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July/August 2005 - Vol. 7, No. 5
Federal Budget Bill for DC Contains Marriage Incentive
Funding
A bill before Congress that makes appropriations for the District
of Columbia for FY 2006 contains a controversial marriage initiative.
Sponsored by Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), the Marriage Development
and Improvement Program would match $3 for every $1, up to
a lifetime maximum of $9,000 in “marriage development”
savings accounts held by District couples for the purchase of a
home, the payment of tuition or for starting a business. Couples
would have to withdraw the money within three years and be married
by that time. Couples earning up to $50,000 would be eligible for
the matching funds. Also eligible would be single childless
District residents ages 16-22. These residents would receive a $200
bonus for getting married. Couples would receive a $300 bonus for
participating in marriage counseling.
A total of $3 million would be appropriated for the program. Of
this, $1.5 million would be set aside for the marriage development
accounts, and another $1.5 million would be designated to two groups,
the East Capital Center for Change, located in the District, and
the National Center for Fathering of Kansas City, Missouri. These
organizations would work with churches to provide marriage counseling
and couples mentoring.
In a letter to Senator Brownback and DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes
Norton, Legal Momentum and other advocacy groups state:
While we strongly support government assistance for low income
parents, we feel that such assistance should be available to all
families, regardless of marital status. To do otherwise is to
engage in discrimination against single parents and their children,
and to further disadvantage a group of children who, through no
fault of their own, have only one parent, or whose parents are
unmarried. Due to divorce, separation, death, abandonment or because
their parent never married, more than half of all children growing
up today will spend some of their childhood in a single parent
family. But single parent families are no less worthy than married
parent families and they should not be treated as second class
citizens. Indeed, the Supreme Court held more than thirty years
ago that discrimination against unmarried families is an unconstitutional
denial of the equal protection of the laws. New Jersey Welfare
Rights Organization v. Cahill, 411 U.S. 619 (1973).
The bill passed the Senate Committee on Appropriations on July
21, and has been placed on the Senate legislative calendar.
Missouri Bill Would Charge Birth Costs to Father
A bill introduced in the Missouri State Senate would require fathers
to repay the state for the costs associated with the birth of their
child when the mother receives Medicaid benefits at the time of
birth. If enacted, the bill would add Missouri to an existing pool
of ten states whose child support agencies actively require repayment
of Medicaid paid birth costs. The average cost of a birth covered
by Medicaid in Missouri is $3,286. The proposal is part of an overhaul
of the Medicaid program being considered by the state Medicaid Reform
Commission in which the entitlement to benefits is being questioned.
Although recovering birth costs has been shown to discourage mothers
from receiving prenatal medical care and reduce the financial resources
available to poor families, the policy is viewed by some as a means
to hold the father responsible for the birth of his child. The policy,
however, creates a dilemma for anti-abortion activists who favored
a recent increase in income eligibility limits for Medicaid in order
to encourage women to carry their pregnancies to term.
Wisconsin currently has a birth-cost recovery policy and last year
collected $20.8 million to repay the state for Medicaid birth costs.
The state’s policy has been opposed by many advocates for
low-income families and a recent Wisconsin Court of Appeals decision
struck down the policy when applied to persons who can demonstrate
an inability to pay. The impact of the decision is not yet known.
Virginia Child Support Enforcement Subpoenas Cell
Phone Records
The Virginia Department of Social Services has subpoenaed major
private cell phone companies for addresses and telephone numbers
of customers in order to enforce their child support order. The
state has issued subpoenas for 48 cases and, according to Virginia
Director of Child Support Enforcement Nick Young, has had approximately
a 20% rate of success in finding individuals through their cell
phone information. Young plans to continue to pursue the strategy
aggressively, subpoenaing information from the companies twice monthly.
Cell phone company representatives expressed concerns with customer
privacy, but were complying with the subpoenas. For more information,
see
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke%5C27830.html.
New York Child Care Assistance Child Support Cooperation
Requirement Raises Legal Issues
The state of New York passed legislation requiring recipients of
child care subsidies to cooperate with child support enforcement
in order to allow the state to seek reimbursement for the subsidy
in May 2004. The requirement applies to all subsidy recipients who
are not also TANF participants. The child care subsidy applicant
or recipient must pursue support through child support enforcement
or proceed on her own through the courts to obtain an “add-on”
to the current child support order for child care costs in order
to satisfy the cooperation requirement.
A review of the requirement and its implications, recently issued
by the Greater Upstate Law Project, Inc., raises the following issues:
- Refusing to cooperate with child support enforcement without
good cause results in denial of transitional child care subsidies.
A “good cause” exception is granted when it can be
demonstrated that cooperating would cause “an adverse effect
on the health, safety or welfare of the child or other persons
in the child’s household.” Child care services workers
make the determination instead of the more skilled domestic violence
liaisons because the funding does not allow for the payment of
domestic violence personnel who are TANF employees to be paid
out of the Child Care Block Grant.
