“A Helping Hand over a Heavy Hand”: Child Support Enforcement in the Era of COVID-19

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic forced human services agencies to adapt quickly to the economic realities faced by their customers. For child support agencies, the pandemic raised difficult questions about how strenuously agencies should enforce child support orders during periods of economic crisis and uncertainty. Drawing on interviews with agency and court staff, this study explores staff’s perceptions of pandemic-related effects on parents’ abilities to work and pay, how and why enforcement practices changed during the pandemic, and changes staff expect to persist. Agency staff reported a pause on enforcement at the pandemic’s outset, followed by leniency, flexibility, caution, and empathy in their practices.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19 pandemic
• child support enforcement
• human services

Introduction

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the rapidly spreading coronavirus 2019 disease (COVID-19) a global pandemic (World Health Organization, 2020). Since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected public health, economic, and social conditions worldwide; by February 16, 2022, the United States experienced over 78 million COVID-19 cases and over 925,000 deaths due to COVID-19 (Johns Hopkins University & Medicine, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic has also spurred a devastating economic crisis (del Rio-Chanona, Mealy, Pichler, Lafond, & Farmer, 2020; Triggs & Kharas, 2020). In the United States, the unemployment rate jumped from 3.5% in February 2020 to 14.8% in April 2020 (Falk, Carter, Nicchitta, Nyhof, & Romero, 2021).

Deteriorating economic conditions caused significant economic hardship for many households in the United States, particularly those with children. The share of households reporting financial hardship increased significantly during the pandemic, with rates of food insecurity doubling and over a quarter of adults reporting difficulty paying bills (Bitler, Hoynes, & Schanzenbach, 2020; Parker, Minkin, & Bennett, 2020; Schanzenbach & Pitts, 2020). Low-wage earners, workers without college degrees, workers of color, and women have experienced the brunt of the pandemic’s fallout, including greater likelihood of job loss (Bartik, Bertrand, Lin, Rothstein, & Unrath, 2020; Falk, 2020; Falk et al., 2021; Moffitt & Ziliak, 2020; Park, 2021), long-term unemployment (Hershbein & Holzer, 2021) and economic hardship (Memmott, Carley, Graff, & Konisky, 2021; Park, 2021; Parker et al., 2020; Perry, Aronson, & Pescosolido, 2021; Schanzenbach & Pitts, 2020).

Given the financial crises faced by many of their clients, human services agencies had to quickly adjust their practices to better fit this new reality. For child support agencies – the agencies of focus in this study – the economic and public health fall-out of the pandemic had important implications for families involved in their services, especially those working in the low-wage labor market. Low-earning noncustodial parents (NCPs) experienced difficulty meeting their child support obligations before the pandemic (Bartfeld & Meyer, 2003; Goldberg, 2015; Huang, Mincy, & Garfinkel, 2005; Nepomnyaschy & Garfinkel, 2010), and research from the Great Recession suggests that the pandemic’s economic crisis has likely exacerbated low-earning NCPs’ risk of financial hardship and difficulty meeting child support obligations (Mincy, Jethwani, & Klempin, 2015; Mincy, Miller, & De la Cruz Toledo, 2016). At the same time, single mothers, who make up most of the population of custodial parents (CPs) (Grall, 2020), were also disproportionately negatively impacted by the pandemic’s economic downturn (Waring & Meyer, 2020). Further, NCPs who struggle financially are often partnered with CPs and children at greater risk of experiencing poverty (Cancian & Meyer, 2004; Sinkewicz & Garfinkel, 2009), placing all family members at heightened risk during economic crises.

This tension between the economic needs of NCPs and CPs raises difficult questions about how strenuously child support staff should pursue enforcement of child support orders in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Child support agencies have a host of tools to enforce orders when NCPs do not pay what they owe, and these tools are important resources for collecting payments. However, some tools are designed to intercept or seize monetary assets from NCPs (Vogel, 2021) – assets NCPs are theoretically less likely to have amid an economic crisis. Further, some tools have the potential to impede employment prospects (e.g., suspension of driver’s licenses), making a bad situation worse for economically vulnerable NCPs (Meyer, Cancian, & Waring, 2020; Pate, 2002; Selekman & Johnson, 2019; Vogel, 2020a, 2020b).

Given the important role agencies play in transferring resources from NCPs to CPs and children, how staff approach enforcing orders amid an economic crisis like that caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has significant implications for families’ well-being. Researchers have yet to investigate how child support agencies approached the task of enforcing orders during the initial stages of the pandemic. Yet, understanding the approaches agencies took and the factors informing their decision-making have important implications for child support practice and policy post-pandemic and during future economic crises. This study aims to address this gap by exploring the experiences, perceptions, and actions of staff charged with enforcing child support orders during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Policy context

The importance of child support

Child support plays an important role in the lives of many families. In 2020, over 25% of children in the United States lived in single-parent families (Hemez & Washington, 2021), and most American children will spend at least some time living apart from a parent (Andersson, Thompson, & Duntava, 2017). The child support program aims to ensure that parents living apart from children regularly contribute to their financial well-being (Committee on Ways and Means, 2018). In 2019, the child support program distributed over $28 billion in payments on behalf of over 14 million children nationally (Office of Child Support Enforcement, 2020b).

Because child support is an important resource for single-parent families’ economic well-being, nonpayment of child support is a significant problem (Cuesta & Meyer, 2018). In the context of a global pandemic and economic downturn, missed child support payments may be particularly detrimental to the economic well-being of CPs and their children. However, even during typical economic times, many NCPs do not pay the support that they owe because they lack the financial resources to do so. Low earnings, high order amounts relative to income, and owing support across multiple families affect NCPs’ abilities to pay (Bartfeld & Meyer, 2003; Cancian & Meyer, 2004; Eldred & Takayesu, 2013; Goldberg, 2015; Huang et al., 2005; Meyer et al., 2008; Nepomnyaschy & Garfinkel, 2010).

Child support services in Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, like a handful of other states, the child support program is supervised by the state and administered locally by counties. The state, among other functions, develops policy, collects and distributes payments, and supports enforcement by operating centralized enforcement tools. Counties establish paternity and set and enforce orders. While operating within state and federal guidelines, counties have some flexibility to interpret policy and enact operations locally (Gentry, 2017). Child support agencies and courts both take part in enforcing child support orders in Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin and nationally, child support agencies have a variety of tools available to increase compliance when NCPs do not pay the support that they owe. Agencies can use some tools administratively, without court involvement, including automatic income withholding and withholding of up to 50% of unemployment benefits; intercept of state and federal tax refunds and other financial resources; property liens; and suspension of driver’s, professional, and recreational licenses (Gentry, 2017). Many of these actions are automatically applied at the state level in response to NCPs meeting specified thresholds; county staff can use discretion on suspending licenses; account seizures; and property liens (Gentry, 2017; Vogel, 2019).

If administrative remedies are unsuccessful in yielding payments, child support agencies and courts can initiate contempt proceedings against an NCP to compel compliance (Gentry, 2017); the judiciary decides whether to find an NCP in contempt. When an NCP is found in contempt, courts issue purge conditions (typically a lump sum to be paid against past-due support) and remedial sanctions as requirements to clear the contempt. If the NCP does not meet the conditions in the specified timeframe and the court has ordered a jail sentence as a remedial sanction, the court can issue a bench warrant for the NCP’s commitment to jail (Cook & Noyes, 2011).

