April 2024 CSQ

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But I didn’t feel poor. I felt resourceful. We just needed a little help. When I applied for AFDC, I was required to assign my child support rights. It made no sense— child support was our own money. I closed my case and made do. Forty-six years later, I am still mad about cost recovery. Give young people a picture and a way out. After high school, I enrolled in community college. But I dropped out at the end of my first year, when my first child was born. I had no encouragement, money, or childcare to stay in school. Five years later, I applied to the University of Minnesota. We moved into a 500-unit student family housing community managed as a cooperative. I got involved, and eventually became the board president of the housing corporation. Everything I know about politics I learned in that role. I was planning to become a librarian but was encouraged by my friends to go to law school. In 1979, I became the first single parent admitted to the University of Chicago Law School. Three-quarters of the students and nearly the entire faculty were male. During my first year, Chicago public school teachers went on strike, so my children sat on a bench outside my classroom every day. From the beginning, I wanted to become an anti-poverty attorney. I became an officer of the law school legal clinic, and initiated a project to represent adolescents in child welfare proceedings. Encourage fathers to stay involved. My views about implementing realistic child support policies and the role of fathers in the child support program developed over time. I had my own personal experiences. I was also influenced by my experiences as a legal services supervising attorney in the Newark, NJ area. I represented inadequately housed and homeless people, keeping weekly intake hours at a local soup kitchen. But I really began to understand the effects of existing child support policies when I worked for MDRC, a nonprofit research firm in New York City. I helped implement a research demonstration pilot in the early 1990s called Parent’s Fair Share (PFS). PFS tested a model that included employment services, child support case management, peer support, and mediation that later became the basis for the Child Support Noncustodial Parent
Employment Demonstration (CSPED). I talked with many fathers, and heard their trauma, pain, grief, despair, humor, and hope. In about 1997, early advocates for low-income noncustodial parents made a strategic decision to engage NCSEA in a dialogue. I remember the first time they presented on “fragile families” and “deadbroke dads” at an NCSEA conference. They were almost hissed off the stage, but they were persuasive. I began to publish reports identifying more realistic child support policies, became a national fatherhood leadership board member, and worked with Congress to draft child support distribution and sections of the Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood grant legislation that ultimately passed as part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA). The child support program began in a different era. My then-husband and I ran a dairy farm in the early 1970s. Early in my marriage, I was not permitted to work outside the farm, drive the car, or have a checkbook. But out of financial necessity, I then became the primary wage-earner. I applied for a credit card at the very department store where I worked, but was denied. Only my husband could open a credit card account, and only his income counted. Later, when my husband and I separated, my car insurance coverage was cancelled, although his policy continued. The insurance agent explained marital coverture to me--under the law, man and wife were considered one person, and unfortunately for me, that person was the husband. I tried to get renter’s insurance, but found out that I was uninsurable as a divorced mother. At that time, divorced fathers weren’t encouraged to stick around. The attitude was: “Let him get on with his life,” and “The new husband can take care of the kids.” There was little appreciation for the traumatic loss experienced by children and their parents. Voluntary acknowledgment of parentage and child support enforcement has helped transform the way we look at fathers. Title IV-D was enacted to increase gender equity. Title IV-D of the Social Security Act was enacted in 1975 with overwhelming support from women’s rights and anti-poverty advocates. It was one of a series of laws intended to level the playing field between men and women, such as the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. As OCSS commissioner, I participated in several international conferences, and learned that one of the first steps taken by countries with emerging civil rights for women was to adopt a family law code granting mothers the right to obtain child support.
Page 2 and 3: Table of Contents April 2024 Execut
Page 4 and 5: innovative solutions. I attended se
Page 7 and 8: Balancing Act: The Shifting Focus o
Page 9 and 10: Rightfully, the child support progr
Page 11 and 12: Moving the Program Forward: Final R
Page 13 and 14: to protect and enhance Tribal lands
Page 15 and 16: now has “an important tool to hel
Page 17 and 18: of the Tax Reduction Act of 1975. O
Page 19 and 20: Income of both parents: $15,000 Par
Page 21: From Customer to Commissioner by Vi
Page 25 and 26: support. Better-off fathers, on the
Page 27 and 28: ACF meet with stakeholders to reexa
Page 29 and 30: communications strategy and conduct
Page 31 and 32: Creation of the Child Support Reent
Page 33 and 34: incarcerated parent with a copy of
Page 35 and 36: NCSEA 2024 Policy Forum Wrap-up:
Page 37 and 38: employment on the various programs
Page 39 and 40: Carla West Connie Chesnik Corrinne

April 2024 CSQ

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