- Lisa Klein Vogel, Vee Yeo, and Hilary Shager
- December 2021
- Link to WI-ELEVATE-initial-implementation-report (PDF)
In 2019, the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF) provided funding, via a waiver from federal the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), to five Wisconsin counties to test an innovative approach to serving families involved in the child support system. This program, called ELEVATE (Empowering Lives through Education, Vocational Assessment, Training, and Employment), provides a package of services to noncustodial parents (NCPs) behind on their child support obligations, in lieu of more traditional, enforcement-oriented approaches. The ELEVATE program originated from a previous OCSE-funded national demonstration project, the National Child Support Noncustodial Parent Employment Demonstration (CSPED). Wisconsin piloted projects in Brown and Kenosha counties under the title Supporting Parents Supporting Kids (SPSK). ELEVATE’s evaluation includes an impact analysis, which will analyze the program’s effects, and an implementation analysis, which documents how programs operated. This report summarizes implementation findings from the program’s first year, informed by interviews with program staff and leadership, surveys of frontline staff, a baseline survey of study participants, service data, and program documentation.
Categories
Child Support, Employment, Enforcement, Unemployment/Nonemployment
Tags
Implementation Study, Noncustodial Parents/NCP, Qualitative Research, Wisconsin