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Jacquelyn Boggess
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
What You Should Know About "Fatherhood Policy"
Marriage Promotion
Child Support Collaboration
How Legal Service Professionals Can Help You
Fatherhood and Domestic Violence
Safety
Fatherhood Programs Are Not Batterer's Intervention
Programs
Common Concerns—Poverty and Safety
The Value of Social Welfare Services for Fathers
It's Your Decision
Footnotes
I. INTRODUCTION
Many practitioners who work with low-income fathers find themselves
so busy providing services to their clients, making connections,
and interacting with other people in the community, that they prefer
not to further burden themselves with "policy" matters. It can,
however, be very useful to social service providers and their clients
to inform themselves on the general policy issues related to noncustodial
parents in their community, and to specific issues being emphasized
in community and government policy discussion.
It is particularly important to look at "fatherhood" policy from
a broad perspective and use this knowledge to understand how funding,
laws, and practices affect the families in a program. If a community
service provider understands policy implications, he can make better,
more informed decisions about involving his program and participants
in demonstration projects and other grantmaker funded and directed
ventures.
Some of the projects guided and structured by government funding
in particular can include goals, objectives and strategies that
do not recognize the issues and barriers of the participants in
a particular program or community. Projects and research demonstrations
in which a social service program is expected to be altered or directed
to a certain research outcome can actually be harmful to the men
in the program.
II. What You Should Know About
ëFatherhood Policy'
What you may already know is that in 2003, at the time of the scheduled
reauthorization of the 1996 welfare reform, proposed legislation
included funding and program structure guidelines for "fatherhood
programs." The set-aside of funds and the inclusion of programs
directed at fathers in social welfare policy can certainly be considered
an accomplishment for those who advocate for low-income fathers
and their families. However, the excitement of reaching this goal
should not cloud the rational thinking of those considering using
this funding for programs that serve non-custodial poor fathers.
Clear and determined decision-making is especially important for
programs that serve never-married fathers and fathers with large
amounts of child support owed to the state that, if paid, are retained
by the state. Service providers in programs with a substantial population
of those participants must appreciate the fact that the funding
guidelines may include expectations of grantees and child support
payment requirements that will particularly (perhaps negatively)
affect these men and their families. Some of the expectations may
include marriage promotion, collaboration with the local child support
agency, and domestic violence assessment.
- Marriage Promotion
In the relatively short history of the inclusion of services for
low-income fathers in social welfare policy, marriage promotion
has always been a part of that policy. In the early drafts in
the late 1990s, it was "promotion of two-parent families,"
and by the time of welfare reauthorization of 2003, it was frankly
"marriage promotion." The proposals were to provide
funding for programs that work with fathers1 and promote
marriage. The proposals provide examples of marriage promotion
such as teaching parenting skills, household management skills,
and anger management skills. Programs that consider accessing
such funding sources should carefully consider which goals and
objectives will be expected in the programs being considered,
and assess the chances of reaching such goals in that community.
A carefully written program plan could ensure that the goals of
the grantmaker are practical ones for your program and your community.
- Child Support Collaboration
Another strong push of welfare reform since the mid 90s has been
toward stricter enforcement of child support. Research and policy
analysis during that time period has suggested that children could
be saved from poverty if their fathers were paying child support.
Perhaps as a consequence of this analysis, state and federal governments
have placed a much greater emphasis on strict child support enforcement.
This was also a time, coincidentally, that there came a push from
some community activists and advocates of "responsible fatherhood"
to include men in social welfare policy and programs. The rationale
was that men need social services and employment assistance in
order to ensure that they would be able to pay their child support.
It seemed a natural alliance, and federal and state funding for
fatherhood programs was directed toward programs that collaborated
with local child support enforcement agencies. The premise of
this collaboration is a valid one. Poor men who do not have the
resources to obtain legal services, and who cannot decipher the
complexities of the child support process themselves, should be
connected to the child support enforcement agency through their
advocates at the fatherhood programs. They could be informed and
directed in order to avoid the pitfalls of accidental non-payment,
and to correct (or be forgiven for) the mistakes and missteps
they had made in the past. Many non-custodial parents are well
served by being able to make a direct connection with their child
support enforcement agency. It is helpful to men with child support
problems to have a chance to explain their situation (with the
assistance of a social service provider), and perhaps given more
time and patient consideration to come into compliance with the
order to pay child support.
However, there are two reasons practitioners who go into these
collaborations are advised to study the practicality of this collaboration
from the perspective of the men in their programs and their community.
Men in the programs are usually required to commit to "pay
their child support." This means individuals in the programs
have to sign a document that says they will pay, and the consequences
of being unable to pay may be that they cannot continue to receive
the services of the program.
