While child support professionals are probably familiar with Part D of the Social Security Act, many may not be aware of other parts of the Act, such as Part A which funds services for people receiving public assistance, or Part E which funds child welfare services for children who are abused or neglected. Many families receive more than one of the Social Security Act services – some for generations.
About 20 percent of the people in the child welfare cases also have involvement in a domestic relations case. This second statistic is a smaller percentage because some parents have more than one domestic relations case. Fifteen percent of domestic relations cases have a child welfare case, with 7 percent of the people in domestic cases also involved in a child welfare case.
These overlapping cases for the same families are important
because they represent a possible Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) for the
children involved. ACEs are experiences
a child has that are so bad that they can negatively affect the child’s
development in ways that have lifelong consequences. ACEs are associated with people having risky
behavior later in life, bad health, lower income, and shorter lifespans.
ACEs can be divided into roughly four categories:
- abuse;
- being in a household with challenges such as domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse, or having a family member in prison;
- divorce or abandonment;
- and economic hardship or poverty.
One ACE alone can cause lifetime consequences. When a child has four or more ACEs, the
results are usually devastating. The
children in Michigan’s caseload whose families receive services in Parts A, D,
and E may start out with three ACEs:
- poverty (which could equate to physical neglect);
- separated parents (leaving the child with a feeling of abandonment - whether the parents are separated, divorced, or were never married); and
- abuse.
In other data analysis, FOCB found a large percentage of the
child support caseload was also associated with a parent in a criminal case –
perhaps equating to a fourth ACE – having an incarcerated family member.
When FOCB examined caseloads in Muskegon County, we found
that ZIP codes with a higher percentage of persons with four or more ACEs also
had a higher percentage of domestic relations and abuse and neglect cases. When we look at just the scant information we
know, it is clear that many children in the child support program are at risk
for negative lifelong consequences.
As dire as the prognosis might seem, ACEs do not have to
result in permanent harm. Certain other
events in a child’s life that build resiliency can lessen the consequences of
ACEs. Having a trusted adult seen as a
protector can help a child cope with ACEs.
Having outlets such as belonging to organizations or being able to
engage in activities that give the child a sense of purpose can also help
offset ACEs.
The child support program must take our customers as it finds
them, but that does not mean there is nothing that can be done to help avoid
the consequences of ACEs. By helping to
establish a strong, healthy bond with parents through parenting time
appropriate for the individual child and family, child support professionals
might counteract one ACE (a sense of abandonment) and provide a child with the
potential to develop resiliency through having a trusting relationship with an
adult.
Establishing a strong and healthy relationship between child
and parent starts with a commitment to establish a specific parenting time
order. In days past, parenting time
orders in child support or paternity cases were either omitted entirely or
addressed with a nonspecific “as the parents agree.” However, most parents either have an existing
informal arrangement for parenting time or have expectations about parenting
time with their children. Often these
parents may not have communicated with each other in advance about parenting
time, and so, like the proverbial two ships passing in the night, parenting
time goes unaddressed when support and paternity are established.
The Office of Child Support recognizes the importance of
parenting time for the well being and healthy development of children and
allows IV-D workers to bill up to one hour of time spent working with parents
to establish parenting time for initial support orders[1]
because:
- Parenting time is a factor in calculating child support;
- There is evidence that parents who participate in setting their orders end up being better payers; and
- There is evidence that payers who exercise parenting time are better support payers.
In Michigan, it is likely that children of divorce fare
better than children in paternity cases because children in divorce cases
usually start out with a relationship with both parents and have an opportunity
to build or maintain resiliency through a continuing relationship with both
parents. FOCB research indicates the
percent of cases with no parenting time is highest in paternity cases, followed
by family support cases, and then divorce cases.
Children in paternity cases often start out having fathers who are so uninvolved it is necessary to have a court determine paternity. If these fathers and their extended family remain uninvolved in the child’s life, an opportunity might be missed to build resiliency for that child through additional adult family members providing emotional support.
Prosecutors and FOC offices doing establishment work have a critical
opportunity to assist families early in their case with parenting time
issues. The FOCB studied child support
payment and enforcement activities on cases and determined that parents who
have parenting time are better support payers and need fewer enforcement
activities on their cases. With the
current data, a causal relationship is unclear.
We do not know if the parenting time produces better payment results, or
if parents who are more likely to pay better are also more likely to seek
parenting time.
Regardless of support payment motives, every child certainly
deserves an opportunity to have strong parental relationships. A small effort in the beginning of the case
can have sweeping consequences for enforcement needs over the life of the case. And in some cases, the effort might just have
positive effects for generations going forward.
[1]
IV-D Memorandum
2016-031, Announcement of the Availability of IV-D
Funding for the Establishment of Custody/Parenting Time, and the Program
Leadership Group (PLG) Statement Regarding Parenting Time.
