Listening to Those We Serve

By now, I’m sure you know that I’m big on engagement, so you can imagine my excitement when I got to see, talk to, and collaborate with so many child support professionals in person at last month’s NCSEA Policy Forum. After two years of virtual conferences, it was invigorating to have these important conversations face to face.

And the breadth and depth of these conversations did not disappoint. The plenaries demonstrated the evolution of the child support program and included different perspectives when asking how we can better serve today’s families. During the performance metrics session, panelists acknowledged that parental engagement is important but wondered how the program might measure it. They also discussed that an engagement measure may come at the expense of another metric. During the state guidelines session, panelists discussed how child support can provide support to one member of the family while causing damage to another if orders are set without fact gathering and evidence. And we learned from a domestic violence survivor’s firsthand experience about the importance of safety-informed policies and practices in the child support program.

One of the most powerful sessions was called “Are We Hearing Them?” Parents who’ve been involved with the child support program talked about the importance of listening to their lived experiences and the need for individualized engagement because everyone’s circumstance is different. They also encouraged us to think about the first impression parents might have of our program. We should consider each interaction that a parent has with our office—from the time they walk in the door and including every person they encounter along the way—to make sure they feel heard and receive good customer service. Hearing these viewpoints was illuminating, and several speakers throughout the forum referenced lessons from this session.

Helping programs leverage lived experience

OCSE is proud to be helping child support agencies lift parent voices. We recently worked with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and ICF (a strategic consulting and communications organization) to host training webinars with child support and lived experience experts. These trainings highlighted successful strategies for how programs can integrate lived experience into the design and delivery of their services and policies. You can read about these trainings and a new lived experience starter kit in the March issue of the Child Support Report.

The NCSEA Policy Forum always energizes me, and I especially appreciated this one with so many sessions about how we can engage parents, stakeholders, and each other. I hope to see you at an upcoming conference to continue these conversations.
 

Tanguler Gray, Commissioner

This blog gives the commissioner a forum to communicate directly with child support professionals and other stakeholders about relevant topics. The Commissioner’s Voice is reprinted from the March 2022 Child Support Report newsletter.