August is Child Support Awareness Month, an exciting time to promote the benefits and success of this critical income support program. In FY22, state programs (PDF) nationwide collected $30.5 billion and served 12.8 million children—that’s 1 in 5 children in the United States. Tribal programs (PDF) collected $51 million in FY22, $10 million of which was collected for other tribes, states, or countries. This is the kind of support that helps set kids up for success.
The benefits don’t stop there—we’re committed to serving the whole family. Recently we changed our name to Office of Child Support Services to reflect our family-centered approach. In addition to core services funded directly by the child support program, we support states and tribes in implementing services like employment programs, fatherhood initiatives, demonstration grants, and reentry partnerships.
This approach reflects one of the five strategic goals of the Administration for Children and Families: Use whole-family, community-based strategies to increase financial stability and economic mobility. State, tribal, and local child support programs are uniquely positioned to advance whole-family strategies because of their extensive interactions with parents and caregivers. With that in mind, we’ve identified several goals for advancing whole-family strategies through our work:
- Family needs are prioritized by emphasizing services and resources that are available to both parents.
- Wraparound and cross-agency services are provided in a thoughtful, expedient manner.
- Interacting with child support is valued and seen as a positive experience.
- Child support provides an opportunity for families to foster a connection between the custodial parent, child, and noncustodial parent that may not have otherwise occurred.
- Child support allows families to be financially stable.
You’ll continue to see these tenets reflected in my engagement framework and in our priorities for the program.
Help spread the word
We’ve created a Child Support Awareness Month webpage with a social media toolkit to help state and tribal child support agencies and the public spread the word about this family-centered program. The page has sample text and graphics that you can copy and paste or modify as needed.
The toolkit includes these sections:
- National, tribal, and employer infographics
- Fatherhood resources
- Services provided by the child support program
- How child support works (English and Spanish video)
- Sign up for child support (English and Spanish)
- Change a child support order (English and Spanish)
- Establish parentage (English and Spanish)
- Sample newsletter item
- Virtual backgrounds
- Child support overview PowerPoint for partners
We hope you’ll use these materials to help people understand how child support services work for the whole family and encourage them to learn more from their local office.
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 August 2023 Child Support Report newsletter.