FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Monday, April 10, 1995
Contact: Michael Kharfen (202) 401-9215
HHS ANNOUNCES CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT REINVENTION UNDERWAY
HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala announced today that the nation's child
support enforcement program has launched an initiative to promote improved
performance, service quality and public satisfaction in the program.
"The urgency of our task has been
stressed by many," said Mary Jo Bane, assistant secretary for children
and families. "This initiative to set goals and measure results
will strengthen our ability to ensure needed support for millions of
children and is in keeping with the president's mission to make government
work better for the American people."
As a two-year pilot project under the
Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), the Administration
for Children and Families' Office of Child Support Enforcement will
work to develop effective partnerships with all states. To support the
initiative, about 30 state and local child support programs have volunteered
to initiate improvements.
"We recognized the need for significant
improvement in the child support system, and have gained support for
reinvention. We will work closely with our state and local partners
to help them accomplish their objectives in these demonstrations,"
said David Gray Ross, deputy director, Office of Child Support Enforcement.
"We have much work to do, but today we are taking a big step forward
to help children."
Highlights of some demonstrations follow:
In California, Los Angeles, San Francisco
and Sacramento counties will, respectively, try to improve cooperation
of welfare mothers in identifying and locating alleged fathers; explore
the feasibility of group medical insurance for children whose parents
do not have work-based insurance; and provide employment counseling
to noncustodial parents. In a statewide demonstration, California will
provide seed money to stimulate innovations in child support operations
to boost collections.
In Illinois, the Chicago (Cook County)
program will streamline the child support referral process under a "one-stop
shopping" concept so that unemployed noncustodial parents can become
quickly employed and pay their child support.
The Michigan project will attempt to
improve child support program management by using a new contracting
process under which state reimbursements to prosecuting attorneys and
Friends of the Court will be results based.
The demonstration in New York is part
of a regional initiative, that includes New Jersey and to a lesser degree,
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Key projects are in improving collections
of child support arrears by obtaining access to better information on
parents' financial assets, and developing criteria to measure the
effectiveness of paternity establishment activities.
A regional project in Kansas, Missouri,
Iowa and Nebraska will improve service delivery, initiate results-oriented
performance measures and conduct training.
Ohio's demonstration will measure the state's overall child support
program performance. It will evaluate the effectiveness of improvements
made in the past three years to correct program deficiencies.
Nearly 30 percent of all births in the
United States are to unmarried parents. In FY 1993, almost 3.5 million
children in the child support enforcement program needed legal paternity
established. In that year only 554,204 paternities were established,
a 7 percent increase over 1992. Child support collections in 1993 reached
a record $8.9 billion. GPRA activities are designed to help increase
paternity establishments, award
establishments and collection of support.
The federal/state child support program
is one of about 70 federal programs designated by the Office of Management
and Budget as pilots under GPRA.
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Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials
are available at http://www.hhs.gov/news.
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