The child support program serves parents in the context of their community. Child support agencies work with community-based organizations to help meet parent needs,and enhance the success of families in child support programs. This compendium reflects the diversity of child support partnerships across the country; it includes resources and fact sheets on employment, reentry, family violence, responsible fatherhood, homelessness, parental education, and preventing the need for child support services by addressing the importance of being emotionally and financially prepared to support a child.

In support of the Administration for Children and Families’ (ACF) mission and strategic plan, ACF has developed a set of materials intended to provide guidance to hard-to-reach populations to increase their awareness and understanding of the array of resources that may be able to assist them. These resources are explicitly designed to be user-friendly and easy to digest. The materials include resources for transition-age youth exiting foster care, families with children ages 0-12, prospective Head Start participants, survivors of domestic violence looking to find and keep housing, fathers looking for benefits programs or parenting tips, and providers supporting those seeking post-disaster housing.

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 included father involvement in childcare and support for virtual learning, how the pandemic heightened existing challenges for low-income and noncustodial fathers, insights from practice and research, and supports that fathers may need to maintain positive changes or recover from negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Representatives from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the City of Milwaukee, the University of Michigan, and the 4Dad Fatherhood Initiative in Kalamazoo, Michigan made presentations.

This journal article is the result of a qualitative study informed by Arditti’s Family Inequality Framework. The study features interviews with 19 fathers who were recently released from prison and data gathered through a brief background survey. Four main themes identified in the study were parenting from prison, committed fathering, outside influences on parenting, and recreating oneself. The fathers identified factors that created barriers in maintaining contact and communication with their children while being incarcerated, such as personal challenges, systemic barriers (such as housing, employment, and the criminal justice system), and parental challenges.

This infographic from the National Fatherhood Initiative shares that 18.3 million children in the United States are without their biological father in the home. It details how children are affected in father-absent homes, including teen pregnancy, as teens are seven times more likely to become pregnant; child abuse, as children are more likely to face abuse and neglect; and behavioral problems. Data used in the infographic was retrieved from the U.S. Census Bureau.

This National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse brief provides information and action steps that fatherhood programs can use to help unmarried fathers understand and navigate their circumstances and options. Highlighted action steps include creating a parenting plan, finding out whether free or low-cost programs and services are available to unmarried fathers, attending negotiation conferences, and consistently complying with a parenting time schedule.

This brief by the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse analyzes data on the amount and frequency of formal and informal child support payments. The analysis included fathers aged 20-49 who reported living apart from at least one biological or adopted child aged 18 or younger and used data from the 2015-2017 National Survey of Family Growth. Highlights of the analysis were the reported frequency of support payments, which varied according to the father’s employment status.

This report assesses the Families Forward Demonstration (FFD), which aimed to integrate employment and training within child support programs. The FFD program included free occupational skills training, employment services, and wraparound supports. FFD emphasized “responsive” child support services that helped parents understand their support obligations, and suspended some enforcement actions as parents participated in the program. FFD was implemented in five jurisdictions: Cuyahoga County, Ohio; Franklin County, Ohio; Calhoun and Jackson Counties, Michigan; Benton, Franklin, and Walla Walla Counties, Washington; and New York City.

This blogpost illustrates how Jewish Family Services (JFS) of Columbus (Franklin County, Ohio) transitioned operations and adapted its practices as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The blogpost focuses on the JFS Journey program; Journey assists low-income individuals engaged with the Franklin County child support agency in obtaining new or better jobs, which helps them meet their support obligations. The discussion covers how JFS worked with local employers in the distribution industry to create placement opportunities for its clients, how JFS transitioned its group employment services digitally, and how new forms of staff and client engagement and procedures may be retained in a post-pandemic environment.

The Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) model is premised on how an individual’s perception of fairness and how they were treated during judicial proceedings impact compliance with child support orders more than the perceived fairness of the outcome. Funded as part of a PJAC evaluation grant from the Office of Child Support Enforcement, these six research briefs prepared by MDRC assess lessons learned from the model’s implementation by the Georgia Department of Human Services, Division of Child Support Services.