COVID-19ʹs potential implications for compliance and enforcement

The implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on NCPs’ compliance with child support orders are unclear due to the potentially offsetting impacts of widespread job losses and the federal government’s economic stimulus programs. On one hand, it would be reasonable to expect child support payments to decline in response to widespread job losses. Previous work focusing on the Great Recession identified that the proportion of fathers who paid any child support declined, and fathers who experienced a decline in earnings paid less than the amount owed compared to fathers whose earnings stayed stable or increased (Wu, 2011). In Wisconsin and nationally, economic hardship increased as the pandemic persisted and strengthened. Between February and April 2020, Wisconsin lost over 400,000 jobs (Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, 2020), with low-wage workers (Knapp, 2021) and workers of color disproportionately affected by job loss (Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, 2020). Because automatic income withholding is an important compliance tool – over 70% of child support in the United States is collected this way (Office of Child Support Enforcement, 2018; Tollestrup, 2019) – we would expect payments to decline with declines in NCPs’ employment in the formal job sector.

On the other hand, the federal government provided several sources of income relief to United States households to lessen the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, which might be expected to blunt anticipated declines in payments. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, passed in March of 2020, supplemented state unemployment benefits with additional federal benefits of $600 per week through July 2020; provided an additional 13 weeks of unemployment benefits beyond the 26 weeks previously available to unemployed workers; and expanded eligibility for unemployment benefits to include self-employed individuals, gig workers, freelancers, and independent contractors. In Wisconsin, supplemental unemployment payments resumed at the $300 per week level in October 2020 (Knapp, 2021). These unemployment benefits were also subject to automatic income withholdings of up to 50% and thus may have offset declines in child support payments from lost earnings.

Moreover, the CARES Act also provided stimulus payments of up to $1,200 per adult earning under $75,000 per year (with lesser amounts phased out at higher income levels) and $500 per child under age 17; payments were sent in April and May 2020. These payments were augmented with a second round of stimulus payments through the Tax Relief Act of 2020 in December of 2020, which provided additional payments of $600 to qualifying adults and children, and a third round through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, which paid up to $1,400 per individual and qualifying dependents starting in March 2021 (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2021a). The first round of stimulus payments were subject to intercept when NCPs owed arrears (Office of Child Support Enforcement, 2020a), potentially increasing payments on past due support; however, as noted by the National Child Support Enforcement Association, which opposed the stimulus funds intercept, a significant share of intercepted funds went to offset state-owed debt rather than to arrears owed to CPs (National Child Support Enforcement Association, 2020a). Subsequent stimulus payments were not intercepted, leaving it up to NCPs to willingly use the funds toward paying child support and child support agencies to enforce payments (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2021b).

How might child support agencies respond to changes in compliance behavior among NCPs during this period of economic decline? On one hand, given the importance of child support to single-parent households, it is plausible that agencies viewed enforcement as imperative to facilitate transmission of resources from NCPs to CPs and children. On the other, research with Wisconsin child support directors and court commissioners during the Great Recession identified that agency staff reported granting delinquent NCPs greater flexibility in making payments, being more willing to compromise on state-owed debt, performing reviews for modification eligibility, and pursuing contempt less often due to the inability of many NCPs to pay amidst the recession (Kaplan, 2010). These findings comport with more recent research suggesting that some agency staff perceive traditional enforcement tools as not effective when NCPs lack ability to pay, and as a result, have incorporated practices to help facilitate NCPs’ abilities to work and pay, such as early intervention, proactive outreach, initiating referrals to employment programs and community resources, and right-sizing orders (Vogel, 2021). However, it is not yet known whether staff perspectives and approaches to practice in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic align with those identified during and after the Great Recession. The COVID-19 pandemic is primarily a public health crisis that triggered an economic recession, and threats to public health created additional barriers to employment not previously seen, such as widespread school and child care provider closures. It is also unclear whether staff perspectives on early intervention and proactive outreach hold true during such a time of broad economic need across CPs and NCPs.

Federal and state policy guidance issued during the COVID-19 pandemic does not provide a clear roadmap for how agencies might have been expected to proceed with enforcement. The federal government issued limited policy guidance during this time, including an FAQ informing agencies that certain enforcement actions, including income withholding and withholding against unemployment insurance, are mandatory and cannot be suspended (Office of Family Assistance, 2020), and that federal law does not allow child support obligations to be suspended in public health emergencies. Beyond these non-negotiables, the FAQ clarified that state laws govern suspension of other administrative enforcement actions, such as license suspension and state tax refund offsets. State policy directives in Wisconsin also provided county child support agencies with considerable latitude; the main enforcement-related change made by the state was a temporary suspension of adding newly delinquent cases to the administrative lien docket from March until August 2020 (Bureau of Child Support, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c). The state issued guidance to the counties indicating that it considered the pandemic an adequate reason for failure to cooperate with child support procedures and clarified that county agencies had authority to determine whether NCPs were making a “good faith” cooperation effort. The state encouraged counties to use discretion in applying enforcement tools (Bureau of Child Support, 2020d).

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing public health and economic crises, and substantial agency discretion over child support enforcement, this study aims to understand how child support agencies in Wisconsin approached child support enforcement. We used a qualitative approach and data from semi-structured interviews with Wisconsin child support agency and court staff to explore three questions:

1. What are staff’s perceptions of the effects of the pandemic on NCPs’ ability to work and make child support payments and on NCPs’ supportive service needs?

2. How have administrative and judicial enforcement practices changed since the pandemic started, and what factors have driven these changes?

3. What have staff identified as promising practices for enforcing orders during the pandemic, and what practices do staff expect to persist after it subsides?

Materials and methods

Data and sample

The sample for the current analysis included child support agency leadership, frontline child support workers, child support attorneys, and judges or family court commissioners from five Wisconsin counties. The research team selected counties in consultation with state leadership. Given that the prevalence and timing of COVID-19 infections has varied across counties, and that local labor market conditions and public health directives have affected local economies differently, we selected counties purposively to identify as broad an array of experiences confronting the pandemic as possible. As such, we considered three sets of county characteristics when selecting counties for inclusion, aiming for diversity across each – geographic location, county size, and COVID-19 positivity rates. We compared each Wisconsin county’s confirmed positivity rate (i.e., number of confirmed positive cases per 100,000 people) to the Wisconsin state average just prior to data collection and assigned counties to one of three groups – those with lower-than-state average rates and higher-than-state average rates (from which we ultimately selected two counties each), and those with rates near the state average (from which we selected one county). We selected counties within each grouping that differed in geographical location, to ensure that one county from each of Wisconsin’s five operational regions – Northern, Western, Southern, Northeastern, and Southeastern – were included in the final sample, and that the final sample included a mix of large, mid-sized, and small counties. Respondents included county child support agency directors (n = 7), frontline staff (n = 9), child support agency attorneys (n = 4), and judges or court commissioners (n = 4).

Methods

Interviews were conducted using Microsoft Teams or Zoom platforms and occurred between February and April 2021. Interview length varied based on participant roles and lasted approximately 60 to 90 minutes. Each respondent provided consent to take part in the research and permission to audio-record their interview. All recruitment and data collection efforts were approved and overseen by the University of Wisconsin−Madison’s Institutional Review Board, and the Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Institutional Review Board.

