Section 1115 Grants: University Partnerships Grant: Iowa

The goal of Iowa's University Partnership demonstration was to build a relationship between the child support agency and local university. It leveraged university scholars with significant public policy expertise to analyze child support data to inform decision-making and improve program effectiveness. The Iowa Child Support Recovery Unit partnered with Iowa State University and the Child Welfare Research and Training Project to examine paternity establishment methods throughout Iowa in order to develop a new data-driven approach to set paternity establishment targets.

The objectives:

1. Gather demographic, caseload, and paternity establishment data
2. Analyze the data gathered to determine the need for improvement and the best use of limited resources; develop a new model based on these findings
3. Implement the model and assess ongoing performance
4. Analyze the results

See the final report attached below.