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Child Support Enforcement Playbook

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Key Takeaways:

 
  • Child support payment collections is critical to ensure families' financial health.
  • Custodial parents intended to receive support but receiving none is steadily increasing.

  • Child support agenices have a small window to identify non-payment risk before an account becomes delinquent.
  • Moderinize child support service with three strategies: Proactiveness, prioritize quality over quantity, prioritize resources for efficiency and efficacy.

Implementing strategies and solutions for more effective child support operations and results

Child support agencies are tasked with strengthening financial stability for families, often measured by five key performance indicators (KPIs):

  1. Establishment of paternity
  2. Establishment of child support orders 
  3. Collection of current support 
  4. Collection of arrears
  5. Cost-effectiveness of program

When a child support agency meets KPIs, it receives additional funding from the Federal Office of Child Support Services. A major challenge to achieving these areas of focus is investment and innovation in child support services and collections.

However, as child support agency personnel increase their emphasis on the importance of families’ financial health, and slowly evolve enforcement tactics to drive better financial outcomes, the collections function is a critical focus.

How are child support agencies evolving service delivery?

Shifts in the market, economy, family arrangements and more have forced change on child support operations. The proportion of custodial parents intended to receive support — but receiving none — is steadily increasing. Family living arrangements and make-ups are also changing.

A TransUnion analysis also found overdue child support balances are growing, and when an overdue account goes unpaid, it remains that way for a significant period of time. For more than three years, the average amount owed on overdue, unpaid child support accounts has increased steadily.[1] This means child support workers are facing increasing difficulty in getting overdue accounts to a status of current.

[1] According to an internal analysis of child support accounts reported to TransUnion for non-payment. The analysis included accounts dating back to Jan. 1, 2020. 
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Your agency may be doing the best it can with the data and systems it has, but it needs to be more productive. Those agencies that don’t adapt and modernize operations to meet the needs of today’s families will struggle to get support to those who need it, lose opportunities to enforce orders, and negatively impact families and agency performance. Those that have adapted may be poised to:

  • Prioritize efforts based on recoverability
  • Improve outcomes for children and families
  • Improve enforcement
  • Control arrears and retain more current enforcement
  • Salvage and expand relationships with non-custodial parents
  • Improve efficiency

Why child support agencies need a new playbook for engagement and collections

Child support agency success is largely defined by family outcomes and federal performance measures. On any given day, non-custodial parents’ financial situations change, causing risk and predictability to fluctuate. During times of economic stress and uncertainty, the pace, scope and amount of change can accelerate dramatically. In periods of prolonged ambiguity, child support agencies are increasingly challenged to maintain enforcement as more non-custodial parents show signs of financial distress.

Before an account becomes delinquent, research shows child support enforcement agencies have a short window to identify non-payment risk. And once an account is delinquent, we’ve found more than half of parents often forego any payment on their arrears month over month. Conversely, less than one-third of accounts will see balance decreases each month.

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With the right resources, three best practices may help manage services:

  • Understand non-custodial parents holistically
  • Adopt a proactive approach
  • Strengthen engagement processes

While this may be standard practice in many organizations today, reliable readiness and consistent execution are paramount in more dynamic market conditions — and can mean the difference between effective enforcement and loss.

Modern engagement strategies require modern tools. With current best practices and solutions to augment your approach, processes and protocols, this guide can help you improve performance by optimizing order enforcement organization through enhanced operational efficiency.

Modernize child support service strategies to optimize operations

The best strategies find a balance between effectiveness, efficiencies, and risk. To optimize your organization and maintain reliable readiness, start by aligning your approach with three foundational principles essential to success in today’s economic environment:

1.     Be proactive. The best time to improve child support outcomes is — and has always been — before arrears surge. It’s no longer prudent to wait to engage non-custodial parents after failure to comply with an order. Identify and meet them for payment before they fall into financial distress.

2.     Prioritize data quality over quantity. A precision-focused outreach strategy is smart and safe. Maintain current parent contact information and preferred communication channels to sustain readiness.

