For the past 16 months, I’ve visited with several tribal child support programs and learned a lot about their cultures, communities, and operations. I’ve also heard from many tribes about their program initiatives, successes, and challenges. This engagement has informed how I think we should support tribes through my 3Ps: People, Process, and Performance.
To expand this engagement, OCSE recently hosted its first Tribal Consultation in 15 years. Consultation is designed to build relationships and inform decision-making through open and meaningful discussion. I was honored to co-facilitate the consultation with Councilman Lee Spoonhunter from the Northern Arapaho Tribe. We led discussions and heard from tribal leaders and their designees on four important topics:
- Modification of the non-federal share of program expenditures: The requirement for tribes to provide the current non-federal share of program expenditures can limit growth, cause disruptions, and create instability. Modifying this requirement would remove a major barrier to administering a child support program. It would also ensure the opportunity for tribal families to receive child support services that reflect and affirm their cultures and traditions, promote parental responsibility, create financial stability, and lift tribal families out of poverty.
- Tribal legislative priorities: We heard from tribal leaders about legislative priorities for their communities.
- Additional regulatory changes, such as procedural and technical changes: Earlier this year, we gave a presentation to tribal child support directors about potential regulatory changes. At the consultation, we received input from tribal leaders and their designees about these possible regulatory changes. We noted that possible changes discussed during the consultation were only suggestions and would need to go through a separate Notice of Proposed Rulemaking process.
- Tribal systems: Tribal systems help in the processing of child support cases and are essential to a program’s performance. We gathered feedback on tribes’ visions for systems that can better serve their program and how OCSE can help.
It was valuable to hear directly from tribal leaders and directors and to continue strengthening our government-to-government relationship. OCSE will publish a final report for the consultation by June 20, 2023.
We welcome additional feedback, and tribes can submit written testimony until Saturday, May 6, 2023, to OCSE.Tribal@acf.hhs.gov.
Tanguler Gray, Commissioner
This blog gives the commissioner a forum to communicate directly with child support professionals and other partners about relevant topics. The Commissioner’s Voice is reprinted from the April 2023 Child Support Report newsletter.