The following Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) data preview report^[1] highlights financial and statistical achievements of the Child Support Enforcement program for fiscal year 2000. This report is a first look at fiscal year 2000 data and shows advancements made in the Child Support program over the previous year. The information is taken from State-submitted reports on program status sent to OCSE quarterly, for financial data, and annually for statistical data. Collections data are taken from form OCSE-34A and expenditure data from the OCSE-396A. Fiscal years 1999 and 2000 statistical data included in this report are taken from the OCSE-157 report. States use the OCSE-157 form to report caseload, orders and paternities established, medical support, staffing, and other statistical information to OCSE.

Some States have improved data reporting and implemented data clean-up projects in anticipation of the data reliability requirements of the Child Support Performance and Incentive Act of 1998 (CSPIA). Data reporting requirements also changed in fiscal year 1999. Therefore, information reported for fiscal years 1999 and 2000 are not always comparable with data reported for previous years. In addition, information is presented as reported by States and no assumption has yet been made concerning the reliability of the data.

This report shows that, in fiscal year 2000, $17.9 billion in child support payments were distributed and nearly 1.6 million paternities were established or acknowledged. The total child support caseload for FY 2000 was 17.4 million. There were 10.7 million cases with orders and 1.2 million new support orders were established.