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Administration for Children and Families US Department of Health and Human Services
The Office of Child Support Enforcement Giving Hope and Support to America's Children

Lack of referrals of IV-E cases to IV-D

DCL9229 July 30, 1992

TO ALL STATE IV-D DIRECTORS:

Dear Colleague:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General recently released a report entitled "Child Support For Children in IV-E Foster Care" (OEI-04-91-00530). The purpose of the review was "to determine the extent States collected child support from biological parents of children of Title IV-E funded foster care as required by the 1984 Child Support Amendment Act."

The study sampled eight states who accounted for almost two-thirds of the children in the IV-E program in FY 1989. The thrust of the findings was that the interface between the Programs is inadequate, resulting in a lack of referrals of IV-E cases to IV-D. One of the important consequences of this coordination problem is that some child support collections are being incorrectly distributed to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (IV-A) rather than to IV-E.

According to the report, a small percentage of the sampled cases were misclassified at the IV-D agency. These cases typically started out as IV-A cases in which the children were subsequently placed in IV-E foster care. The IV-D agency did not reclassify the cases from IV-A to IV-E when the change was made. The reasons cited in the report for this lack of appropriate classification by IV-D were that IV-D was either not notified because a system for notification did not exist, or "...inadequate systems allowed cases to slip through improperly classified."

As a result of this misclassification at the IV-D agency, nineteen percent of the sample's child support collections were mistakenly distributed to IV-A rather than IV-E.

These findings are evidence of the need for us to improve our

relationship with IV-E. Please examine the IV-D interaction with the Foster Care Program in your State. If there is a lack of under-standing between the staffs, formal and informal communication and training, please take steps to correct these problems.

Sincerely yours,

Allie Page Matthews

Deputy Director

cc: ACF Regional Administrators