There are two issues that arise here: one, for most men, in most
programs, high arrears are not reduced. Some men approach the
program in order to find employment and get themselves in a better
position to help their children. They can become frustrated and
feel helpless when their brand new paycheck is so reduced that
they cannot use their income to support themselves or their children.
The second concern is that for most men whose children receive
or have in the past received welfare services, when they get a
job, or a better job, and they finally are able to make enough
money to help support their children, the "child support"
they pay is retained by the state as repayment of past welfare
benefits. Practitioners who provide employment services and job
skills services for low-income men have expressed this frustration
on behalf of the men they serve.
Please keep in mind, however, this is a very general discussion
of this one aspect of fatherhood program/child support agency
collaborations. Across the country, there are some state and federal
demonstration projects that address the two concerns explored
here. In your decision making process, inquire whether there exists
some arrears forgiveness program, or some state or federal demonstration
waiver, that could allow the child support payments of fathers
in your program (whose families have in the past or currently
receive welfare) to pass through the state and be paid to the
child's custodial parent.
It is clear from our conversations with fatherhood program service
providers that the politics of these issues are not nearly as
immediately important as the practical implications for community-based
organizations that serve non-custodial parents. Given the circumstances
of the lives of these men and their children, including poverty,
lack of resources, and lack of social power and sometimes efficacy,
programs designed to insist that the non-custodial parents are
or could easily be in a position to pay their child support or
marry the mother of their children can lead to frustration. Practitioners,
the parents they serve, and communities in which the services
are being provided are well advised to create programs that best
fulfill their community's needs, without regard to popularity
or currency of the issue for other people and other communities.
It is advisable for service providers to survey the issues involved
in marriage promotion and child support collaboration. The information
gleaned from this research can help practitioners decide whether
the perhaps much needed funds provided by the "fatherhood"
funding streams can be accessed without compromising or endangering
the financial and personal security of the families they serve.
III. How Legal Service Professionals
Can Help You
All of the issues addressed in this handbook can most likely be
better and more successfully addressed with the help of a lawyer
or some other type of legal service professional. It is very difficult
for parents to serve the best interests of themselves and their
children without legal advice and advocacy.
The legal vocabulary of the child support system can put unrepresented
lowincome parents at a distinct practical disadvantage. When parents
receive legal documents in the mail, or when they have conversations
with child support enforcement or judicial representatives, they
often see or hear unfamiliar, and in some cases indecipherable,
legal terms. As a result, non-custodial parents are unsure what
is being asked of them. If they cannot decipher the terms or conditions
of an agreement they are presumed to have made, they are in danger
of being held in contempt, waiving their rights, or agreeing to
terms they cannot possibly meet.
Very often, non-custodial fathers ask how, or whether, they can
visit their child, immediately after the child support order has
been entered, or the enforcement tactics have been employed. They
are usually told that they must retain the services of an attorney
or "go to court," to get their visitation rights established. For
many non-custodial fathers this advice is useless because they cannot
afford the services of an attorney, nor can they adequately represent
themselves in an adversarial judicial hearing. Finally, they may
not understand the difference between "court" and "child support
office", and therefore, feel that the child support system is "stacked"
against them.
Community-based programs that serve non-custodial parents should
seriously consider employing the services of legal services providers.
Of course, legal services for low-income fathers are expensive and
sometimes hard to find, but this goal deserves some imaginative
thinking and serious consideration. If there are free legal services
available in the community, there may be some way to explain the
issues of the non-custodial parents in your program, and have that
agency either work to provide the service or to help your program
find a legal service professional who can help. There may be family
lawyers in the community who are interested in providing "pro
bono" (free) services to the parents in your program.
Some programs that serve non-custodial fathers have tried to access
legal services in this way or have these kinds of services in place.
Many of the practitioners in those programs have said that the services
have been of some help, but that they have not been as helpful as
one might expect they would be. Free legal services agencies have
been helpful to some extent, but they do not have the time or resources
to provide services for non-custodial parents.
As to lawyers who are willing to provide pro bono services: There
is an important reason that that kind of service tends to be less
successful than one might expect. For many very low-income non-custodial
parents, a legal advocate's knowledge and understanding of local
welfare policy, practice and law would be vital to their child support
case. Most lawyers (even those who regularly deal with child support
and practice family law) do not have the experience or understanding
and cannot afford to expend the time and effort to gain knowledge
that they cannot use for paying clients.
If both the program and the legal service professional recognize
these issues from the beginning there may be some potential to address
and overcome the concerns. Maybe one could use law students. Maybe
there is some funding available for such a program, and the lawyers
could be paid for their services. It is advisable that community-based
organizations confront these issues with regard to legal services
and find new and imaginative ways to overcome the problems.
