Kentucky Child Support Program

In 2017, the Kentucky Child Support Enforcement program used an Access and Visitation grant to help establish the Custody and Visitation Hotline, which helps parents and caregivers with parenting time and other family law questions. While parenting time and child support are legally separate, we believe they’re linked: a negative impact on one has a ripple effect on the other. 

The hotline is operated by our nonprofit partner Louisville Legal Aid and has helped nearly 6,500 Kentuckians. Callers speak with an intake worker who asks targeted questions to learn about their case and refers the caller to the appropriate service. Most callers speak with an attorney about their case, but the hotline is limited in helping with cases involving conflict of interest, dependency, neglect and abuse, active legal representation, and active criminal charges.

Callers can also get help with: 

• Document preparation: Specialists can provide templates for client-specific petitions and motions fitting individual needs. This is helpful since Kentucky is made up of 120 counties, each with local rules and appointed Domestic Relations Commissioners in lieu of judges. 
   
• Referrals: Specialists can refer callers for help with domestic violence, housing issues, substance abuse treatment, Veteran assistance, and economic stability counseling.
   
• Legal advice: Specialists can escalate callers with more complex legal questions to family law attorneys who can provide legal advice and limited representation to pro se parties—those representing themselves—who need child support modification and enforcement help.  

Our hotline primarily helps single-income households. Only 15% of callers are married, and 95% make less than $40,000 a year. Without the hotline, those callers would likely go without parenting time assistance, having a direct impact on Kentucky’s future collections and establishment of child support. The hotline’s ability to provide parents with other critical resources like disaster relief, foreclosure prevention, local child support contacts, and benefits assistance was vital during the pandemic. 

We’re looking to build on the hotline’s success by hiring more staff to help callers and their families. 

For more information, contact IV-D Director Lily Patteson at 502-564-5778 or lily.patteson@ky.gov.

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Iowa Child Support Services

In August 2020, OCSE awarded funding to eight state child support agencies through the Economic Mobility and Responsible Parenting Demonstration Grant. In July 2021, we awarded funding to an additional cohort of 7 states and 2 tribal programs. This article is the first in a series that features their efforts to leverage their child support program's responsible parenting expertise. For more information contact Michael Hayes at michael.hayes@acf.hhs.gov or Donna Steele at donna.steele@acf.hh.gov.

In 2020, Iowa Child Support Services received a section 1115 grant to educate and motivate young adults to postpone parenthood until after they complete their education, start a career, and have a committed relationship. We partnered with Iowa State University to create “Parenting: It’s a Life” - a program to teach young adults how to access services to achieve economic mobility, develop responsible parenting skills, and have healthy relationships. The program also works to reach young adults through a College Simulation that ran at Iowa Central Community College and Southwestern Community College in fall 2021.

This simulation shows participants what it’s like to be a student parent and highlights college and community resources for student parents. It allows young adults to engage in activities that require decision-making, demonstrating how to successfully care for a child and attend college at the same time. Participants take on a student parent role with unique characteristics. They move around a room visiting different tables that provide information about college, health, and human services. There is also a table where students focus on 1) class: do a simple worksheet; 2) work: spend two minutes working on a puzzle; and 3) personal time: discuss relationships with peers, coworkers, and family. 

The program also evaluates what students learn during the simulation. Initial findings from the 2021 simulation suggest it successfully provided resources to support student parents. It also allowed students to experience what it feels like to be a parent during their college years. Participants said that being a student parent is challenging and reflected on the possibility of delaying having children. They said the simulation felt real, and they enjoyed the entire experience. 

Our findings also identified several ways to improve evaluation and programming. We’re implementing these improvements as we roll out this simulation again at the same community colleges in fall 2022. We’ll collect and analyze more data from students and publish the results.

If you’re interested in learning more, email pial@iastate.edu or check out the Parenting: It’s a Life website .

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Michael Hayes, OCSE

October is Domestic Violence (DV) Awareness Month, and we’re reprinting an article with information that can help you better support parents in your caseload.

Financial stability and support are at the very heart of our work in child support. By helping domestic violence survivors safely get this support, we can play an essential role in ending relationship violence and the damage it does to families. Here are 11 things you should know about domestic violence to better help parents in your caseload: 

1. There’s a lot of domestic violence. 1 in 3 women and 1 in 7 men in the U.S. report experiencing domestic violence in their lifetime. This means that it’s likely affected many people you know. It’s even more prevalent in the child support caseload where 4 in 10 custodial parents report domestic violence with the other parent on their case. 
    
2. It’s underreported. Only 1 in 10 custodial parents in the federal case registry have a family violence indicator marked on their case. In some states, it’s less than 1%.
    
3. “Are you a victim of domestic violence?” is the wrong question to ask. Many survivors answer no to this question because they wonder if it will affect the services they’ll receive and who will get this information. Still, most state applications ask this question. OCSE worked with DV experts to create model screening questions (PDF).
    
4. Financial security = the ability to leave an abusive relationship. More than two-thirds of survivors report staying longer in or returning to an abusive relationship due to financial hardship for themselves and their children. This is how child support can help!
    
5. Domestic violence is not just physical. When many people hear the term domestic violence, they tend to think bruises, black eyes, and broken bones. The definition we use at OCSE is “a pattern of assaultive or coercive behaviors that may include physical, sexual, emotional, psychological, verbal, and economic attacks that are used against an intimate partner to achieve compliance from or power and control over them.” Think of an iceberg where physical abuse is the tip of the iceberg above the surface, and most of the abuse is all the non-physical behaviors below the surface.
    
6. Survivors need public safety net services. More than 90% of victims report using some kind of public safety net resources to leave and establish a safe home for themselves and their children. TANF, Medicaid, SNAP, child care, and housing assistance are the primary safety net services — many of which have child support cooperation requirements. Survivors are likely to be part of those public assistance referrals you get from your partner agencies.
    
7. Child support processes can retraumatize survivors. Paternity establishment, genetic testing, service of process, in-office negotiations, court hearings, review and adjustment, and case closing are all opportunities an abuser might use to continue to exert control over their victim. These processes could also trigger a trauma response from a survivor. 
    
8. Ninety percent of survivors want child support if they could get it safely. However, data from one state survey indicated that as many as half of survivors don’t have formal child support orders and aren’t receiving any informal support. This means they’re going without.
    
9. You need specialized knowledge and skills. Training is essential to working DV cases, and OCSE has provided training to child support professionals in more than 30 states and 40 tribes. But there needs to be more!
    
10. Neutrality in child support doesn’t mean neutrality when it comes to violence. In fact, if child support agencies don’t build in safety measures and protections for survivors, they have unintentionally tipped the scale in favor of abusers. 
     
11. There are domestic violence experts and organizations to help you. More than 100 national, state, regional, tribal, and local domestic violence experts and organizations can help you support survivors. They’ve contributed to and participated in child support trainings, developed public education materials for safer access to child support, reviewed child support agency policies and procedures, and presented at conferences. You don’t have to—and you shouldn’t—do this on your own. If you want to know who to talk to in your area, contact Michael Hayes (Michael.Hayes@acf.hhs.gov).

OCSE created domestic violence awareness tear sheet flyers in English and Spanish with information for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. There’s also a version for tribal communities that includes contact information for the StrongHearts Native Helpline.

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A recent Children’s Bureau and OCSE joint letter highlights new guidance about removing financial barriers to help reunify families in the child welfare program. The Children’s Bureau policy notes IV-E programs must thoroughly review cases and be confident a referral to the child support program will not interfere with reunification.

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