Commissioner Tanguler Gray

November is Native American Heritage Month, an annual time to celebrate the rich and diverse cultures, traditions, and history of Indigenous peoples. I’m so fortunate to be able to see vibrant tribal communities and their dedicated staff during site visits and tribal conferences. At OCSE, we work to uplift the great work of tribal child support programs. Earlier this year, we published our first ever tribal infographic, and we recently updated the infographic with FY21 data (PDF). We also spotlight tribal work in this newsletter, including this issue where you can read about Lac Courte Oreilles Child Support Program's Good Life Vision and White Earth Nation’s transition to electronic files.

Human-centered design projects

Another way we seek to better support tribal child support programs is through human-centered design. This approach gives us a new way to collaborate with tribal directors to identify problems and gain insight and input on the design, format, and delivery of potential solutions. We partnered with the University of Maryland Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship to learn about human-centered design, and three teams interviewed tribal directors about their program needs and how we could help. The teams identified potential solutions to their challenges:

Improving the tribal plan management process
This team is working with tribal directors to identify a solution for an optional streamlined tribal IV-D plan and plan amendment process. They developed draft tribal IV-D plan pages through interviews, regional meetings, webinars, and collaboration with a joint OCSE/tribal director workgroup. The workgroup is hosting listening sessions to get additional feedback from tribal directors on the draft Action Transmittal that will provide instructions and examples for the optional streamlined tribal IV-D plan and plan amendment process.

Building tribal capacity and relationships through enhanced training, technical assistance, and support
This team is working to help tribal programs understand the 1115 grant application and management process. They discovered that tribal programs value relationships and desire more communication from OCSE and an increased presence at tribal events. Tribal programs also want Notice of Funding Opportunity flexibilities and an improved grant resources webpage. The team is finding and developing new resources for a webpage that will introduce visitors to our competitive grant funding: its history, application basics, and resources to apply for and manage grant projects. The team will seek input from tribal leaders and stakeholders about the webpage and plans to launch it in early 2023.

Increasing tribal input on OCSE-created outreach materials 
This team established a communications workgroup to learn more about tribal communication preferences and get feedback on outreach materials that OCSE creates. Over the summer, the workgroup had a kickoff meeting where they chose a “Parent 101” one-pager as their first project. The workgroup decided the one-pager should highlight core services provided by tribal programs, a few tribal program flexibilities, a call-to-action for questions, and space for tribal logos and contact information. OCSE’s graphic designer created three mock-ups, and the workgroup offered feedback on the content and design. We'll be sharing the Parent 101 resource soon!

Visit our website for tribal agency resources and sign up for our Child Support Report newsletter for the latest human-centered design updates.

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Raegan Hendrickson, Director, White Earth Nation Child Support Program

At the beginning of the pandemic, White Earth Nation laid off employees, including six child support case managers and one admin assistant. This left our program with a manager and financial coordinator to operate the office and maintain all child support cases. This was challenging because we didn’t have a way for staff to work from home. Also, it was a particularly busy time for our program because Minnesota had a cost-of-living adjustment effective May 1, but our small team was able to make it work. 

Fortunately, we were able to slowly start bringing workers back to help. We ordered laptops for employees to telework, but they couldn’t access case files from home, so we had to figure out a way to store cases electronically. White Earth Human Resources stored employee files electronically, and we contacted their vendor about services to best fit our needs. They were able to provide what we needed, and we executed the service agreement approved by OCSE. 

We worked with the vendor via Zoom to design the filing structure and the system’s appearance. We chose to design it exactly how our case files looked. We purchased licenses and scanners for staff to access the software and scan case documents, and the vendor trained our team on how to use it all. We launched in November 2020, and it took about a year to scan and sort our open case file documents. We’ve almost finished scanning and sorting closed cases. We continue to contract with the vendor to make improvements, like our recent enhancement that allows clients to access and fill out forms online.  

Going paperless was a big change—sometimes you still wanted to grab the case file! However, electronic files are more convenient and just as easy to pull up on your computer. We hope this improvement prevents layoffs in the event of another pandemic because now everyone can work from home.

For more information, email raegan.hendrickson@whiteearth-nsn.gov.

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Ted Mermigos, Director, Delaware Division of Child Support Services

The Delaware Division of Child Support Services works with fatherhood groups to share program updates and help parents manage child support matters. In 2021, we started a new partnership with The ReManned Project, Inc. to help support parents as they work to meet their financial and medical child support obligations.  

The ReManned Project is a nonprofit coaching and consulting group in Wilmington, Delaware, that specializes in personal and leadership development. They help minority inner-city men learn fundamental tools to improve the quality of their lives, their family’s lives, and their community. 

This partnership provided three outreach opportunities:

• Referring noncustodial parents who want to improve compliance with their court-ordered child support obligations to The ReManned Project
   
• Allowing The ReManned Project to serve as a gateway for participants seeking specific child support case information and child support services
   
• Allowing both programs to improve outreach about their services to underserved fathers through listening sessions   

Listening Session tour

In July, we met with a group of 15 noncustodial parents as part of a Listening Session tour with The ReManned Project. This session was the first in a series taking place across the state to help us identify barriers affecting minority dads.  

Although some participants expressed frustration, it was a constructive conversation. They asked questions on a variety of child support and family court policies. One issue that gets a lot of discussion from policy makers, legislators, and the public is the license suspension program, and it was a big topic at our listening session, too. Most participants have had licenses suspended. One gentleman said his license was suspended even though his employer had been sending payments for several years. He was even pulled over one evening while on his way to work because of his suspended driver’s license. After our office reviewed his case, we discovered his license had been suspended years ago but was now eligible for reinstatement because he was making payments. 

This listening session made us wonder how many suspensions might be eligible for reinstatement based on our compliance criteria and flexibilities. We ran a query in our system and found 1,352 cases met the criteria for possible reinstatement. We gave child support specialists three weeks to review the cases, and the project resulted in 86% of the licenses being reinstated. This project was the first of its kind in Delaware. Due to its success, we’re looking into doing it every year.     

As we continue our listening sessions with noncustodial parents, we plan to learn about our customers and explore solutions to help parents become compliant or maintain compliance with their child support orders.

For more information, email Theodore.Mermigos@delaware.gov.

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OCSE issued recent guidance to help states and tribes develop and operate their child support programs according to federal laws and regulations:

• FY 2022 and FY 2023 Incentive Payment Pool Amounts (11/14/22)
• Domestic Violence Resources, Training, and Collaboration (10/28/22)

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