Printer Friendly Page Child Support
NAPIPM Child Support TAG contact: Patrick Teague
Summary of the Peer to Peer OCSE sponsored training on Paternity Establishment Conference (.pdf)
October 7, 2005:
The following is the OCSE newsletter summary of the initial meetings between Medical and Child Support Directors.
Multi-agency Collaboration to Pave the Way for Improving Medical Support
By: Elaine Blackman
This summer, the Nation's state IV-D directors will meet with state directors from three other Department of Health and Human Services programs, marking the first such widespread collaborative effort on a national level concerning the issue of medical support for children.
State directors from Medicaid, SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program), and Child Welfare (IV-E) have been invited to join the state directors of child support enforcement programs in their multi-regional office-level meetings, set for June through August.
The meetings should result in a plan of action for each state IV-D director to further improve the program's effectiveness for obtaining medical support for the children it serves, as detailed in the National Child Support Enforcement Strategic Plan for FY 2005-2009.
In a joint "Dear Colleague Letter" to state directors of the four programs, in March, Administration for Children and Families Assistant Secretary Wade F. Horn and Dennis G. Smith, Director of the Center for Medicaid and State Operations, urged their participation in the meetings. The letter pointed to the National Child Support Enforcement Strategic Plan as a driving force for this collaborative effort. The Strategic Plan stresses cooperation with other components of Federal, state, and local government, including Medicaid, SCHIP, and child welfare programs, in striving to meet its medical support goals.
The letter also specified three additional reasons that spurred plans for the meetings: the Child and Family Services Review, an ACF review system that helps states focus on systems change and improve outcomes for families and children; inspections conducted by the Office of Inspector General of seven states related to the use of Medicaid by children in foster care; and the Administration's desire to increase children's access to public and private health care coverage.
In preparing the agenda for the meetings, regional offices for each of the programs sought participation among their states. The agenda includes topics surrounding the timeliness of, and broader goals for, collaboration among these programs; perceived barriers to, and possibilities for enhancing, collaborative efforts; and best practices in states with cross-program approaches to children's health care issues.
OCSE Acting Commissioner David Siegel expects the meetings will "enhance our connections at all levels of government and through the three critical programs...Meetings such as these are important not only to us, but to those who look to us every day to improve their lives and their future-the children and families we serve."
