Kern County Department of Child Support Services Receives Award for Committment to Helping Formerly Incarcerated Parents

Kern County Department of Child Support Services (DCSS) received the Program Awareness Award at the 2016 Western Interstate Child Support Enforcement Council Annual Training Conference held in Utah for their innovative "Incarcerated Parent Program. The program has demonstrated Kern County’s commitment to meeting the needs of customers by improving the delivery of child support services to incarcerated parents.

The program started in 2012 when local child support professionals realized incarcerated mothers and fathers faced barriers within the child support system. A significant challenge these parents have continuously faced is their inability to pay their child support obligations. In fact, many incarcerated parents have past due child support obligations but lack a realistic way to pay them.

According to a study released by the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement, the average incarcerated parent with a child support case has $10,000 in past-due support when entering state prison and leaves with past-due balances of $20,000 or more. Not only is this debt unlikely to ever be collected, but it may interfere with the formerly incarcerated parents’ ability to obtain housing and employment in order to support their child. The study also suggests that debt increases the likelihood that non-custodial parents released from incarceration will enter the underground economy and thus avoid paying their child support obligation.  

With these challenges in mind, Kern County DCSS reached out to the Kern County Sheriff Lerdo Detention Facility (Lerdo) to extend child support services to the jail's incarcerated parents. By partnering with each other, Kern County DCSS gained the ability to offer services to a secluded portion of its community and Lerdo Jail acquired a new tool that could have a greater likelihood of releasing inmates with smaller amounts of debt and therefore more chances to reintegrate into society and their children’s lives.

In late 2014, Kern Couny DCSS and Lerdo developed an additional benefit to the Incarcerated Parent Program, the first kiosk in California to offer inmates the opportunity to speak directly to a child support professional. Stationed in a small room, the kiosk uses videoconferencing to allow incarcerated parents to communicate face-to-face with child support professionals in real time. Thanks to the kiosk, parents can attend to their cases and caseworkers can confidentially address parents’ private questions and concerns.

Since its inception, the Kern County DCSS Incarcerated Parent Program has served more than 2,000 incarcerated parents and modified more than 100 child support orders. Through this partnership with Lerdo, Kern County DCSS has had the opportunity to reach and engage parents that may have been overlooked in the past. These parents have developed a relationship with the department that supports their continued engagement in their case upon their release from incarceration. The efforts of this program have supported the reduction of recidivism rates in the Kern County community by educating incarcerated parents about how to manage barriers to future employment such as license suspension and removing child support debt pile up while imprisoned. Studies have shown that a noncustodial parent is more likely to pay child support and otherwise reengage with their families if they consider their child support debt to be manageable.

Kern County DCSS accepted the award in early October.

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