3.     Prioritize resources for efficiency and efficacy. Doing more with less means enforcing orders effectively with the optimal amount of parent interactions. Automate where possible and focus resources on parents who may be struggling to reduce the likelihood orders will fall out of compliance.

With your foundation in place, let’s look at the order enforcement lifecycle, starting with pre-delinquency strategies.

 

How to predict child support payment delinquency risk

Without the data and tools to track and analyze consumer financial activity, it’s extremely difficult to predict, prevent or change the number of non-custodial parents putting themselves — and their families — at risk.

Enhancing order enforcement starts by understanding who can pay, how payment behaviors have changed over time, and changes in other debt obligations can help protect agency performance. Armed with the right information, a proactive engagement strategy can be taken to help non-custodial parents stay compliant, detect delinquency risk and mitigate arrears.

To help predict child support order non-payment, agencies should be vigilant about detecting changes that hint at financial distress. Traditional monthly credit and relationship data can be lagging indicators, possibly missing the crucial window when a case manager can step in and help a parent who misses payments on their obligations. Daily alerts to shifting risk in a consumer’s credit portfolio enable agencies to work proactively — before a non-custodial parent misses a payment.

Early action offers additional, potential benefits for families and your agency

By detecting emerging patterns, you can anticipate and better meet the needs of children and families by:

  • Recognizing trends in non-custodial parent credit quality, you can better manage order enforcement
  • Identifying key behaviors, you can fine-tune outreach strategies
  • Identifying non-compliant orders most likely to pay on their own, you can reinforce positive payment behavior

Assess ability to predict child support payment delinquency risk

Evaluate your organization’s ability and readiness to predict payment delinquency risk by reviewing the questions below:

How do we measure and manage risk exposure?

  • Where are key risk areas across our cases?
  • How do we identify indicators of increasing risk exposure?
  • How do we know when material events that could indicate growing risk occur?
  • How do we limit arrears risk, even as non-payment incidents or volume increase?

What do we do to understand non-custodial parents' credit behaviors and activities?

  • How do we identify struggling parents before they miss a payment?
  • How do we determine distracted versus struggling payment behaviors?
  • How do we identify meaningful changes in credit health that could indicate increasing risk exposure?

How do we optimize treatment and recovery strategies for parents in early delinquency?

  • How do we prioritize debts and delinquent parents — balance, aging of delinquency, ability to pay, other?
  • How do we know when a parent has an increased capacity to pay so we can ensure their family is first in their payment hierarchy?

You can incorporate best practices for predicting non-payment risk into your case management playbook by:

  • Proactively identifying and engaging at-risk parents before they go delinquent
  • Monitoring changes in payment behaviors, including excess payments above minimums
  • Comparing shifts in child support recovery scores to track overall risk across cases
  • Gauging inquiry activity to identify consumers who are actively applying for credit
  • Identifying early risk indicators and life changes to determine treatment strategy
  • Leveraging analytics to improve order enforcement strategies based on specific consumer characteristics
  • Having a process to ensure you hold the most actionable parent contact information 

What solutions can predict child support payment delinquency risk?

The following credit and identity monitoring solutions can help predict delinquency risk and mitigate losses by providing timely, consistent views of ongoing activity and emerging trends before they become serious delinquencies.

Solution

TruVisionTM Trended Credit Reports provide actionable insights to understand parents’ financial situations as they change over time

What it does

Trended credit data and alternative data sources like checking accounts reveal consumer insights not captured by traditional or “snapshot-in-time” approaches, enabling child support enforcement personnel to:

  • Detect a non-custodial parent’s worsening financial situation to anticipate payment stoppages
  • Spot activity that may indicate a new ability to pay

TruVision Trended Income Estimator goes beyond wages to predict total income and help determine what parents can pay

Compare predicted total income — including income from investments, businesses, IRA distributions, pensions and annuities, real estate, unemployment compensation and Social Security benefits — to non-custodial parents’ stated incomes

