Building child support employment programs that set parents up for success
Pennsylvania county child support programs regularly face a challenge with no easy answer: cases where nonpayment from a noncustodial parent is not about unwillingness, but about unemployment. Traditional enforcement, such as contempt proceedings, license suspension, and income withholding, are powerful when the noncustodial parent has income and chooses not to pay, but they accomplish far less when income is absent.
This generally results in a cycle of repeated enforcement actions, rising arrears, congestion in the court system, and frustrated staff who know the tools they have do not fit the problem they are facing. Workforce systems and human services programs operate in the same communities, but too often without meaningful alignment with child support.
To help county directors address the disconnect and adapt their caseloads, courts, and labor markets, CAI developed an assessment to help connect the dots with resources and employment.
A strong foundation and a missing piece with employment programs
Employment program development has been among the Bureau of Child Support Enforcement’s (BCSE) highest priorities for years. In response, Pennsylvania operates 2 distinct employment programs funded through incentive dollars: the New Employment Opportunities for Non-Custodial Parents (NEON) intensive case management model and the Job Gateway partnership with the state Department of Labor and Industry. Both demonstrate that child support programs can meaningfully improve employment outcomes for non-custodial parents while driving measurable improvement in collections. Pennsylvania counties also benefit from structural advantages that other states do not have, including the Job Gateway interface with the Pennsylvania Automated Child Support Enforcement System (PACSES) and partnerships with the state-wide employment portal PA CareerLink®, which exist in most counties.
What has been harder to achieve at the county level (with each county’s unique caseload characteristics, local labor market, and court practices) is the program design that makes those tools work effectively in that specific place. That is the missing piece.
Why CSET assessment is the best first step
The most common mistake in implementing employment services within a child support context is starting with a program model and fitting it to the county. Importing a model from another county or applying a standard template from a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program without first examining local conditions, is a reliable path to underperformance.
Pennsylvania’s 67 counties vary substantially in caseload composition, court practices, workforce infrastructure, and staff capacity. What works in a dense suburban county may be poorly suited to a rural county without major employer concentration. What a court expects in one jurisdiction may differ significantly from what a court expects in another.
Beginning with the principle understanding that no 2 counties will operate the same employment program, and the best tools available will not deliver results without meaningful adaptation to local reality is vital to developing a methodology that will be successful. Through structured, evidence-based assessment, a diagnostic can be formulated that identifies what is working, where breakdowns occur, and what a practical path forward looks like for that specific county. The ideal result is a custom blueprint for creating or improving a job search program.
Everything the CSET assessment examines
The Child Support Employment and Training (CSET) assessment is structured around 5 core domains. Each examines a dimension of program operations that directly shapes whether an employment strategy will work in practice. It is important to understand each of these domains.
Caseload and enforcement workflow
Every county’s child support caseload contains a subset of noncustodial parents who are unemployed or underemployed and have accumulated arrears through repeated enforcement cycles. Identifying that specific cohort and those who are most likely to respond to employment services is the first step in designing a program that is worth operating.
The assessment examines PACSES general caseload data, not case-specific confidential data, to identify the number of participants with no verified current employment and no payment within 90 or more days. It also examines the number of court-ordered work search cases, non-financial obligation (NFOB) cases, and TANF/former/never assistance cases to understand the full enrollment landscape. Critically, the assessment maps how employment services can be integrated into existing enforcement workflows without adding undue burden to case managers.
Local labor market analysis
A realistic program requires realistic placement targets. An analysis of Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) data provides an understanding of the county’s economic landscape: major industry sectors, high-demand occupations, entry-level wage data, hiring outlook, and employer attitudes toward applicants with criminal histories. Transportation access, geographic barriers, and childcare availability are also examined because barriers that prevent participants from finding and keeping a job are as important as the job itself.
In one of Pennsylvania's non-metropolitan counties, for example, this part of the assessment identified a healthcare provider and a large-box retailer as among the most viable placement targets for that county’s caseload profile, based on hiring volume, wage levels, and criminal history practices. That kind of specific, actionable analysis, grounded in local data rather than general principles, gives county directors information they can use immediately in program design and employer outreach.
A partnership mapping
A clear organizational principle that the CSET assessment diagnostic is built on maintains that child support manages the job search program. External partners, such as PA CareerLink®, TANF, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment and Training, parental support organizations, adult education programs, and community service providers, play important and specific roles in a program. But accountability for compliance, court reporting, and enforcement decisions remains with the child support office.
This distinction matters particularly in counties where employment services have historically been fully delegated to workforce partners. When participants are referred out and child support’s involvement ends, compliance monitoring breaks down and the program loses its enforcement accountability. The partnership assessment identifies which relationships already exist and are functioning well, which need to be built or strengthened, and what specific functions each partner is best positioned to perform. It also avoids a common failure of routing all participants to a single partner regardless of their specific circumstances.
