Effort to Boost Child Support by Fathers Finds Many Barriers

Jon Yu says that he’s a better father to his 13-year-old daughter now than he was a few years ago.

Then, he had just emerged from Ironwood State Prison, a man still too close to the streets, too poor to pay child support and barely able to relate to a girl entering adolescence.

Now, he and his daughter are best friends.

Yu has a certificate as a computer technician and is turning his life around. But so far, the East Los Angeles man is still unable to pay anything but nominal child support as he seeks a job.

His story reflects both the hope and challenge of government initiatives aimed at involving absent fathers in the lives of their children and thereby reducing welfare costs.

The Parent’s Fair Share program, the largest such federal initiative, has succeeded in increasing child support payments from fathers, but has failed so far to improve employment and earnings, according to a study to be released today by the nonprofit Manpower Demonstration Research Corp.

The study began in 1992 and is based on a sample of 2,641 fathers of children on welfare in Los Angeles County; Dayton, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Memphis, Tenn.; Springfield, Mass.; and Trenton, N.J.

Half were provided services such as job training, help in finding work, peer counseling and mediation to ease conflicts with the mothers of their children.

The other half, serving as a control group, received no extra help.

To keep men in the program, the government temporarily reduced their child support payments while they were looking for work. Once they found jobs, child support payments were taken directly out of their paychecks.

Of those who received the extra services, the proportion of parents who paid child support increased by 4.5% to 7.5% over that of the control group.

About half of the fathers worked at some point, but access to services did not substantially raise their employment rates or boost earnings above those of the control group.

Researchers concede that they underestimated the impact of the financial and emotional barriers faced by the fathers, who were mostly poor, uneducated and in many cases homeless.

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About 80% of the overall sample were black or Latino. More than 60% had never been married, 70% had been arrested as adults on charges unrelated to child support and about half lacked a high school diploma.

“The big challenge was that these programs found themselves working with a very diverse group of men with varying needs,” said Virginia Knox, one of the study’s principal authors.

“Some needed skills training, but another group was very disadvantaged ex-offenders, having substance abuse problems or having no housing. We found that working with them paralleled our thinking about working with women on welfare. You’re going to have to work on job retention, career path and really getting people moving ahead.”

Los Angeles County was one of only three successful sites, along with Dayton and Grand Rapids. Locally, the study found an 8.1% increase in the number of fathers who paid child support.

Officials here have continued to monitor the program and say they are encouraged so far.

About $5.4 million in child support has been collected from fathers in the program, said Linda S. Jenkins, project administrator for the district attorney’s Bureau of Family Support. Another $3.4 million in child support has been collected from fathers who were found to have jobs.

Program participants have paid about $225,000 more than those in the control group, she said.

Los Angeles County took a different approach from some of the cities, stressing education and training, as well as jobs, for each participant, said Geraldo J. Rodriguez, the program’s project manager in the county’s Department of Community and Senior Citizens Services.

The Los Angeles results have encouraged California officials to implement a similar pilot project, he said, targeting fathers in eight other counties.

Perhaps the most important outcome of the project, Jenkins said, is that authorities now distinguish between those fathers unwilling to pay child support and those who are unable to.

“This group has been ignored for a long time,” she said. “Nobody looked at noncustodial dads, nobody talked to them.”

Talking--and listening--has made a big difference for men like Yu, 35, whose school tuition was paid by the program.

“I decided to come into the program and be humble, without an attitude, looking at it as a way to make things right,” he said. “The peer support was absolutely helpful. It was encouraging to learn that I was not alone. I made friends of the staff, and they have gotten to be like family.”

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Chris Meloncon had been without a job for a year when he joined the program. The 38-year-old Compton man said he was barely a father to his four children, who range in age from 2 to 15.

The program, he said, with its peer support and counseling, gave him direction. He trained to be an alcohol and drug counselor, and he was recently hired in a full-time position.

Meloncon now pays $523 in monthly child support and recommends the program to others.

“This is something that society need to pay attention to,” he said. “Some say it’s all about money, but it’s really about self-respect.”