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

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <SUBAGY>Administration for Children and Families</SUBAGY> <CFR>45 CFR Parts 302, 303, 304, and 309</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> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In an effort to make the child support program more effective, OCSS (or the Office) issues this final rule to allow State and Tribal child support agencies the option to use Federal financial participation (FFP) available under title IV-D of the Social Security Act to provide the following employment and training services to eligible noncustodial parents: 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> This rule is effective on January 13, 2025. </EFFDATE> <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">Statutory Authority</HD> This rule 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 rule is also authorized by sections 452(a)(1) and 454(13) of the Act (42 U.S.C. 652(a)(1) and 654(13)). Section 452(a)(1) of the Act expressly delegates authority to the Secretary's designee requiring the designee to “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  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> State plans, the costs of which are eligible for FFP under section 455 of the Act (42 U.S.C. 655). Specifically, section 454(13) of the Act provides the Secretary with delegated authority to require the State's title IV-D 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 . . . .” State plans may be updated at any time and a State would submit updates to their State plan at the time of electing to provide employment and training services. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Sections 451-469B of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. 651-669b. </FTNT> This rule is further published in accordance with section 455(f) of the Act (42 U.S.C. 655(f)) which authorizes the Secretary to make child support funding available to Tribes and Tribal organizations operating child support programs and to issue regulations establishing requirements for Tribal child support programs. The rulemaking is also consistent with section 451 of the Act, 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> The purpose of this rule is to allow State and Tribal child support agencies the option to use FFP under title IV-D of the Act to provide certain optional and nonduplicative employment and training services for eligible noncustodial parents in the child support program. In 1975, Congress established the child support program under title IV-D of the Social Security Act (Pub. L. 93-647) to provide funding to States for effective enforcement of child support obligations. The child support program is administered at the Federal level by the OCSS and functions in all States and over 60 Tribes. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> The program has evolved over the past 50 years and 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. Today the program is focused on delivering child support services that improve the financial support of children, by collecting and facilitating consistent child support payments based on the noncustodial parents' ability to pay. <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Throughout this final rule, States include the 50 States, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. </FTNT> Families and labor market opportunities have fundamentally changed since 1975. The percentage of children who need child support services has increased and the ability of noncustodial parents to pay child support has declined. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> In calendar year 2021, 40 percent of births were to unmarried women, up from 14 percent in 1975. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> In calendar year 2023, 25 percent of children lived with a single parent, up from 17 percent in 1975. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> In fiscal year 2023, the child support program served one in five children in the United States, or 12.7 million children. <SU>6</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>7</SU> <FTREF/> As of 2018, over 70 percent of noncustodial parents had not attended college. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> In 2017, more than one-third of noncustodial 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>9</SU> <FTREF/> Stable employment is particularly important for a parent to be able to make reliable consistent child support payments for their children. <FTNT> <SU>3</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> U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. “OJJDP Statistical Briefing Book,” (March 2024) <E T="03">available at https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/population/qa01201.asp?qaDate=2023.</E> 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> 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> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (October 18, 2000). Osterman, Michelle J.K., et al. (January 31, 2023). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (March 2024). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Support Services, “2023 Child Support: More Money for Families,” undated, <E T="03">available at https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ocse/2023_infographic_national.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  Binder, Ariel J. and John Bound (2019). See page 163 of the article where the authors note that they use the Personal Consumption Expenditure deflator when reporting real hourly earnings. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  Sanders, Patrick (October 2021). 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>9</SU>  Id. </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 figur ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 162k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━