We used semi-structured interview protocols to guide the interview process. Interviews consisted of a core set of questions applicable to all respondents, as well as batteries of questions specific to each respondent’s role. The guides included questions on staff perceptions of the pandemic’s effects on NCPs’ abilities to work and pay child support; how child support staff make decisions about pursuing administrative and judicial enforcement in the COVID-19 era; factors affecting enforcement decisions and contempt referrals; and staff perspectives on how changes resulting from the pandemic might persist in future practice.

Interviews were professionally transcribed, then read into NVivo 12 software for coding. Interview data were analyzed using thematic analysis, a systematic, multi-phase approach that includes reviewing the data; generating initial codes; and identifying, reviewing, and naming themes (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2012; Vaismoradi, Turunen, & Bondas, 2013). The research team developed an initial coding scheme based on the key research questions. The first six transcripts were all double coded and discussed among the research team to facilitate consistency in coding approach; subsequently, about half of transcripts were double coded to ensure consistency was maintained (10 out of 18 transcripts). The codebook was refined throughout the coding and analysis process, and new codes were added when new themes emerged.

Results

We present findings from interviews as follows, organized by the aforementioned research questions. First, we describe staff perceptions about how the pandemic affected NCPs’ abilities to work and make payments. Second, we describe staff perceptions of how administrative and judicial enforcement practices changed since the start of the pandemic and factors contributing to these changes.¹ Then, we discuss staff perceptions of the most effective enforcement practices used during this period of the pandemic and expectations for practice changes that will persist in the future. We include quotes where appropriate, sometimes lightly edited for clarity or brevity.

The pandemic’s impact on NCPs’ abilities to work and pay

Staff perceptions of the effects of COVID-19 on employment

Across all counties, agency staff reported an increase in unemployment or reduced work hours among NCPs on their caseloads. They noted that many NCPs were impacted with layoffs and unemployment. In turn, agencies noticed decreases in payments at the immediate outset of the pandemic and an influx of NCPs calling the agency to explain that they had lost their income source and request help.

Staff perceived that the impact of the pandemic on employment was uneven and varied across demographic groups and job sectors. They observed that NCPs who were struggling with employment and making payments before the pandemic were those hardest hit, as were low-income families, NCPs working in the informal economy, and families of color. Staff also noted that pandemic-related unemployment was most severe for specific sectors of the economy often characterized by low-wage jobs – including construction, frontline service, food service, hospitality, small businesses, and tourism. One enforcement worker explained:

A lot of the demographic that we serve are people that are on public assistance. They tend to be a lower income population, a lower education population. And so the types of jobs that a lot of our participants have were a lot of the first ones to go at the pandemic. A lot of your frontline workers, food service workers, grocery store, that job sector, unfortunately, lost a lot of their jobs. And so we saw a lot of people lose their job immediately.

Some staff also discussed the obstacles NCPs with school-aged children at home faced as they balanced child care and adapting to virtual learning with work and other duties.

Staff also perceived that COVID-19 caused some NCPs to be unable to work due to being sick or having to quarantine, including a local outbreak of the virus that interrupted a major local employment sector in one county. Some interviewees noted, in rare instances, that NCPs on their caseload died from COVID-19. More commonly, staff reported that many NCPs expressed concerns about being exposed to the virus while working. Interviewees in all counties shared that fear of contracting COVID-19 or spreading it to their family informed NCPs’ employment decisions; some NCPs chose to leave jobs due to health concerns while NCPs who lost their jobs were reluctant to find new work. An agency director explained:

We’re hearing a lot from clients that they’re not comfortable in the job they previously had because of the risk of COVID. And those are a lot of the service sort of industry jobs … where there are, you know, working with people [in] closer proximity, you know, entry level type jobs. So a lot of people aren’t comfortable doing that … it’s a valid excuse for a lot of people because … there [are] other risk factors with that. I mean no one wants to really be unemployed right now.

Although staff across counties perceived that the COVID-19 pandemic had a substantial negative impact on employment initially, perceptions of economic recovery and NCPs’ ease of obtaining employment varied across counties. Staff from some counties described a slow recovery process, with some NCPs going back to work in “lower-paying, less hours jobs” than before the pandemic and some remaining unemployed. In contrast, staff in other counties described the economic recovery in their area as quick and widespread, noting that after a “short drop off of jobs,” businesses reopened and now, “the job market is just as good as it was before the pandemic.” Across counties, many interviewees perceived ample employment opportunities for individuals willing to work, especially if NCPs were willing to change job sectors. Agency staff in one county felt that any NCP who wanted a job could attain one; staff from this county suspected some NCPs used fear of COVID-19 as an “excuse” not to work because, in the view of some staff, jobs that did not require much human contact were available in their county. However, staff in most counties noted that NCPs were often reluctant to change job sectors to obtain employment; when offered services that could help them change fields, many were willing to remain unemployed for longer, given uncertainty about the pandemic’s duration, in order to try to remain in their field. A director explained:

That’s what we’ve been seeing and hearing from our [local employment program] is that they will reach out, but people are not interested … Obviously we know that there are definitely more jobs at the like grocery store, the frontline worker type of jobs, but the other jobs that people were laid off of because they were office jobs or maybe not necessary—those are all gone, right? So I think people who might’ve lost jobs in that area did not want to go and work in, you know, a grocery store.

Staff perceptions of the effects of COVID-19 on collections

Across the board, staff perceived that the decline in child support collections was much smaller than anticipated given the impacts of the pandemic on NCPs’ employment. Although staff noted that current support payments declined somewhat, particularly at the start of the pandemic, staff in many counties described that arrears collections actually increased compared to previous years after CARES benefits began to take effect. Staff attributed this to the automatic intercept of CARES Act stimulus payments and expanded unemployment insurance, as one agency director explained:

I think that the thing that kept child support performance from completely cratering in 2020 was largely the pandemic relief that was in the CARES Act. That certainly had an impact on arrears collection, which actually went up for the reasons that we discussed. The current support collection, I think, was saved in part by the extension of unemployment benefits.

Although the intercept of the first CARES Act stimulus checks benefited arrears collections, agency staff commonly reported that both CPs and NCPs were upset that the money was intercepted, particularly when it was applied to state-owed debt instead of being disbursed to CPs and children.

Staff observed that additional unemployment benefits were “lifesaving” to helping families meet their basic needs but noted that some families experienced substantial delays in approval for unemployment insurance, causing financial stress as well as delays in child support payments. Moreover, as expanded unemployment insurance benefits expired, staff observed a corresponding decline in child support payments. As a frontline worker explained: “We had a little bump, where unemployment ran out. And that’s kind of where we are at now. We’re seeing people running out of the unemployment, even with the federal help.”

When describing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on NCPs’ ability to pay child support, staff across all counties described two groups of NCPs: 1) those making a good faith effort to work and pay child support; and 2) those using the pandemic as an excuse not to work and therefore, not meeting their child support obligations. With respect to the first group, staff typically described these NCPs as hard working, consistent payors pre-pandemic, who suddenly found themselves “not working through no fault of their own” for the first time and willing to resume work as soon as they had the opportunity. Staff spoke most sympathetically about this type of NCP, as an enforcement worker described:

We’ve also seen a lot of people [who] never struggled with working or paying child support now struggle. It’s opening a whole new world to them that they’ve never been exposed to before. They don’t understand the consequences of not paying because they’ve never been in this boat before. There’s a lot of confusion with navigating, dealing with us as a child support agency, but also dealing with the courts.

