Many child support policies disproportionately harm families with low incomes in which nonresident parents have limited ability to pay support. This blogpost outlines six recommendations on how child support systems can equitably serve families…

Child support is an important resource for children who live apart from a parent, but there are many reasons why noncustodial parents may be unable or unwilling to pay. The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at…

States, counties, and tribes are modernizing their child support programs through holistic, family-centered policies and practices that build partnerships with parents instead of adversarial relationships. They go beyond collecting money to…

This interactive map explores the 32 states that operate child support-led employment programs for noncustodial parents. This resource highlights available programs in each of these states, including which states use TANF funding or offer TANF…

Since the establishment of the Child Support Enforcement Program in 1975, child support policy has played a central role in improving the economic circumstances of children living apart from one of their parents. Prior research has documented the…

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) demonstration project, which began in 2016, integrates principles of procedural justice into enforcement practices in six child support agencies across the United States. This guide…

The Child Support Enforcement program strengthens families by securing support from noncustodial parents for their children. For noncustodial parents with steady employment and financial resources, the program can work well, but the child support…

The Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison hosted a webinar on November 4, 2021 from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. CT, which explored ways that fathers’ roles and responsibilities shifted during the pandemic. Topics…

Part of a larger project sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services called Key Programmatic Elements of Engaging Fathers to Promote Self-Sufficiency (KEEP…

This brief illustrates the delivery of Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) services from the perspective of case managers in six child support agencies. Procedural justice, a process-oriented model for dispute resolution,…