TruVision Trended Account Management Score predicts the probability of delinquency in the next 90 days

Identifies likely payers versus non-payers, enhancing prioritization

Offers reliable, predictive power with expanded tradeline information across 30 months of account history

TruVision Account Management Triggers send near real-time alerts about changes in customers’ credit behaviors and health

Delivers daily alerts and insights, enabling organizations to take immediate action

Helps fine-tune prioritization and increase recovery rates with up-to-date information

As early-stage delinquent orders get flagged for recovery efforts, focus shifts to pre-contact segmentation, prioritization and contact strategies that help maximize recoveries.

How to prioritize child support payment arrears collections

To collect what’s owed and drive cost efficiencies in line with performance metrics, you need a clear view of a non-custodial parent’s ability and willingness to pay. In the current child support climate, recovering what’s owed has become especially challenging. TransUnion data indicates recovery prospects have significantly deteriorated since 2020. Using our TruVision Child Support Recovery Score — a score designed to help support enforcement by calculating the likelihood an account can be recovered — we analyzed how recovery likelihood is trending in child support markets.[1] Unfortunately, the median score for overdue accounts has decreased by nearly 20 points, highlighting significant deterioration in the predicted likelihood of collecting overdue debts.

The observed decline coincides with higher costs for everyday staples, rising interest rates and dwindling cash savings — all of which may be tightening non-custodial parents’ finances.

[1] This score is based on changes in spending patterns, credit usage, debt repayment and new credit activity. Scores range from 350-850, with a higher score denoting a higher predicted likelihood of collecting within 6 months.
 
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As child support services personnel likely face challenges in collecting overdue payments, insight into parents’ financial situations is paramount. Insights derived from trended credit and alternative data give agencies a clear understanding of capacity and payment behaviors.

One of the most important goals of any agency’s effort is efficient use of resources, especially if they’re limited or constrained. To maximize productivity, case managers use prioritization solutions to quickly identify which non-custodial parents have the ability and willingness to pay. By ranking delinquent payees, case managers’ time and productivity can be most efficiently managed. This is especially critical as overdue child support accounts with higher recoverability scores have balances that are growing — meaning more opportunity to get support to families in need.

Among parents with a moderate-to-high Child Support Recovery Score (550+), our data shows the average amount of overdue child support has been growing recently. Child support agencies that prioritize accounts with a high likelihood of recovery are more likely to yield partial or full repayment of outstanding child support debt.

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Assess ability to prioirize child support payment arrears collections

Evaluate your agency’s ability and readiness to prioritize non-compliant parents by reviewing the questions below.

  • How do we prioritize delinquent parents: balance, date of first delinquency, ability to pay?
  • How do we understand a parent’s ability, willingness or capacity to pay?
  • What information do we use to prioritize outreach regularly?
  • Is our current prioritization methodology sufficiently effective? How can it be improved?
  • How do we maximize resources to bring order enforcement to current status?

You can incorporate best practices for prioritizing delinquent orders into your collections playbook by:

  • Using advanced trended credit data recovery models to identify non-custodial parents most able and likely to pay, and prioritize these accounts to your best resources
  • Evaluating debt compromise plans with unique insights derived from consumer credit behavior

What solutions can help prioritize child support payment arrears collections?

The following solutions can help optimize prioritization efforts by minimizing risk and helping you refine resource allocation.

Solution

Child support recovery scores help support enforcement when payments fall into arrears

What it does

Scores designed to help maximize resources and enable targeted intervention

How to maintain parent contact information for child support services operations

Keeping parent contact information current is vitally important to the efficacy of your enforcement efforts. Otherwise, your team will spend more time locating than enforcing, negatively impacting performance metrics. To help case managers make contact sooner, equip them with actionable details on exactly who, how and when to contact — while remaining compliant with regulations. To increase the likelihood of calls being answered, optimize how parents see your incoming calls on their mobile device displays.