- If the noncustodial parent fails to make a payment for the child
care add-on, the custodial parent will have to wait one month
before filing a violation petition in order to have the social
services district resume payment for the noncustodial parent’s
share. In the meantime, the custodial parent will be held responsible
for the payment of both her share and the noncustodial parent’s
share. After one month, the custodial parent will need to go to
court to enforce the add-on, in spite of the fact that the add-on
will benefit the state and not the custodial parent.
- There is no state statutory authority for the child support
requirement.
- It will be difficult to determine the proper “add-on”
amount. There is no clear directive on whether the noncustodial
parent is to be charged when the order is set. The state Office
of Child and Family Services wants the amount to be the equivalent
of the total cost of care, but Family Court Magistrates have been
setting the amount by looking only at the custodial parent’s
co-payment.
- It will also be difficult for the noncustodial parent to know
how much is owed in any given month. The state subsidy is dependant
on the amount of time a child spends in care each month and so
is variable. Thus, the parents will not be aware of the amount
owed by the noncustodial parent unless they seek out the information
each month from the child care worker or provider. The unpredictable
monthly amount will rule out the use of wage garnishment and discourage
regular payments.
- Although the state is the beneficiary of the ordered child
support, the custodial parent will be held responsible for paying
a fee to the child support agency for enforcement services.
The report, Child Support Cooperation: New Condition of Eligibility
for Child Care Assistance Raises Practical and Legal Issues,
is available at www.gulpny.org.
CFFPP Conference on Collaboration Between Domestic
Violence Advocates And Fatherhood Groups Planned for October
The Center for Family Policy and Practice, together with
the Family Violence Prevention Fund and the Institute
on Domestic Violence in the African American Community invite
you to join us in beautiful San Antonio, Texas during the Domestic
Violence Awareness Month of October for a one-of-a-kind conference,
Collaboration between Fatherhood and Domestic Violence Programs
in Communities of Color: A Focus on Prevention. The conference
will be held October 11-13, 2005 and is supported by the U.S. Department
of Justice Office on Violence Against Women.
Why should you attend this conference?
The conference is designed for domestic violence advocates and fatherhood
practitioners who face such challenges as:
- Understanding the barriers and issues faced by low-income men
of color
- Finding new allies in gender violence prevention efforts
- Keeping up with policy and legal developments that will affect
low-income families
- Finding trustworthy groups that work with fathers and seeking
out ways to collaborate that will benefit families
- Helping a victim achieve safety and stability when she remains
committed to the perpetrator
- providing services to keep low-income families safe while at
the same time confronting the poverty and racism that affect all
family members
- Exploring domestic violence prevention with non-traditional
groups
- Meeting and networking with others who share an interest in
advocating for low-income families
- Sharing first-hand experiences from your work related to race,
class and gender with a broad spectrum of advocates and experts
- Working with fathers while recognizing the need to collaborate
with domestic violence advocates to create violence prevention
initiatives
- Learning to distinguish between different types of father-centered
advocacy
Planned Conference Outline
We are fortunate to have a wide range of national leaders assisting
with the conference as presenters, panelists and keynote speakers.
Presentations will include:
- Economic barriers faced by clients of fatherhood programs and
domestic violence programs
- Domestic violence and communities of color
- Examples of collaborations between domestic violence programs
and fatherhood programs
- Public policy related to welfare, fatherhood and domestic violence
- Community-based domestic violence prevention efforts
- Involving men in domestic violence prevention
**First Opportunity to Apply for Targeted Technical
Assistance Services!
Over the coming year, we will have the opportunity to provide technical
assistance to selected community organizations seeking to forge
relationships between father-centered work and domestic violence
prevention. These services will be provided free of charge. Applications,
and further details, will be available to interested organizations
at the conference, the first such opportunity to apply to become
a recipient of our technical assistance services.
Registration is limited and there is a deadline to guarantee hotel
room availability and rates, so you are encouraged to register soon.
A registration form is available here.
Update on Faith-Based Programming and Prisons
- A lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Iowa against a
faith-based ministry program will proceed to trial following a
federal judge’s ruling. U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt
ruled that Americans United for Separation of Church and State
had produced sufficient documentation to support its claim that
the Iowa Department of Corrections (IDOC) was violating the separation
of church and state by promoting an evangelical Christian prison
ministry program called the InnerChange Freedom Initiative (ICFI).
ICFI was created by the Prison Fellowship Ministries (PFM) in
Texas in 1997 with the goal of reducing recidivism through the
acceptance of “the life-transforming power of Jesus Christ.”
