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The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 mandates the establishment of new resources at the Federal and State levels to assist State Child Support Enforcement IV-D Agencies in:

Some of the provisions of PRWORA require the establishment of State Directories of New Hires (SDNH), State Case Registries (SCR), and, within an expanded Federal Parent Locator Service (FPLS), a National Directory of New Hires (NDNH), and a Federal Case Registry of Child Support Orders (FCR). The implementation date for the NDNH is October 1, 1997 and October 1, 1998 for the FCR.

A State’s SDNH is a registry of all newly hired employees in that State and the SCR is a registry of all the State’s IV-D child support cases and all support orders established or modified in the State on or after October 1, 1998. Each SDNH and SCR transmits data to the NDNH and the FCR components of the FPLS respectively. In addition, each State also transmits quarterly wage and unemployment insurance data to the NDNH.

In order to have a comprehensive data base with information from all employers, PRWORA also requires every Federal agency to transmit information on newly hired employees and quarterly wage information to the NDNH. Federal agencies transmit their data directly to the NDNH.

The existing FPLS is a computerized national location network operated by OCSE of the ACF within the DHHS. It provides address, employment, asset, and SSN information on persons to assist State and local CSEAs in locating non-custodial parents and putative fathers. Information may also be requested from the FPLS through the State Parent Locator Service (SPLS) to locate a child or parent for purposes related to establishing custody and visitation, investigating parental kidnapping, adoption or foster care.

There is no limit to the number of requests a State can submit to the existing FPLS. Turnaround times for requests vary between one and six weeks, depending on the turnaround time of the specific data sources that a State requests. The usefulness of information in any source depends on the time that has elapsed since the information was last updated, which for some sources may be several months. The data sources that may be searched are:

The expanded FPLS will continue to supply information from the sources listed above through FCR locate functions. However, automatic matches between the FCR and NDNH will provide States with current information on a greater number of individuals and their employers.