Assess ability to contact parents for child support services operations

Evaluate your organization’s ability and readiness to contact parents by reviewing the questions below.

  • What are our primary challenges or concerns regarding calling parents?
  • What challenges do we face in our contact strategies and ability to enforce orders?
  • How do we manage parent contact data and ensure it’s consistently up to date?

You can incorporate parent contact best practices into your enforcement playbook by:

  • Improving right-party contact rates by automating updates to your contact information with the best phone number and time to call
  • Focusing on parents’ preferred communication channels
  • Increasing connect rates with branded calls, reduced spam-tags and call blocking

What solutions help contact parents for child support services operations?

The following contact solutions can help minimize risk and improve resource allocation to optimize your enforcement preparation efforts.

Solution

TruContactTM Phone Behavior Intelligence helps callers reach the right party the first time

What it does

Links contact information with a parent’s identity to determine their best phone number to call, best day of the week to contact and best time of day to dial

Increases right-party contact (RPC) rates by an average of 25%

TruContact Caller Name Optimization protects verified phone numbers from call blocking and spam tagging

Enables secure, trusted calls to more than 360 million US devices

Reduces improper call blocking and tagging by 90%

TruContact Branded Call Display enhances caller ID information by displaying caller name, logos and call reason

Gives parents a reason to answer

How to locate hard-to-find parents for child support arrears collection

Enforcement requires a robust understanding of non-custodial parents. In especially challenging scenarios, data and technology can be critical to help search for and locate people, assets and businesses. Without robust profile data like names, aliases, addresses, assets, criminal histories and more, it can be difficult to find parents and assets to initiate, maintain and reinforce enforcement strategies. To ready case workers in your organization, start by ensuring access to actionable data when they need it.

 

What solutions help locate hard-to-find parents for child support arrears?

The following search and locate solutions can help drive effiencies in your operations and enable your case managers to access data-driven tools and technologies.

Solution

TruLookupTM Asset Search  gives you reliable, current insights and can locate individuals, businesses, vehicles and other assets to help you reduce risk, and save time and money

What it does

Locate parents and assets in a few clicks using the advanced, user-friendly online platform TLOxp®, part of TransUnion’s TruLookup product family

Detailed subject histories and locations can be delivered in seconds, including addresses, phone numbers, place of employment, criminal records, bankruptcies, liens, assets, relatives, associates and more

TruLookup Employment Search enhances research capabilities with current and actionable employment data

Find, explore and act on information faster with detailed, current employment histories produced in seconds

TruLookup Criminal Search simplifies case work with real-time incarcerations and arrests search capabilities

Access real-time arrest, booking, jail and prison records from thousands of US agencies to determine a non-custodial parent’s criminal history and current incarceration status

TruLookup Advanced People Search filter through billions of public and proprietary records in an online platform designed for ease of use and flexibility

Enter partial information from addresses, Social Security numbers, telephone numbers and more

Even enter a phonetic name spelling and TLOxp can narrow the search to the fewest possible options

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Pro tip: What data is required to improve child support order enforcement?

Getting segmentation and prioritization right requires high-quality, up-to-date data, especially parent contact information. By knowing who to contact, which number to use, the best day and time to reach them and how they prefer to be contacted, agencies may implement more effective and productive outreach and contact strategies for improved operational KPIs.

Modernize child support services operations to maximize results

A proactive, data-driven approach to child support engagement, starting with identifying and effectively connecting with parents showing signs of stress, can materially increase the strength and productivity of your agency. In addition to increasing operational efficiencies and maximizing child support services, taking preventative measures where possible, and enhancing engagement with insight-informed recovery strategies, authoritative contact identity and behavioral insights can improve experiences and enrich relationships. Insight-driven strategies may also promote more consistent and sustained enforcement. TransUnion can deliver a unique combination of credit, public record and phone data, solutions, and services designed to help your organization solve critical challenges, increase effectiveness and boost results across the enforcement lifecycle.

To explore strategies and solutions for optimizing your child support services operations