Staff also described these NCPs as having an easier time getting a job as the economy recovered, due to their skill sets and willingness to work.

Interviewees across counties also described a second group of NCPs who they perceived as using the pandemic to avoid working. According to staff, some NCPs in this second group took advantage of child support agencies’ leniency and lack of enforcement during the pandemic by claiming that they could not work when they actually could; claiming that they were waiting on unemployment insurance when they had not applied for it; or stating that they were afraid to work when staff perceived that was not the case. Staff typically described these NCPs as inconsistent payors prior to the pandemic, and expressed frustration and distrust regarding this NCP type, as evidenced by a frontline worker in one county:

I mean, it’s not that we don’t want to trust them, but some of us know some of our [customers] and if they were not working before and they’re still not working now, we don’t know if they’re truly just using that as an excuse or if they’re really trying to find work. Because we know in the beginning [of the pandemic], we were being told there really wasn’t any work and then we got to find out once things were opening that there really is work out there if they want to work.

Not all staff shared this sentiment, however. One enforcement worker perceived that NCPs using the pandemic as an excuse is a “misconception” and that instead “people are trying to work; the work just wasn’t there.”

Administrative and judicial enforcement practice changes

Staff described changes to their agency’s approach toward enforcing orders during the COVID-19 pandemic, using both administrative and judicial remedies. We identified several themes: an immediate, broad pause on enforcement; more leniency, flexibility, and empathy; a “slowed down” approach to enforcement; proactive outreach, communication, and offers of help; careful consideration when selecting enforcement tools; and attempts to balance CP and NCP needs.

An immediate, broad pause on enforcement

Staff in every county spoke of an immediate broad pause on most types of administrative² and judicial enforcement, including contempt, issuing warrants, and arrests. In some counties, individuals already in jail for contempt were released. Staff noted health concerns, uncertainty about the pandemic’s effects on NCPs’ jobs and ability to pay, and agency and court operations moving to virtual settings as factors contributing to this pause. In part, the pause on enforcement was state-driven, resulting from the state’s suspension of adding new cases to the lien docket and directives to use discretion when employing administrative tools. Described one enforcement supervisor:

[The state] had sent out guidance saying, “Please make sure that you’re making good decisions; please make sure that you’re understanding people’s circumstances; please do not suspend people’s licenses” … so, at that point, we knew that what we felt was already intuitive, had been confirmed at the state level. So, it was just this, “yes, you shall not” … kind of thing moving forward. And then that was ongoing for quite some time until July when we started looking at proceeding with enforcement.

Some pauses in processes, outreach, and enforcement were driven, in part, by changes in operations to remote work and lack of capacity during this transition. Most staff transitioned to working remotely when Wisconsin’s governor ordered non-essential businesses closed via Wisconsin’s “Safer at Home” order in March 2020 (Wisconsin Department of Health Services, 2020), and obtaining the necessary technology typically took time. Whereas some counties reported the transition to remote work as a seamless process – particularly one county that already had capacity for remote work – others reported challenges. For example, one county’s caseworkers did not have access to work phones at home for calling clients, so they had to make all their phone calls on their one day per week in the office for approximately five months. One caseworker said: “That really did a number on my caseload.”

Health and safety concerns regarding jails and concerns about the economic effects of the pandemic on NCPs led several counties to enact a months-long pause on contempt as they waited to see “if the virus and the pandemic would settle down a little bit.” As one agency director described:

We stopped doing contempts immediately for a couple of reasons. The job situation, which it was back in March, and the jail situation because we can’t put more people in the jails than absolutely necessary, given the spread of COVID.

Another director described that they “quashed all existing child support warrants” when the Safer at Home order took effect due to health and safety concerns about jail conditions. Directors, enforcement supervisors, and frontline workers in some counties reported that another reason they stopped sending cases for civil contempt was that even after some court hearings resumed, judges and court commissioners were not willing to hear contempt cases, especially early on. As one director described:

The reason why we made our shift was a lot having to do with the courts. The judges were refusing to sign, the commissioners were refusing to sign, you know? And so like, we got to the point where there was no point in us filing anything if we weren’t going to get an order, right? So that was at the very beginning, I think, when the pandemic started and people didn’t know what to expect, and we all knew that the pandemic was a huge factor in everything: employment, payment, like everything you could think of, health, like all those things. So then the judges, I think, just didn’t make like an outward statement, but they weren’t signing things because they were afraid that would bring somebody into the jail, or it would make them lose their job, or if they didn’t have a job, or whatever it may be. So that kind of guided our decision to not even refer some of those contempts at the very beginning.

Civil contempt proceedings paused for a period of several months at the outset of the pandemic, then resumed virtually using phone or video-conferencing (so called “Zoom court).” Once court resumed, staff prioritized referring cases with NCPs who were nonpayers prior to the pandemic rather than NCPs who lost their job due to the pandemic. Agency directors and frontline workers described that court commissioners did not want cases brought up that had been consistent payors prior to the pandemic, as one enforcement supervisor described, “We also don’t want to bring in unnecessary cases to court. If you knew this person is not working because of the pandemic, why are we bringing them into court to tell us this, when we already know?” Staff in several counties also noted that, as courts resumed operations, contempt hearings were a lower priority than other child support related hearings, such as establishment and paternity hearings. Explained one supervisor:

When they reopened the courts mid-May, it was to handle all the adjournments from hearings that had been already scheduled in March and April. Getting those back into court first, because they had already been pending, and then getting paternity cases started and [orders established], those just seemed to be higher priority than the contempts.

Staff from every county also discussed how they resumed court enforcement, to some extent, later into the pandemic than administrative enforcement, typically in August 2020. The decision to resume contempt hearings and issuing warrants (in some counties) was made largely in consultation with the local courts, agency attorneys, Sheriff’s Department, and local jail administrators. Staff across counties mentioned a similar set of factors considered when determining if it was appropriate to resume contempt, namely local infection rates, vaccination rates, and job availability. For example, one agency director explained:

June, July … that’s when we started having the conversations with our judiciary and with the attorneys here about when is it appropriate to start taking a more critical eye in terms of enforcement. And, you know, we had to really look at what is the availability of jobs. What is the COVID rate? What is the—You know, what is a reasonable expectation of people at this time?

A staff member from one county also mentioned that federal requirements played a role in their decision to resume contempt proceedings, saying:

I think, eventually, I want to say maybe towards the end, either middle or summer, end of summer, last year we decided, okay, well we do still have these federal requirements, right? So the federal government says, “You still have to do something. You still have to act on something.” So I think we still ended up filing things, even if they were being rejected, even if they were being postponed or not scheduled, we still had to file those contempts … Some judges did start signing them and others were still not signing them. So it was okay, as long as we were doing our part.

More leniency, flexibility, and empathy

Staff from most counties described more “leniency,” “flexibility,” and “empathy” in their administrative and judicial enforcement practices compared to the pre-pandemic period. Counties reported communicating with NCPs to determine whether to pursue enforcement and using tools more sparingly. One agency director described:

You know, maybe [before the pandemic], we would have required a doctor’s statement saying somebody was incapable of working, but instead, now they call Joe, and Joe says, “My girlfriend is receiving chemotherapy, and I’m helping with the kids. And I don’t want to keep working at [the grocery store] because I’m exposed to everybody and their brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles. So I’m staying home.” And we might say, “Would you mind getting a doctor’s statement?” But, you know, if he says, “I really don’t even go to a doctor, and I don’t have health insurance,” they’re going to get the free pass. Like, we’re not going to do anything with their case, whereas we might have before. I guess they have a lot more ability to be lenient. I would hope that they are being a lot more lenient.

