Fatherhood Initiatives in the Administration’s FY 2012 Budget

March 06, 2011

The President has a deep and long history of supporting policies that can lift up fathers— expecting them to take responsibility for their children, but also helping them be the fathers they want to be by making policy changes and offering services that encourage, not discourage, healthy and active paternal involvement.

There are many facets of this Administration-wide effort, as is made clear in the President’s FY 2012 budget request. The budget request includes new investments of $305 million in FY 2012 and $2.4 billion over ten years for the Child Support and Fatherhood Initiative. The budget also proposes continued funding of $150 million to support the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grant program. Both initiatives are part of HHS’s efforts to ensure that children have the support and involvement of both parents.

CHILD SUPPORT and FATHERHOOD INITIATIVE

The FY 2012 budget includes several legislative proposals to continue a commitment of vigorous child support enforcement, a continuous emphasis on program outcomes and efficiency, and provisions to help further encourage fathers to take responsibility for their children and to promote strong family relationships. The Child Support Enforcement program is administered by HHS’s Office of Child Support Enforcement within the Administration for Children and Families. These proposals include:

Improved distribution policies to ensure that when non-custodial parents do the right thing and pay child support, their children benefit. The proposals encourage states to distribute more child support payments to families so that more of the support paid by fathers reaches their children. Taken together, these distribution proposals are estimated to result in an additional $1.9 billion in child support payments reaching the children. They include:

Encouraging states to pass through the current child support collections to TANF families, rather than retaining those payments;
Granting states additional flexibility to discontinue the requirement that child support payments be assigned to the state when a family receives TANF assistance;
Requiring that when children are in foster care, the child support payments made on their behalf are used in their best interest;
Prohibiting the use of child support from fathers to repay Medicaid costs associated with giving birth—a policy already discontinued in many states;
Including a short-term five-year pool of funds to offset a significant share of states’ costs in implementing the distribution policies; and
Providing one-time funds to states for necessary adjustments to their computer systems.

Fostering fathers’ engagement in their children’s lives. The Budget provides $570 million over ten years to support increased access and visitation services and integrates these services into the core child support program. A few states currently help parents establish access and visitation agreements with significant success and modest costs. These services not only improve parent-child relationships and outcomes for children, but can also lead to greater, more regular payment of child support. Research shows that when fathers spend time with their children, they are more likely to meet their financial obligations. This creates a “double win” for children – an engaged parent and more financial security. The Budget includes proposals to:

Update the statutory purposes of the CSE program to recognize the program’s evolving mission and activities that help parents cooperate and support their children;
Require states to establish access and visitation responsibilities in all initial child support orders; and
Encourage states to undertake activities that support access and visitation, implementing domestic violence safeguards as a critical component of this new state responsibility.

Short-term Increase to Incentive Pool. The CSE program clearly demonstrates a high return on investment. For every dollar invested in the program, CSE collected $4.78 in child support. The Budget includes $600 million for a temporary increase in incentive payments to States based on performance in FY 2012 and FY 2013. These payments are to be based on state performance, which continues an emphasis on program outcomes and efficiency while also helping states overcome short term fiscal stresses.

The Budget also continues a commitment to vigorous enforcement. The FY 2012 proposal includes several additional proposals aimed at increasing and improving collections and improving efficiency and effectiveness by:

Requiring States to amend their uniform interstate child support laws to ensure efficient international child support case processing as required by The Hague Child Support Treaty;
Closing a loophole to allow garnishment of longshoremen’s benefits;
Improving the processes for freezing and seizing assets in multistate financial institutions;
Providing tribal child support programs with access to the Federal Parent Locator Service and other enforcement tools and grant programs currently available to state child support programs, as well as sustained support for model tribal computer systems;
Modifying the threshold at which states become subject to performance penalty based upon their paternity establishment percentage to better reflect state performance;
Requiring each state’s use of procedures to review and adjust child support debt owed to the state, and to discourage accumulation of unpaid child support debt during incarceration;
Revising title IV-D to consolidate and clarify various data matching, safeguarding and disclosure authorities.

HEALTHY MARRIAGE and RESPONSIBLE FATHERHOOD GRANTS

The FY 2012 budget proposes continued funding of $150 million to support Healthy Marriages and Responsible Fatherhood to be administered by HHS’ Office of Family Assistance within the Administration for Children and Families. These funds will be split equally among Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood activities. Under the law:

Healthy Marriage funds may be used for a number of services including pre-marital education; marriage enhancement programs; divorce reduction programs; marriage mentoring programs; and marriage education, marriage skills, and relationship skills programs, that may include parenting skills, financial management, conflict resolution, and job and career advancement.
The $75 million in Responsible Fatherhood funds may be used for fatherhood activities intended to promote or sustain marriage, responsible parenting, economic stability, and media campaigns that reach families with important messages about responsible fatherhood.