The Aspen Institute’s Ascend initiative has launched a webinar series to cover 2Gen approaches that support the health, economic opportunity, and education of low-income families as they recover and move forward from the COVID-19 pandemic. Upcoming webinar topics are Child Support: Implications and Useful Lessons around Child Support, Parent Voice During COVID-19: Maintaining Feedback Loops, Stopping Behavioral Health and Substance Use Disorders Where They Start: Prevention and Treatment in Adolescence, and State Leadership During COVID-19 and Beyond. Recordings of previously held webinars on Telehealth and 2Gen, State Opportunities and Challenges in Advancing Child Care Innovation, and New Frames for a New Time are available.

This strategy brief discusses how safety culture can assist child protection agencies in shifting their organizational culture to one characterized by open staff conversation; in this environment, staff feedback is valued and important in addressing their organizations’ concerns. One way to strengthen safety culture is through effective mindful organizing, described not only as staff’s understanding of their work, but also of their colleagues’ capabilities, which according to studies, results in reduced staff turnover and positive outcomes for children and their families. The brief highlights mindful organizing strategies used by child protection agency staff in Tennessee, including huddles and debriefs.

This letter from the Acting Commissioner of the Office of Child Support Enforcement provides guidance on how individual tax rebates made under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act to eligible noncustodial parents are subject to intercept for past-due child support payments. It also notes that TANF or Title IV-E foster care cases must have at least $150 in past-due support for the offset requirement to apply; non-TANF and non-Title IV-E cases must have at least $500 of past-due support for the offset requirement to apply.

This research-to-practice brief describes the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) demonstration project and its integration of procedural justice principles into enforcement practices in six child support agencies in Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, and Virginia. The premise of PJAC is that if defendants perceive the dispute resolution process to be fair, they will comply with the outcome of the process, regardless of whether the decision was favorable to the defendant. The target population of the PJAC demonstration project is noncustodial parents being referred for civil contempt of court-mandated child support even when these parents have been determined to be able to pay it. Implementation of PJAC addresses noncustodial parents’ perception of the court system proceedings and reasons for nonpayment, how to improve consistency of their payments, and ways to promote their positive engagement with the child support agency as well as the other parent.