A director from another agency explained that they suspended recreational licenses less frequently than pre-pandemic saying that caseworkers “didn’t work the [recreational license] report as hard because there was no way we were just going to put the hammer down and just automatically do that this year.”

Staff described granting increased leniency and flexibility particularly for NCPs who regularly paid their child support before the pandemic. One supervisor described:

If the only reason their payments stopped, is because they were sent home … You know, all right, well, see what you can do, see what happens and, give us a call in 30 days … Or they’ll follow up and call them again, and try to have more conversations and be more encouraging, rather than the enforcement.

As the economy began to recover and more jobs became available and COVID-19 case rates declined, some counties reported that they were back to business as usual with respect to enforcement practices and tools used “but with a little bit more dignity, leniency, and understanding sprinkled in,” as one director said. Staff reported that they continue to be mindful of the impact of COVID-19 on some NCPs, doing more outreach to NCPs compared to pre-pandemic, and continuing to investigate more thoroughly the circumstances on nonpayment before proceeding with enforcement. Yet, some staff also described frustration from NCPs when they resumed enforcement:

I felt like when we were finally able to start enforcing again, [NCPs] would say that we were not being lenient enough, you know, even though we’d spent months not enforcing … So, it’s kind of been hard to transition back into it with so many people still feeling like we shouldn’t be enforcing right now.

A “slowed down” approach to enforcement

In concert with increased enforcement leniency and flexibility, staff in several counties described a “slowed down” outreach and enforcement process. During the pandemic, staff reported being more likely to let a case “sit” temporarily to await a payment or outreach from an NCP. Some staff described that NCPs who lost their job because of the pandemic experienced delays of many weeks after filing for unemployment insurance before receiving their benefits, which in turn caused delays in child support payments. Stated one frontline worker, “The hairdressers and people who are self-employed that were able to file, I don’t think they got their unemployment until June.”

Staff in some counties described pandemic enforcement processes similar to those they carried out pre-pandemic, but with more time reserved for outreach, gathering information on an NCP’s situation, and looking at the totality of the circumstances before beginning to take enforcement actions. In other words, the sequence of enforcement actions did not change but the process was protracted. Moreover, some automated enforcement practices did not slow down, but discretionary enforcement actions, such as license suspensions, account seizures, and property liens, did, as one enforcement worker described:

It’s a lot longer. The automated letters are automated. So those go out at the same timeframe. Obviously, I mean, for the most part, I can only speak for myself. I’m not as—I’m not nearly as aggressive as I was before. Because the reality is a lot of people are not working through no fault of their own. So, you know, when I look at these cases, I’m looking at, did you stop paying when the pandemic started? Were you someone that always paid and you lost your job because of the pandemic? Do you have unemployment pending that might be coming through? Because I’m not going to take action while unemployment is pending. … You have to use that discretion and look at the history of the case and all those things. But I tend to give a lot more slack at that point, and prolong it a little bit. Before, it would have been like a four-month process. Now, I don’t know, eight months? And really, at that point, all I’m looking at is to hear from you.

As contempt proceedings resumed in many counties, staff described the process as moving more slowly, and the agency as referring substantially fewer cases. The slow pace of the process was intentional from the perspective of most staff, who explained that a longer enforcement process gave payors time to explain their circumstances and make payments to ward off contempt entirely. One director described:

Nine times out of ten [before the pandemic], you would go from that threatening letter to looking at filing contempt of court if they did not comply or didn’t respond … In the pandemic, you know, a year ago or summer we were just trying to give them a little more space, trying to reach out to them more. If you’re not getting responses, you know, you can set it out for a month and then just start the process again.

A frontline worker added, “Me personally, I used to always err on the side of going with contempt … Now, I’m erring on the side of giving you more time.”

Proactive outreach, communication, and offers of help

Though staff noted that they often used outreach to NCPs when they got behind on payments before the pandemic, such as through letters and phone calls, staff across all counties described increased, improved, and more successful outreach to NCPs during the pandemic. Staff described that this increase was driven both by the need to update NCPs on whether the office was open and how to make payments during the pandemic and by NCPs’ increased need for support and resources. As described by one director, this outreach aimed to answer staff questions such as, “What have we done and what can we do? Do we know where he is? … Is he working? Did we miss something? Can we get money that way? … Can we get him in a job program?” The need to understand the full context of their clients’ current employment and economic situation led staff to increase their phone calls to NCPs, as one enforcement supervisor explained:

The pandemic has really taught my staff to rely on the telephone and making phone calls to individuals, rather just sending more letters, because they’ve already not responded to the previous two letters. Now let’s make those phone calls and find out, what is their situation? So we’ve become more dependent on that personal contact rather than the impersonal, throw a piece of paper in the mail.

Staff felt that, with this increase in outreach, they became more skilled at communicating with clients. An agency director described:

We are trying to get more direct contact with the caseworkers, with the parents that we serve … People are able to get used to talking more and more with our parents which I think is really making everybody a lot more relaxed.

Staff in several counties described intentional changes to written outreach processes, primarily by personalizing letters sent by enforcement staff. They adapted the standard language in templates to better fit NCPs’ situations, and to be “more informational and more helpful” rather than threatening. Some staff mailed out information on local services and directions on how to use various payment options.

Staff in several counties also described performing broad, non-enforcement-focused outreach to clients to proactively determine NCPs’ needs for order reviews, services, state-owed arrears expungement, and other support. For example, one agency director described sending flyers to clients to notify them of a right to an order review if their employment has been impacted by the pandemic. Staff described that proactive offers of order reviews and arrears expungement accomplished case solutions that holding off on enforcement alone could not. One frontline worker explained:

Expunging arrears, that is another tool that I’ve been using because, you know, if a non-custodial parent is unable to make payments due to the fact that they’ve been unable to work because of the pandemic, there are situations where if the non-custodial parent is aware of that and so is the custodial parent, you [can] help them moving forward is that they have the option to expunge a portion of that balance. It’s just another example in regards to how important outreach is. Because although, you know, the state might be able to tell us to hold back on enforcement or, you know, the agency might put us under the directive to hold back on enforcement, that doesn’t necessarily stop the order from running. We can only give options. [Parents] can, you know, file a motion, they can request a review, or parties can [stipulate] to lowering the child support order. But just, again, giving them their options and their resources available would probably be the most important thing.

The key to each of these non-punitive actions to address ability to pay – offers of resources, order reviews, and arrears expungement – was early and proactive outreach. Staff described personalized and direct outreach as more feasible in counties that had smaller caseloads. The agency director in one county explained that caseworkers were able to proactively reach out to most if not all clients to determine how the pandemic was affecting NCPs need for resources and ability to pay:

We just went through the case list. That’s the advantage of a small county - we don’t have that many cases. I know that’s not feasible in a lot of counties. But we just kind of went through each one and even if they were still paying and working we just wanted to touch base with them and just say, “Hey, you know, just checking in to see how you’re doing and, you know, if there’s anything you need or any resources that you may not know where to go to, you know, we’ll be willing to help.” We couldn’t reach a lot of people but we talked to a lot and we heard it more often than not that people were just appreciative that we called to check with them. So that was a good thing for our agency.