Inmates follow a continual “Christ-based” agenda of
bible studies, counseling and job training. President Bush, then
governor of Texas, agreed to provide a prison, guards and basic
operating services at taxpayer expense. The ministry was to pay
for all prisoner programs and religious training. ICFI has since
expanded to Iowa, Kansas and Minnesota, serving a total of about
1,200 inmates. Each of these states pays about a third of program
costs, approximately $250,000 each. Current PFM President Mark
Earley hopes to expand to five new states over the next two years
and eventually spread across the nation. Although inmates of any
faith are eligible for the program, the stated goal is to spread
Christianity. (See CFFPP Policy Brief
November 2003 for further details on the Inner Change program).
- Prison Fellowship Ministries, founded by evangelist Charles
Colson and home to ICFI (see above) received a personal invitation
from the White House to participate in a round-table discussion
on April 1st with President Bush and First-Lady Laura Bush as
part of her Helping America’s Youth Initiative which has
been created to address the needs of the most disadvantaged children.
At an earlier White House event in June 2003, President Bush proclaimed
the ministry a model for his efforts to allow faith-based groups
to compete for public money to provide social services.
- According to a Harvard University Kennedy School of Government
Case Report, 27 of the 52 grants awarded in 2002 under the President’s
Mentoring Children of Prisoners Program were to faith-based projects
or projects that partnered with faith-based programs.
- In Tom Green County, Texas, county officials have approved plans
for the construction of a private Christian jail that would house
more than 500 inmates. The jail is said to be the first with a
mission to bring Christianity to all of its inmates. While the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice has said that it will not
send state prison inmates to the jail, county officials have confirmed
their confidence in the plan because it will be funded through
the issuance of county bonds and inmates would volunteer to be
housed in the jail. The jail is planned to have many features
not available in typical correctional institutions, such as jobs
for inmates that pay no less than minimum wage, a set-aside of
15% of salary as a ‘nest egg’ available upon release,
and a courtyard surrounded by the jail’s buildings to protect
the perimeters rather than a barbed-wire fence. Inmates would
be allowed to wear personal clothing rather than prison uniforms.
For more information, see http://www.interfaithalliance.org/atf/cf/%7B05044A38-9516-4831-9AA2-E10AFAB8886A%7D/meetuptia_resource_prison_reentry_05242005.pdf
- In a related vein, Kentucky District Judge Michael Caperton
has been offering some drug and alcohol offenders the option of
attending "worship services" instead of going to either
jail or a treatment program. Judge Caperton has offered the alternative
approximately 50 times. A lawyer for the Kentucky ACLU, David
Friedman, noted the serious constitutional problems with the alternative
sentences because, "the judge is saying that those willing
to go to worship services can avoid jail in the same way that
those who decline to go cannot." See Judge lets some
defendants attend worship as sentencing option, May 31, 2005,
www.courier-journal.com.
Journal Articles Focus On Race, Class and Marriage
The August 2005 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family
has a number of articles of interest to those working on behalf
of low-income families of color:
- Explaining Black-White Disparity in Maltreatment: Poverty,
Female-Headed Families, and Urbanization, Amie M. Schuck
- The Risk of Partner Violence Among Low-Income Hispanic
Subgroups, Sonia M. Frias and Ronald J. Angel
- In-Hospital Paternity Establishment and Father Involvement
in Fragile Families,
Ronald Mincy, Irwin Garfinkel, Lenna Nepomnyaschy
- Parental Involvement Promotes Rural African American Youths'
Self-Pride and Sexual Self-Concepts, Velma McBride Murry,
Gene H. Brody, Lily D. McNair, Zupei Luo, Frederick X. Gibbons,
Meg Gerrard, Thomas Ashby Wills
- "Everything's There Except Money": How Money Shapes
Decisions to Marry Among Cohabitors, Pamela J. Smock, Wendy
D. Manning, Meredith Porter
- Race/Ethnic Differences in the Marital Expectations of
Adolescents: The Role of Romantic Relationships, Sarah R.
Crissey
- Incarceration and the Formation and Stability of Marital
Unions, Leonard M. Lopoo, Bruce Western
Abstracts from the journal articles are accessible at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/jomf/67/3,
where the journal issue can also be purchased.
Conference to Enlist Men in the Prevention of Violence
against Women
A Call to Men: National Association of Men and Women Committed
to Ending Violence Against Women will hold its first national conference
at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City September
22-23, 2005. The conference, Becoming Part of the Solution to
End Violence Against Women, will feature presentations on:
- Redefining manhood
- Pornography and the sexual objectification of women
- What faith communities can do to end violence against women
- The correlation between racism, sexism and violence against
women
- Concepts and principals of community organizing
- Violence against women and the hip-hop culture
A Call to Men, according to its website, “believes that violence
against women is not a women's issue. Although historically it has
been almost entirely women who have been at the forefront addressing
this subject, we think it is essential that men play a primary role
in the solution to end it. To do that, well-meaning men …
men who, for the most part don't see themselves as part of the problem
… need to get involved.”
For more information and to register, see www.acalltomen.com.
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