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To be eligible for the study, a participant or comparison group member had to have the following characteristics: be a noncustodial father; be receiving public assistance or have an income at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level; be unemployed or working fewer than 20 hours per week; have a child support order payable through the support collection unit or have had paternity established for his or her child and a court proceeding; and be receiving child support services through a social services district. The pilot programs used several methods to recruit participants, including family courts, internal referrals, and outreach. The authors used propensity score matching to generate a comparison group, using annual data on child support case characteristics, demographic information, and quarterly wage information for noncustodial parent case records in the New York state child support program from 2005 to 2009. Specifically, evaluators matched cases with overdue child support orders that had similar demographic characteristics, employment and earnings histories, number and ages of children, public benefit receipt histories, and some other characteristics. The matching approach resulted in a group of 1,757 fathers in the intervention condition and the same number of comparison group fathers.
October 2006 to September 2009
New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance
New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance
The program was a pilot and did not exist before the evaluation.
The Strengthening Families Through Stronger Fathers Initiative provided employment services and other supports to parents with low income who were not current on their child support payments in the following four New York cities: Buffalo, Jamestown, Syracuse, and New York City. Participants worked with a case manager to coordinate services, including job-readiness training, job search assistance, and job placement. Some sites also offered job skills training, transitional jobs, and work supports. Each site also provided parenting or relationship skills workshops and child support-related services. Some sites provided substance abuse and mental health services as well.
The comparison group was composed of men who were not current on their child support payments in the same New York cities, and who matched the characteristics of parents in the intervention group but who did not have access to Strengthening Families services.
Participants were explicitly told participation was not mandatory but that nonparticipation could result in jail time. According to the authors, the “threat of jail” was “usually made quite clear.”
People in the program group could receive services for one year.
The intervention included participants from four cities in New York: Buffalo, Jamestown, Syracuse, and New York City.
Parenting and co-parenting (child support paid)