Staff from larger counties acknowledged the importance of early, direct outreach. However, they described reaching all clients directly as infeasible due to caseload sizes, which were high prior to the pandemic and in even greater need of attention during it, as more clients faced unemployment and placed calls to their office. One staff member explained:

When you take into account the caseload size in [our county], each of my case managers … have a caseload of [thousands of] cases … there just is no easy way of touching all of those cases. A lot of time, it’s, you know, first come, first served when the custodial parents contact us, or when the non-custodial parents contact us to let us know what’s going on.

Staff described increases in outreach and communication as driven in part by the lack of more punitive administrative and judicial enforcement tools during the pandemic and in part due to their own hesitancy to use these tools given the pandemic’s widespread impact on employment, state directives, and court closures and/or the removal of the threat of arrest as part of civil contempt. Because caseworkers could not rely on those tools to compel NCPs to pay, they had to rely on outreach strategies instead. A frontline worker described:

I think a benefit of COVID is that it really has opened up our doors for communication and gotten our caseworkers calling and trying that outreach … We were not doing [contempt court] for so long that also gave them a little bit more time to make that initial contact. Because it’s always been a juggling system of, how much can you outreach to somebody and play phone tag with them, before, ‘Is it worth the time?’

Careful consideration when selecting enforcement tools

Across counties, staff described thinking carefully about which administrative enforcement tools to use, and whether their use was appropriate at all, during the pandemic. Overall, staff aimed to avoid making a bad situation worse by using tools that could impede NCPs’ abilities to work or cover basic expenses. Staff described hesitating to pursue account seizures during the pandemic as they were mindful NCPs not working might be living off of the money in their accounts. In counties that were using license suspensions pre-pandemic, staff in several counties mentioned that they perceived the practice to be ineffective or inappropriate during the pandemic, as one enforcement supervisor said, “What’s the point of suspending somebody’s driver’s license, when they can’t work because their employer shut down? It just didn’t make any sense.” When staff used administrative tools to enforce compliance during the pandemic, staff described a “more sympathetic” approach. One director described:

[Caseworkers are] not going to put that hammer on and take somebody’s license if that person has communicated effectively, and we know there’s some kind of reason or there’s something in the works. It’s forced them to really not just be automatic and do it carefully and pay attention to really what’s going on.

Likewise, to move forward with account seizure, staff shared that there had to be a “pretty good chunk of change” and little concern that an individual was relying on the funds to meet basic needs.

Similarly, with regards to judicial enforcement, staff described pursuing civil contempt against NCPs more cautiously than prior to the pandemic. Staff in some counties noted that they filed for contempt less often after the pandemic started, because they had more “boxes” to check related to NCPs’ pandemic and general situations. One attorney noted, “What’s changed with the pandemic is, we’ve added that layer of really look at it and make sure, you know, this not paying isn’t just pandemic related. That is really key.”

One county declined to resume contempt hearings entirely, replacing them with a “treatment court” model that aimed to help NCPs obtain employment without threat of incarceration. Staff in this county noted that the pandemic catalyzed their decision to implement a new process, as they had found the traditional contempt process ineffective even before the pandemic, particularly for generating payments from NCPs with substantial barriers to employment.

Even after contempt processes resumed in most counties, the counties took steps that reduced the likelihood of NCPs being sent to jail, in recognition of the health concerns related to crowded and confined spaces. For example, one county’s courts resumed contempt proceedings but not warrants, as the director explained: “We just get an order for contempt, but if we can’t have a bench warrant, because even after the contempt, they’re still not paying what the contempt order says, there’s nothing we can do at this point.” In counties where bench warrants had resumed, some staff reported that some judges or commissioners were still refraining altogether from issuing warrants and jail sentences. Another county that had resumed issuing warrants reported that the purge conditions are more flexible (e.g., making any payment instead of a minimum payment amount) and that courts are more likely to court-order participation in an employment services program than to order jail time as a result of contempt. As the director described:

We’ve been using [the employment services program] as a big tool … because they have so many options to help people, you know, for job training not only in job placement. But you know, help with resources for, you know, fixing their car if their car doesn’t work or getting them steel toed boots or just little examples like that. So we have been using that a lot more as a court order thing instead of putting a sanction on them sitting in jail.

Even in cases where NCPs were issued a warrant, staff reported that NCPs were less likely to be arrested and serve jail time because the Sheriff’s department would not arrest an NCP if they only had a family court warrant and not a warrant for a felony. Staff from one county also noted that NCPs were more likely to be let out on house arrest with an ankle monitor, rather than spend time in jail. Staff had mixed feelings about removing arrest in the contempt process as an option. On one hand, they felt this forced them to use more outreach and communication in lieu of contempt, which they found an effective practice change. On the other, they felt the change caused some NCPs to take the process less seriously.

Attempts to balance CP and NCP needs

Staff from some counties spoke to the difficult dynamic of addressing the needs and opinions of NCPs and CPs through the enforcement process during the pandemic. Staff noted that all parties were often facing increased stress and exhibiting higher need for support, including monetary support, and taking enforcement action that centered the needs and well-being of an entire family system could be difficult. On one hand, staff noted various sources of NCP frustration, including resumption of enforcement, and intercepts of unemployment insurance and federal economic stimulus payments. One staff member reflected:

I mean, it’s just a lot of frustration, you know? We still have to do our job, and we still have to send out enforcement letters, and try to contact people. And you know, I mean, we can’t stop what we’re doing, understanding that the world had stopped turning for a short time. So there definitely was a lot of frustration, you know? And our hands are tied because as the agency, we can’t modify those orders. And the courts were closed, so they couldn’t modify orders. So it was just difficult conversations. A lot of difficult conversations.

At the same time, staff shared that many CPs expressed frustration at the lack of enforcement and not receiving payments. One staff member described:

There were several months when we weren’t able to take any administrative enforcement … And it was hard because the custodial parent would be upset about that because they thought even though there was a pandemic, the needs of the child never changed … So, they still needed the support.

Staff did not always experience this conflict of interest between parties. One staff member described that CPs could be very compassionate toward NCPs struggling to make child support payments. This helped staff practice “holistic case management” intended to benefit the entire family.

It’s huge because mom might say, “You know, he’s stuck.” … You know, “I don’t want child support right now because he can barely—he’s not okay here, let alone here.” … So what can we do? Can we temporarily suspend the order? Can I write off the debt? What can I do? You know, we’ve [stipulated] with moms to expunge arrears and close cases on numerous cases because mom gets it too.

Promising practices and expectations for the future

Staff described a number of promising practices for providing services during the pandemic. First, staff in all counties described the importance of increased outreach and communication with NCPs during the pandemic to understand their circumstances and reasons for nonpayment, and to offer supportive services. When asked to describe the enforcement tools that they perceived as most effective during the pandemic, staff from most counties described communication; outreach; and connection to support services, including “court-ordered works program,” “customer service delivery,” “information providing,” and “phone calls and letters.” One agency director described:

It’s talking with parties. It’s engaging them. It’s understanding what their circumstances are. It’s trying to problem solve. It’s a lot of listening. And it’s really availing options … It’s making sure NCPs understand what the expectation is. Making sure they understand that they may not be living up to that. Helping educate them and what that may mean in terms of next steps. Ensuring that they understand what resources might be able to help them, including [employment services programs]. And then it’s getting out of their way and letting them make the decision that is going to be in their best interest.