- Fatherhood and Domestic
Violence An insistent part of the policy discussion of
families who receive welfare services and other low-income families
is "fatherhood and domestic violence." This is an
unfortunate combination of words that can be heard and read in
current discussions of social welfare policy. This phase can be
particularly uncomfortable for advocates for low-income fathers,
and for advocates for battered women. For similar reasons, and
for other, more distinct reasons, advocates can be overwhelmed
and unsure about how to proceed in the programmatic and collaborative
work implied in the policy to which this phrase alludes.
The implication has been that service providers for these two
populations should collaborate on the creation and implementation
of activities and programs for the prevention of, and intervention
in domestic violence. Such a suggestion raises several questions.
What would be the structure and function of such a collaboration?
What are the goals and expectations on which the work is to be
based? Should we create programs, and activities within fatherhood
programs? Is that a course of action that is safe for women and
children? Will women and children be as safe as possible if these
types of programs are not created and carried out? If the safety
of some women and children would be enhanced by programmatic activities
that address the issue of violence, what kinds of programs should
be created, and who should design, administer, and evaluate them?
Should domestic violence be addressed within or outside the context
of the violence of society in general? Should we, for any reason,
be concerned about the poor men and men of color who will be affected
by such programs? Should these programs address themselves to
both prevention, and intervention?
All current indications—as we move to welfare reauthorization—are
toward imminent implementation of programs and proposals. It seems
clear that federal and state representatives and others who are
crafting current social welfare policy, either do not have these
same questions, or believe that the questions can be satisfactorily
answered within the context of projects based on the conservative
marriage and fatherhood agenda. Moreover, it is clear from the
policy statements of the current administration, and the findings
included in conservative legislation, that marriage promotion
is one of the two major goals on which the objectives of government
supported fatherhood programs are based.2 To the extent
that domestic violence awareness and prevention measures are included
in fatherhood programs in order to "promote and encourage
marriage," advocates for both battered women and low-income
men are advised to proceed with extreme caution.
One way to address concerns such as these is for the above-mentioned
advocates to deliberately plan and carry out activities and discussions
in which the important questions about "domestic violence
and fatherhood" are addressed. To start that discussion
on some common ground, it is useful to articulate some social
welfare policy notions on which advocates can agree. That agreement
might include the following premises: (1) safety from family violence
is of paramount importance; (2) fatherhood programs are not batterer's
intervention programs; (3) there is value for low-income fathers,
their families, and for society to provide them with employment
and other social welfare services; and (4) the great majority
of the men and women who would be affected by these policy decisions
are poor, as are their children.
Safety
There is very little that will ensure that women and children
will be safe from domestic violence. However, regardless of
any other program goals or objectives, all social services
program activities should conducted in ways that are sensitive
to the reality of domestic violence and should be structured
with family safety in mind. In some respects, it is especially
important that this sensitivity apply for fatherhood programs
because one of the objectives of to encourage intra-family relationships
and involvement. Moreover, one of the important questions to
be addressed is how (and whether) to support and facilitate
safe interaction between children and their fathers who may
have been violent in the past. These are clearly complex and
complicated issues. The crafting and execution of this discussion
and collaboration will require delicacy and forthrightness on
both (all) sides.
Fatherhood programs
are not batterer's intervention programs Generally,
fatherhood programs entail a set of services designed to help
poor fathers by providing neighborhood mentors, and peer group
support and other group support. The services are also provided
to assist in the men's attempt to find work and get education
and training. Group support provides opportunity for discussion
around the issues of involvement with children, interaction
with the children's mother, and an acknowledgment of the
men's concerns about providing for themselves and their
children while dealing with poverty and racial discrimination.
Of these services, the group support around relationships with
children and the children's mother indicates the necessity
of input, collaboration and assistance from women, advocates
for battered women, and child welfare advocates.
However, fatherhood programs are not batterer's intervention
programs. Those who are concerned about safety for individual
family members cannot expect fatherhood programs as they are
currently structured to provide batterer's intervention
services. It is helpful to make that point from two different
perspectives. Men are not likely to have been referred or directed
to the program because of an incidence of violence, and for
the most part, the men have not been ordered by a criminal court
to attend the program because of a judicial finding of domestic
violence. One of the reasons for the cross-training and discussion,
however, is that fatherhood programs, just like all other social
service programs must be administered within the context of
the reality of the existence of domestic violence in our society
and in the lives of low-income families.
Common concerns—poverty
and safety The great majority of the men and women who
are affected by "fatherhood and domestic violence"
policy are poor, and social welfare policy directly and disproportionately
affects poor men, women and children. There are clearly issues
of social and economic justice, and the creation of the policy
would benefit from the contribution of all advocates, and practitioners
who provide services to low-income individuals and families.
