Employment and Training Services for Noncustodial Parents in the Child Support Program

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Administration for Children and Families</SUBAGY> <CFR>45 CFR Parts 302, 303, and 304</CFR> <RIN>RIN 0970-AD00</RIN> <SUBJECT>Employment and Training Services for Noncustodial Parents in the Child Support Program</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Child Support Services (OCSS), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS or the Department). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In an effort to make the child support program more effective, this Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) proposes to allow Federal financial participation (FFP) for certain optional and nonduplicative employment and training services for eligible noncustodial parents in the child support program. The proposed rule will permit states, at their discretion, to use FFP to provide any or all of the following services: job search assistance; job readiness training; job development and job placement services; skills assessments; job retention services; work supports; and occupational training and other skills training directly related to employment. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Consideration will be given to written comments on this NPRM received on or before July 30, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by [docket number and/or Regulatory Information Number (RIN) number], by one of the following methods: • <E T="03">Federal e-Rulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Written comments may be submitted to: Office of Child Support Services, <E T="03">Attention:</E> Director of Policy and Training, 330 C Street SW, Washington, DC 20201. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the agency name and docket number or RIN for this rulemaking. All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. <E T="03">Docket:</E> Go to the Federal Rulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> for access to the rulemaking docket, including any background documents and the plain-language summary of the proposed rule of not more than 100 words in length required by the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2023. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Chad Edinger, Program Specialist, OCSS Division of Regional Operations, at mail to: <E T="03">ocss.dpt@acf.hhs.gov</E> or (303) 844-1213. Telecommunications Relay users may dial 711 first. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Submission of Comments</HD> Comments should be specific, address issues raised by the proposed rule, and explain reasons for any objections or recommended changes. Additionally, we will be interested in comments that indicate agreement with the proposal. We will not acknowledge receipt of the comments we receive. However, we will review and consider all comments that are relevant and received during the comment period. We will respond to these comments in the preamble to the final rule. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Statutory Authority</HD> This NPRM is published under the authority granted to the Secretary of Health and Human Services by section 1102 of the Social Security Act (the Act) (42 U.S.C. 1302). Section 1102 of the Act authorizes the Secretary to publish regulations, not inconsistent with the Act, as may be necessary to the efficient administration of the functions with which the Secretary is responsible under the Act. This NPRM is also authorized by section 452(a)(1) of the Act, which states that the Secretary's designee “shall establish such standards for State programs for locating noncustodial parents, establishing paternity, and obtaining child support . . . as he determines to be necessary to assure that such programs will be effective.” Section 454 of the Act establishes requirements that states must include in their title IV-D State plans, the costs of which are eligible for FFP under section 455 of the Act. Section 454(13) of the Act requires the State plan to “provide that the State will comply with such other requirements and standards as the Secretary determines to be necessary to the establishment of an effective program for locating noncustodial parents, establishing paternity, obtaining support orders, and collecting support payments . . . .” The rulemaking is also consistent with section 451, which authorizes federal funding to states for enforcing support obligations, obtaining child support payments, and assuring that assistance in obtaining support is available to all children. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> In 1975, Congress established the child support program under title IV-D of the Social Security Act (Pub. L. 93-647). The child support program is administered at the federal level by the Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) and functions in 54 states and territories and over 60 tribes. When the child support program began, its primary focus was collecting child support to recover welfare costs, but that has changed significantly over time. Today, the program is focused on delivering family-centered child support services that improve the long-term financial and emotional support of children, by collecting and facilitating consistent child support payments based on the noncustodial parents' ability to pay. This evolution has been guided by the changing needs of families, by federal legislation, and by research and data that contribute to OCSS's understanding of the standards and requirements necessary to establish an effective child support program. Families and work have fundamentally changed since 1975. The percent of children who need child support services has increased and the ability of noncustodial parents to pay child support has declined. Families are more likely to divorce or never marry, increasing the likelihood that children will spend time apart from one of their parents. In 2021, 40 percent of births were to unmarried women, up from 14 percent in 1975. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> In FY 2022, the child support program served one in five children in the United States, or 12.8 million children. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The labor market has been particularly difficult for less-educated men during this period, leaving them with significantly fewer job opportunities and less income than before. In 2015, the real hourly earnings for men 25-54 years old with only a high school degree was 18 percent lower than it was in 1973. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> As of 2018, over 70 percent of nonresident parents had not attended college. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> In 2017, more than one-third of nonresident parents (3.4 million) lived in families with incomes below 200 percent of the official poverty thresholds and 43 percent did not work full-time, year-round. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, “Nonmarital Childbearing in the United States, 1940-99,” National Vital Statistics Reports, 48: 16 (October 18, 2000), <E T="03">available at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr48/nvs48_16.pdf.</E> Osterman, Michelle J.K., Brady E. Hamilton, Joyce A. Martin, Anne K. Driscoll, and Claudia P. Valenzuela, “Births: Final Data for 2021,” National Vital Statistics Reports, 72: 1 (January 31, 2023), <E T="03">available at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr72/nvsr72-01.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Support Services, “2022 Child Support: More Money for Families,” undated, <E T="03">available at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ocse/2022_infographic_national.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  Binder, Ariel J. and John Bound, “The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 33: 2 (2019), <E T="03">available at https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.33.2.163.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  Sanders, Patrick, “Demographic and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Nonresident Parents,” Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, R46942 (October 2021) <E T="03">available at https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46942.</E> This report uses the term “nonresident parent” rather than noncustodial parent. It defines a nonresident parent as a person 15 years or older who does not reside for a majority of nights in the same household as one or more of his or her biological, adopted, or stepchildren under age 21. This definition is very similar to the definition of a noncustodial parent used by the child support program. For purposes of the child support program, a noncustodial parent is a parent who does not have primary care, custody, or control of the child, and who may have an obligation to pay child support (See Office of Child Support Services, Glossary of Common Terms <E T="03">available at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/css/glossary#N</E> ). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  Ibid. </FTNT> Other societal changes have also affected the child support program, including greatly elevated incarceration rates. Incarceration rates increased dramatically between 1980 and 2008 and have since declined, but the percent of the U.S. population incarcerated in 2020 was more than double the figure in 1980. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> It is estimated that 6 percent of all children in the United States have a parent who was ever incarcerated. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> Having an incarceration record is a barrier to employment that diminishes earnings potential, reducing a pare ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 92k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━