about 30 state and local child support programs have volunteered to initiate improvements.

"We recognized the need for significant improvement in the child support system, and have gained support for reinvention. We will work closely with our state and local partners to help them accomplish their objectives in these demonstrations," said David Gray Ross, deputy director, Office of Child Support Enforcement. "We have much work to do, but today we are taking a big step forward to help children."

Highlights of some demonstrations follow:

In California, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento counties will, respectively, try to improve cooperation of welfare mothers in identifying and locating alleged fathers; explore the feasibility of group medical insurance for children whose parents do not have work-based insurance; and provide employment counseling to noncustodial parents. In a statewide demonstration, California will provide seed money to stimulate innovations in child support operations to boost collections.

In Illinois, the Chicago (Cook County) program will streamline the child support referral process under a "one-stop shopping" concept so that unemployed noncustodial parents can become quickly employed and pay their child support.

The Michigan project will attempt to improve child support program management by using a new contracting process under which state reimbursements to prosecuting attorneys and Friends of the Court will be results based.

The demonstration in New York is part of a regional initiative, that includes New Jersey and to a lesser degree, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Key projects are in improving collections of child support arrears by obtaining access to better information on parents' financial assets, and developing criteria to measure the
effectiveness of paternity establishment activities.

A regional project in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Nebraska will improve service delivery, initiate results-oriented performance measures and conduct training.

Ohio's demonstration will measure the state's overall child support program performance. It will evaluate the effectiveness of improvements made in the past three years to correct program deficiencies.

Nearly 30 percent of all births in the United States are to unmarried parents. In FY 1993, almost 3.5 million children in the child support enforcement program needed legal paternity established. In that year only 554,204 paternities were established, a 7 percent increase over 1992. Child support collections in 1993 reached a record $8.9 billion. GPRA activities are designed to help increase paternity establishments, award
establishments and collection of support.

The federal/state child support program is one of about 70 federal programs designated by the Office of Management and Budget as pilots under GPRA.

Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are available at http://www.hhs.gov/news.

Contact: Michael Kharfen (202) 401-9215