There are certainly social justice issues to be addressed on
behalf of poor parents and children in the current welfare system,
and in proposals to change the current system. One important
aspect of those changes is the government "promotion and
encouragement" of marriage, and the use of national fatherhood
policy to promote marriage. Both state and federal government
officials have supported father involvement initiatives and
child support reforms. Every federal legislative proposal to
provide funding for services to fathers includes a requirement
for the grantee to submit to an agenda which includes marriage
promotion, and government reimbursement for cash welfare benefits
to the child's family.3
Current welfare reform proposals include more specific and directive
references to marriage promotion than in the past, and on the
basis of the premises outlined here, they are of particular
concern on the issues of personal privacy, social justice and
domestic violence.4 Without the answer to the questions
posed above, it is unreasonable to suggest that fatherhood programs
should move forward with domestic violence intervention. It
seems clear that the marriage promotion strategy—and not
the safety and security of individual family members—isthe
primary concern of the authors of legislation of this type.
We can all agree that children benefit greatly from the love
and support of adults who are committed to their well-being,
whether or not those adults are in involved in an intimate relationship
with each other. It is also clear that single parents can provide
for their children, and give them firm and positive direction
toward a successful and happy adult life.
The value of social
welfare services for fathers. The third point of common
ground on which advocates for poor men and women must stand
is a belief in the value of social welfare services for men.5
The discussion of services for men, usually provided by community-based
organizations commonly called fatherhood programs requires some
complex analysis. First, it seems clear that poor fathers need
social services, and there are at least two essential services
fatherhood programs must be able to offer low-income men. One
is peer and mentoring support for men (particularly men of color)
facing the issues of discrimination, lack of education and training,
unemployment, and intractable poverty. The other essential service
is preparedness for—and referral to—employment.
What is of most particular concern in the policy discussions
surrounding fatherhood and fatherhood programs is that government
programs and policies not exacerbate the problem for poor mothers
and fathers who need the assistance and sanction of social service
systems in order to meet the goal they have for their children's
well-being.
It's your
decision It is clear from our conversations with fatherhood
program service providers that the politics of these issues
are not nearly as immediately important as the practical implications
for community-based organizations that serve non-custodial parents.
Given the circumstances of the lives of these men and their
children, including poverty, lack of resources, and lack of
social power and sometimes efficacy, programs designed to insist
that the non-custodial parents are or could easily be in a position
to pay their child support or marry the mother of their children
can lead to frustration. Practitioners, the parents they serve,
and communities in which the services are being provided are
well advised to create programs that best fulfill their community's
needs, without regard to popularity or currency of the issue
for other people and other communities. It is advisable for
service providers to survey the issues involved in marriage
promotion and child support collaboration. The information gleaned
from this research can help practitioners decide whether the
perhaps much needed funds provided by the "fatherhood"
funding streams can be accessed without compromising or endangering
the financial and personal security of the families they serve.
Footnotes
- The early proposals were for programs that serve low-income
fathers who owe child support and have children who receive or
have in the past received welfare cash benefits; then it was for
low-income fathers; the 2003 legislation is for programs that
serve men, at least 50% of whom are low-income fathers.
- The other major goal is reimbursement of cash benefits to state
and federal governments through collection and retention of child
support owed to custodial parents.
- For women and child who have received welfare services, and
for the children's fathers "government reimbursement for cash
welfare benefits to the child's family" can be indistinguishable
from what the state and federal governments call "child support."
Each parent is responsible to support their children financially.
By law, this responsibility is to be based on the parents' ability
to provide. The design of government supported social service
programs for low-income fathers is based, in large part, on this
financial responsibility. The vast majority of men in low-income
fatherhood programs want to be able to provide for their children,
above and beyond the child's financial needs. However, the men
in these programs are poor and they have very little ability to
pay, and the child support policies which are said to be motivated
by a inclination to increase father involvement cannot have that
effect for children who live in families that have received welfare
benefits. What little money their fathers have to pay in "child
support," overwhelmingly, is retained by the state and federal
governments. Poor fathers who want to take care of their children,
but see their money going to reimburse the state do not feel effective
or useful to their children, and they are less likely to stay
involved in their children's lives.
- Current legislation.
- This discussion is not meant to include the so-call "father's
rights" organizations created, generally, by and for men who have
the means to support their children. That type of organization
is for fathers who are not low-income parents, and are not subject
to the dictates of welfare policy. Father's rights organizations
have, until very recently, been the most visible and vocal type
of fatherhood organization in this country. Traditionally, they
are comprised of white, more likely middle and working class men,
who communicate widely by Internet. Much of their communication
is to discuss and develop strategy for using the family courts
and lawyers to gain visitation rights, reduce child support payments,
and dispute sexual and physical abuse charges.
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