April 2024 CSQ

percent or more staffing cuts. OCSS also
experienced significant funding cuts. My
staff and I anxiously monitored new hire
data. The program was not really back on
its feet until 2012.
Coming into office, I wanted to establish
the vision, consensus, and policy
framework for a family-centered program.
My predecessors had laid the groundwork
through policy guidance, grant projects, and
initiatives like PAID. Texas was pioneering an
impressive family-centered program model, and
several other states and counties had implemented grant-funded initiatives.
The problem was that these grant initiatives often were not seen as part of
the “real” child support program, and were not sustained when the grant
ended. I wanted to integrate family-centered policies and practices into the
program. But with the fiscal crisis, few people were in the mood to hear
about an upcoming shift in federal priorities.
I remember one cab ride to a conference in 2010. My cabdriver told me that
he could not make enough money driving cab during the recession to pay
his child support. He wanted to go back to school to get an HVAC
certificate. He said he regularly saw his children, and his former wife
supported his plan. However, the county attorney had threatened him with
jail if he quit. I told his story at the conference. The story was not wellreceived.
Have a Plan B. I spent the recession years trying to describe the families I
knew and the type of approaches that would work. I also focused on
changing the language we used. To draw the picture, I borrowed familycentered
principles and language from the child welfare field. I sketched out
the “bubble chart” for a presentation slide. Much to my surprise, it became
our logo. We began drafting the 2016 Flexibility, Efficiency, and
Modernization rule early in the first term. As the program restabilized after
the recession, federal, state, county, and tribal child support agencies
engaged in extensive discussions about the program’s future. We stepped
up federal research to deepen the evidentiary basis, including CSPED,
Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC), and
Parenting Time Opportunities for Children (PTOC). We modernized our