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 with low incomes to emphasize healthy child development, encourage parental support in all forms, foster parent-child and co-parenting relationships, and assist parents who struggle to pay support. These recommendations include the need to emphasize support for the entire family; establish and modify child support orders according to parents’ ability to pay support; identify and address the causes of noncompliance and limit punitive enforcement; transfer all child support collected by the state to TANF families; collect a wider range of demographic and outcome data and evaluate policy impacts on diverse family types; and provide government support to children in poverty whose parents cannot provide meaningful financial support.

The Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program was enacted in 1975 as a federal-state program and served to reduce public expenditures for recipients of cash assistance by obtaining ongoing support from noncustodial parents that could be used to reimburse the state and federal governments for part of that assistance. Over the years, CSE has evolved into a multifaceted program. While public assistance cost recovery remains an important function of the program, its other aspects include service delivery and promotion of self-sufficiency and parental responsibility. This Congressional Research Service summary explores how the CSE program has different rules for assistance families (e.g., those receiving cash benefits under TANF) and non-assistance families. Additionally, the summary highlights each of the CSE program’s seven major services -- (1) parent location, (2) paternity establishment, (3) establishment of child support orders, (4) review and modification of child support orders, (5) collection of child support payments, (6) distribution of child support payments, and (7) establishment and enforcement of medical support – and discusses how they impact TANF families.

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 & Child Support Enforcement programs. It also offers program operation details to learn how 14 different states operate their employment programs.

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.