The perception among these staff was that some NCPs miss payments because they simply lack information, don’t understand the expectations of them, or are facing unemployment or other barriers to making payments.

Next, staff from multiple counties also described the importance of having empathy for their customers during the pandemic. When asked about what promising practices they would recommend to other agencies, one frontline worker said:

I’d say first and foremost have empathy. Like, put yourself in their shoes … like not doing the account seizures because all of your bills come out of your checking account. Like, just simply for one second putting yourself in their shoes. Like, because we’re all humans at the end of the day and we’re all trying to survive.

Staff from several counties described that a cultural shift toward more outreach and communication and away from a more punitive approach to enforcement had been taking place within their agencies for many years and that the pandemic accelerated this shift. As one director described, experienced staff often had a harder time making the shift toward more outreach spurred on by the pandemic than newer hires.

For some staff, the pandemic changed their perspective on the effectiveness of contempt relative to outreach-intensive strategies, and the pandemic forced a change in practice. One agency director said:

Initially, you know, there were sort of a scrambling but I think we just learned a lot from this pandemic. I think we learned a lot about how to work—how to just try to work the whole case instead of just looking at it on the screen, you know what I mean?

In contrast, staff from two of the larger counties felt that administrative enforcement actions and contempt were the most effective tools available to them both before and during the pandemic, in part because the time-intensive nature of outreach made it more challenging for staff with larger caseloads. Nevertheless, several staff from these counties still acknowledged the importance and effectiveness of “talking to people,” “outreach,” and “building those relationships so that people feel that they can voluntarily just do these things instead of us forcing them to do it.”

Staff also identified several practices that they hoped would persist after the pandemic ended. Staff from all counties hoped that the shift toward more outreach and communication and away from a more punitive approach to enforcement would persist. One enforcement supervisor described:

My hope as a supervisor of something that will be carried on is that, that need and understanding the value of having the conversation with the person about what’s going on because that’s something that we’ve been trying to do more of in our cultural shift – of being a helping hand over a heavy hand.

A frontline worker underscored that these communication changes were effective, and therefore, they believed this change would continue. They explained:

I think the communication with the customers will stick around. I think that people have developed working relationships with the parties on cases. That has worked, and so they’re going to continue to do what works and they need to call the person on the 15th of every month to say, “Hey, remember to send in your payment.”

In contrast, some staff were concerned that it might be difficult to maintain these practices as pressure to meet federal regulations increased and as other enforcement tools – i.e., contempt with the threat of a jail sentence – became available again. For example, one enforcement supervisor described how she reacted once the state reinstated the lien docket:

I sent a reminder out to staff saying, please, please, please don’t go into your old—don’t just all of a sudden go from, “What do I want to know about what’s going on” to “OK, now we’re back to suspending licenses. And now I’m going to call you and I didn’t hear from you, so I’m going to send a letter.”

Further, some staff were less than optimistic that increased flexibility and leniency in enforcement practice would persist due to the potential loss of federal funding if county agencies do not meet federal performance measures. One frontline worker explained:

We’re 60 percent federally funded. And if you’re out of compliance, you lose your federal funding. And so, you know, regardless of what’s going on with the pandemic or the economy, those federal regulations don’t go away. We’re still held to certain standards and certain requirements. And so, you know, honestly, I think once there’s no pandemic restrictions anymore, we kind of have to go back to those things.

In addition to more outreach and communication with NCPs, staff were hopeful that new modalities of communication, including new formats for court hearings adopted during the pandemic, would persist due to their effectiveness. In particular, staff from all counties believed that “Zoom court” was an effective practice to emerge from the pandemic – and should have been implemented sooner – and would continue beyond the pandemic. Most staff believed that virtual tools used in court proceedings were beneficial for families (both NCPs and CPs) and have increased participation in court, reduced barriers to participation, and increased “access to justice.” As one commissioner explained:

We had many people that would come here on a motion to modify and say, “Well, I [am] probably going to lose my job anyway, because I have to miss work today.” And that is a very real statement and I believe that. So for those, we created more access to justice. So in the future, it would not surprise me if we’re working from this dual system when one person is here in person and on the other one is by Zoom.

Discussion

The pandemic’s economic fallout forced child support agencies to reconsider methods for obtaining ordered support from NCPs. This paper contributes insights into how child support agencies made decisions about whether and how to enforce orders amidst economic crisis and considerable uncertainty, and potential implications for child support practitioners, as well as human services organizations more broadly, as we move into the COVID-19 pandemic’s next phases. The findings provide important insights as we consider plausible future economic crises and how policy can help buffer families from income losses. These findings also provide support for a growing evidence base that suggests some child support agencies are evolving from traditional, enforcement-only entities toward a more holistic model.

Economic hardship, job loss, and the social safety net

Findings from these interviews suggest that, similar to other research on the economic effects of the pandemic, child support agencies found that NCPs who experienced economic precarity before the pandemic were particularly likely to experience unemployment and financial hardship during the pandemic (Bartik et al., 2020; Falk, 2020; Falk et al., 2021; Hershbein & Holzer, 2021; Memmott et al., 2021; Moffitt & Ziliak, 2020; Park, 2021; Perry et al., 2021; Schanzenbach & Pitts, 2020). The economic downturn from the pandemic also yielded a new group of nonpaying NCPs who had previously been reliable payors. Agencies perceived that income replacement programs – expansions in unemployment insurance and stimulus payments – resulted in impacts on collections that were less severe than expected, suggesting the safety net worked to mitigate economic losses. This suggests that for child support agencies, and human services agencies more broadly, connecting customers to safety net programs might be an effective approach for mitigating economic hardship during future economic crises, particularly among the most economically vulnerable families on their caseloads.

Consistent with our findings on child support agency staff perceptions of collections during the pandemic, research on child support collections during the Great Recession suggests that the proportion of fathers paying any support declined (Wu, 2011), as did the amount of support received by mothers (Waring & Meyer, 2020); however, to our knowledge, research has not yet examined the effects of the pandemic on child support collections, and this is an important area for future research. Whether and how newly struggling payors are able to resume their usual payment behavior as these social safety net features recede and the economy continues to recover remains to be determined. It will be important for future research to follow the employment and payment trajectories of previously reliable payors as well as those who experienced difficulty meeting obligations in the past as we move into future phases of economic recovery. Moreover, child support staff in our study did not speak to the impacts of the pandemic on the economic well-being of CPs and children. Future research is also needed to understand impacts on child support received and the overall economic well-being of CPs and children.

Approaching enforcement with caution

This study found that child support agencies and courts adjusted their enforcement practices by limiting enforcement with an explicit goal of not causing further economic hardship for customers already having a difficult time meeting their own basic needs. These findings align with the limited previous literature available on the Great Recession (Kaplan, 2010), suggesting that some agency staff respond to economic crises with flexibility and compassion. The findings also expand upon this previous work through in-depth exploration of staff’s observations of the experiences of families on their caseloads and the thought processes leading staff to take a more cautious approach to enforcement, as well as embedding these observed shifts within broader changes in agency culture toward a more helping-oriented approach. These findings have implications for human services organizations beyond child support agencies, particularly those who work with involuntary clients or clients who face sanctions for noncooperation. Managers within such human services organizations could consider examining ways in which their own agency’s policies and practices have the potential to exacerbate hardship among families experiencing crises and developing strategies to avoid doing so.