Court alignment and enforcement integration
The court’s confidence and cooperation are paramount for employment programs to succeed. The CSET assessment diagnostic further examines the county court’s current practices around work search orders: what constitutes compliance in the court’s view, what documentation judges expect, how non-compliance should be reported, and what order language creates a workable framework for both participants and staff.
In counties where employment participation will be voluntary rather than court-ordered, either by practice or by preference, the program design requires a different approach, including unique notices, individualized employment plans, and participant engagement strategies that do not rely on court consequences for motivation. The assessment identifies which model fits each county’s court context and builds the program design accordingly.
Court alignment established after a program begins operating is harder to achieve than alignment built into the design. Consistent order language, clear definitions of allowable activities, timely compliance reporting, and an established briefing process with the court before program launch are all design elements that must be assessed in context and built into the program from the start.
Program design recommendations and findings
The CSET assessment diagnostic concludes with a set of concrete, actionable recommendations for program design: referral criteria and enrollment pathways, staffing model options (including a staff augmentation approach), compliance monitoring protocols, partner activation steps, and a phased implementation roadmap.
The recommendations also include projections of the potential federal IV-D performance impact of well-designed child support programs. Specifically, recommendations expressed in terms that county directors can use in conversations with courts, county commissioners, and BCSE.
Approaching child support programs differently with CSET assessment
CAI’s CSET methodology differs from standard employment program consulting in 3 important ways.
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Built specifically for child support
Instead of workforce consulting applied to a child support context, this is child support expertise applied to an employment challenge. The elements included in CSET assessments were designed by a team that has many years of direct experience leading child support, TANF, and workforce programs at the state and county level in Pennsylvania.
The nuances that define child support program design, such as:
- Coordinating with courts
- Managing wage attachments
- Distinguishing willful non-compliance from good-cause barriers
- Understanding how enforcement actions interact with employment program participation, are built into the assessment design and the recommendations that emerge from it.
CSET is not a referral program. It is a model in which the child support office actively manages or co-manages the job search, with external partners providing specific services while child support retains accountability for compliance, compliance reporting, and enforcement. The program’s measure of success is not employment outcomes in the workforce sense, but wage attachment, current support paid, and arrears collected.
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Designed for fiscal sustainability
A cost analysis within the assessment examines the tradeoffs between different staffing models and identifies how to structure the program as an allowable IV-D activity, maximizing federal financial participation at the 66% firm-fixed-price (FFP) rate. The staff augmentation model in which a contract employment specialist operates within the child support office has proven particularly effective. It allows counties to access workforce expertise without permanently expanding county staff complements and can be scaled up or down as caseloads change.
The CSET model is built to operate at significantly lower per-case cost than traditional intensive employment programs while delivering measurable improvement in IV-D collections. It is designed as an allowable enforcement activity and does not rely on waivers, state plan amendments, or the 2025 Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) final rule regarding, “Employment and Training Services for Noncustodial Parents in the Child Support Program.”
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An action plan for county directors
Pennsylvania’s county child support directors are well-positioned and resourced to build on the opportunity that employment services represent.
What most counties are missing is a customized program design that makes all those assets work together effectively for the specific characteristics of that county’s caseload, court, and labor market. Through a multi-dimensional review, the CSET assessment is designed to provide a tailored roadmap to set noncustodial parents up for success and ensure children and families receive the support they need.
CSET assessment in practice: Early Pennsylvania county experience
CAI launched its first Pennsylvania county CSET assessments in 2026, beginning with 2 rural, non-metropolitan counties with distinct local labor markets, court practices, and caseload profiles, and both illustrate why county-specific assessment is essential rather than optional.
The first county, referenced previously, has a labor force of approximately 35,000, with steady demand in healthcare, retail, transportation, and manufacturing that creates viable entry-level employment opportunities. But those opportunities are not self-evident from a high-level scan of the county’s economy. The assessment identified specific employers and sectors aligned to the caseload profile, enabling targeted program design rather than generic job search activity.
The second county’s CSET assessment differed in that it was a redesign of an existing job search program. It produced a full program manual covering caseload analysis, court alignment, workforce partnerships, compliance monitoring protocols, participant tools, and a phased implementation roadmap. The manual was designed as an operational guide that county staff can use from day one of the program redesign, not a conceptual framework requiring further interpretation.
Both assessments confirmed the core premise that the tools and partnerships are already in place in Pennsylvania. What counties need is a program design that makes those assets work together effectively for the specific realities of each county’s caseload, court, and labor market.
Answering the question: What comes next for CSET assessment?
Piloting the CSET assessment methodology in Pennsylvania provided all the elements CAI thought were needed to usher in success for child support programs, plus a handful of considerations that hadn't been accounted for. Every experience of finding the balance between caseload, court, and labor market that is unique to each county was a victory for child support directors who understood the disconnects but were uncertain of the solution.
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