When I think of the child support program, I think of one that serves and supports the whole family. Lifting up both parents helps ensure children receive the financial, emotional, and medical support they need. What's just as important as serving the whole family is serving all families. Equity is an essential part of administering child support to ensure we have quality services and fair outcomes. At OCSE, we strive to create an environment that advances racial equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and held back by persistent poverty and inequality.
In spring 2021, the Administration for Children and Families launched Equity in Action , an ambitious agenda to eliminate inequities within federal programming and the administration of human services. As part of this effort, every ACF office committed to create an Equity Action Plan. ACF also outlined its commitment to advancing racial equity and strongly encouraged grantees to assess and address how their programs and policies may perpetuate systemic barriers for children and families of color.
OCSE’s commitment to racial equity
ACF’s Equity in Action agenda gave OCSE a chance to work on one of my 3Ps of engagement: Process. We’re always open to revisiting how things are done to ensure we’re operating effectively and efficiently. Here are some strategies we’ve implemented to advance equity in the child support program:
- Supported equity in grants: We included equity impact clauses in new section 1115 grant opportunities so the recipient ensures that the grant approach, workplans, and deliverables follow a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.
- Developed a lived experience toolkit: We developed a Starter Kit for Engaging People with Lived Experience (PDF) for child support programs, grant recipients, and stakeholders to engage people with lived experience and enhance programs and practices.
- Promoted tribal successes: We published a tribal infographic (PDF) providing a national view of tribal child support collections and the growing number of programs operated by tribes. This tribal publication will complement what we’ve historically published only for state child support programs.
- Supported equity in legislation and regulation: We incorporated equity impact statements in the legislative and regulatory proposal process to pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.
We’re proud of these efforts to promote a more equitable child support program, but we also know there’s more work to do. Moving forward, OCSE will:
- Make child support information and resources accessible in different languages on our website. This is an ongoing strategy.
- Evaluate and provide opportunities for more flexibility for tribal programs within the next 12 months.
- Deliver training on the grant application process to tribal child support programs every 6 months to build their capacity to apply for and manage grants.
- Annually evaluate demographic representation in OCSE’s workforce and use those findings to target recruitment and promote diversity.
You can also read about a few state equity efforts in previous Child Support Report articles from Michigan, Colorado, and Illinois.
Please send any suggestions or comments on our plan to OCSEcommunications@acf.hhs.gov. Keep an eye out for our semiannual update about this effort.
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 September 2022 Child Support Report newsletter.