Findings from this study also underscore the inter-connectedness of various actors involved in child support enforcement, and the importance of coordinated decision-making among such actors, particularly in times of crisis. At the local level, child support agency enforcement decisions and practices were directly affected by courts and jails, which were in turn affected by public health conditions. For human services agencies broadly, these findings underscore the importance of building relationships across human services providers, and becoming aware of other providers’ services and practices, to facilitate collaboration and information-sharing. These connections have the potential to support streamlined service delivery and information-sharing at any time, but also having strong interagency collaborations in place prior to a crisis can help to support a more smooth, swift, coordinated response across agencies when crises strike (Vogel & Yeo, 2022).

Additionally, for child support agencies, uncertainty about the pandemic’s duration and the expectations of state and federal agencies made it difficult to know how to balance performance measures and federal expectations with the local realities and logistical constraints in enforcing orders. The development of policy directives in advance of future crises delineating parameters for agency staff related to enforcement during times of prolonged economic fallout, as well as clear communication from federal officials about how performance will be evaluated during a crisis, could support agency efforts to prioritize flexible, empathy-driven services and facilitate clarity and transparency. The National Child Support Enforcement Association has argued that the federal government should increase its share of child support services funding to offset the pandemic’s impacts on state and local budgets and eliminate financial penalties for state’s failure to meet performance measures during the pandemic (National Child Support Enforcement Association, 2020b). Such policy changes are worthy of consideration not only for the current crisis, but also during future economic crises, to ensure that agencies are able to adapt service strategies to with customer needs without fear of financial consequences.

Moving toward a more supportive model

Findings from these interviews suggest that in addition to driving a more careful consideration of which enforcement tools to use and when, the pandemic also helped to support change processes already underway in some agencies toward an outreach-based and more customer-friendly, helping-oriented approach to agency services. As staff employed new modalities of engagement to reach NCPs, they found that providing information and support early on mitigated the need for enforcement later. These changes in outreach strategies and flexibility resulting from the pandemic represent an important step toward a more family-centered approach that takes into consideration ability to pay and places greater emphasis on supportive services. This study’s findings also identified how pandemic-driven outreach from staff to NCPs helped to foster compassion and empathy among staff and helped staff to feel more confident engaging in proactive communication with customers. These findings align with previous research with Wisconsin child support agencies, which found that some child support agencies are engaged in an intentional shift toward providing more supportive, holistic services to families aimed at helping parents to meet their children’s and their own basic needs (Vogel, 2021).

While counties were hopeful that increased outreach and a shift toward greater flexibility will persist, as economic conditions improve and federal performance expectations return, it remains to be seen whether and how these practice changes will persist. Relevant for all types of human services agencies, findings from this study underscore the importance of adequate staffing and funding to facilitate sufficiently low caseloads as to allow workers time to engage in these more time-intensive and customer-oriented strategies, which is consistent with previous research by Vogel (2021).

Further, findings highlight the role that child support agencies can play in connecting NCPs to supportive services, including employment supports, with a goal of improving child support collections. Future research could examine the evolution of enforcement practices and service delivery in the post-pandemic world and potential impacts on collections. These findings suggest that a policy change allowing states to use federal child support resources for employment-related services are worth consideration; such a policy change could improve child support bandwidth for connecting NCPs to employment and potentially help NCPs struggling with employment to improve their ability to pay support, thereby reducing the need for additional enforcement (National Child Support Enforcement Association, 2020b).

A shifting landscape offers new opportunities

Finally, findings from this study reveal that limitations on typical practices provided an opportunity for innovative approaches to service delivery with the potential to help improve engagement, within child support agencies and human services organizations more broadly. Consistent with other recent research with Wisconsin child support agencies (Vogel & Yeo, 2021), findings from this study highlight how offering NCPs new modalities for communication and payment yielded the unintended consequence of reducing barriers to some NCPs’ participation in services and court processes. These new opportunities for engagement hold the potential to engage NCPs not only in enforcement processes, but at each step of the child support process, from order establishment through case closure. Such options could be especially important for NCPs with barriers to in-person participation in services and court hearings, such as those precariously employed in inflexible jobs. More generally, these findings suggest that offering families a broader array of choices about how to connect with human services agencies has the potential to help reduce barriers to engagement in services by helping families work around the unique constraints they each face. Human services managers can support innovations in service delivery by working with staff to identify opportunities to modify practice to provide services differently, and to the extent necessary, finding ways to procure new technologies or other resources to provide new and different options for engagement to families. In the realm of child support, future research could examine the extent to which virtual participation options persist in child support courts, as well as the implications of offering these options on enforcement hearing show rates. More broadly, future research should continue to document the extent to which human services agencies now leverage a broader array of options for accessing services and examine implications for service engagement and service quality.

Limitations

While findings from these interviews provide insight into county adaptations and potential areas for future consideration, the analysis has several important limitations. First, the study was conducted in only five counties within one state, and with a subset of staff in each county. The counties that participated in interviews are not representative of all Wisconsin counties, nor are the staff who took part representative of all staff within their agencies or Wisconsin; particularly in Wisconsin’s county-administered system, experiences are likely to vary across counties. While some consistent themes, and therefore implications, emerged, they are based on a small and non-representative sample. Future studies could draw on these findings as a starting point to gather data from a broader array of counties, or systematically across all counties, to provide a more complete picture of county experiences.

Further, these data were collected at a specific point-in-time and early in pandemic’s onset. Public health and other conditions have changed rapidly since data collection occurred, as vaccination has become broadly available and COVID-19 variants have emerged. It is likely that enforcement practices have also continued to evolve. Future research should consider the extent to which changes in practice in the pandemic’s first year have persisted.

Finally, findings from these interviews reflect staff experiences interacting with NCPs and their perceptions of NCP experiences during the pandemic; findings include only limited information on staff perceptions of CP experiences, and do not encompass direct reports of NCP or CP experiences. Future research could explore how staff perceived that practice changes affected CPs, as well as the impact of pandemic-induced declines in payments on CP and child economic well-being; future research could also solicit the perspectives and experiences of CPs and children, as well as NCPs, directly.

Conclusion

In the face of considerable uncertainty, economic crisis, and health-related operational constraints, human services agencies needed to adjust their approaches to work in order to serve customers. This study found that in the field of child support, this shift went beyond changes in the modalities staff use to do their jobs; rather, child support agencies and courts shifted their orientation toward enforcing orders. While child support agencies have historically taken an enforcement-oriented approach, this study found that the COVID-19 pandemic helped facilitate a shift in some child support agencies toward providing outreach and support in a more proactive, supportive manner than before the pandemic, and with greater caution. Whether or not these changes will persist, and what the long-term impacts of changes in approach to enforcement are on collections for children, remains to be seen.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Child Support Research Agreement between the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families and the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin– Madison.

Notes

¹ Interviews included questions about the use of and processes related to criminal nonsupport charges; however, those findings are omitted as the current analysis focuses on actions specifically taken to compel compliance, and criminal nonsupport is a punitive action that cannot be cleared by coming into compliance (Cook & Noyes, 2011; Gentry, 2017). Broadly, agency staff reported few changes to criminal nonsupport in the pandemic context, and very limited use prior to or during the COVID-19 pandemic.

² Whereas most findings presented in this paper draw on information shared by court staff and support agency staff, court staff were not asked questions about administrative enforcement, given that these actions fall under the domain of the child support agency. Therefore, findings on administrative enforcement are based nearly entirely on information from agency directors and staff (whereas all other findings reflect information from both groups).