Clean Slate Subcommittee for Child Support
Chicago Appleseed is proud to participate in the Clean Slate Subcommittee for the Child Support Advisory Committee to HFS and the courts in Illinois. Clean Slate is a program intended to help parents with child support debt clear the money owed to the state and end their cycle of debt. The subcommittee was formed because there is a growing sense that the existing program is unsuccessful at meeting the needs of low income families that rely on child support and public assistance to support their children. We believe reforming the program to reflect the emerging consensus that child support sanctions undermine efforts of low-income fathers to successfully navigate their roles as financial contributors and emotionally engaged effective co-parents.
Under the sweeping welfare reform passed by the Clinton Administration in 1996, child support became tied to social service benefits in a direct way. If a parent—usually a mother living with children—is entitled to child support from her child’s other parent and receives Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF helps pay for food, shelter, utilities, and non-medical expenses), she must assign a portion of her child support payments back to the state. If the parent obligated to pay child support falls behind, a portion of the unpaid child support obligation is owed not to the parent on behalf of the children, but to the state.
The Clean Slate program in Illinois is intended to help parents who are unable to pay their child support eliminate the debt to the state and start fresh. Unfortunately, in its current form the program does not adequately account for long-term economic insecurity. It has not been a successful program because many parents cannot find the stable and consistent employment required to complete the program. According to statistics from the Office of Child Support Enforcement, across the United States, 70% of parents who owe unpaid child support earn less than $10,000 in a year. Parents who earn more than $40,000 represent less than 4% of parents who owe unpaid child support.
In its initial meetings, the Clean Slate Subcommittee has worked to generate consensus among advocates and agency members regarding a pathway to arrears forgiveness for the State debt of parents with a documented inability to pay. We’ve created a vision for the program that strengthens families through accurate assessment of economic circumstance and by valuing nonmonetary contributions to the welfare of their children, such as child care, educational investment and housing.
Our next steps are to craft guidelines and rules for the program which reflect the consensus. We look forward to the work.
The goals of the subcommittee are in line with other efforts to address the disparate impact of court debt on low-income communities, and vulnerable communities of color specifically, that exacerbate economic inequality and financial insecurity. As in other areas of court debt reform, sanctions and fines have not increased revenues collected nor helped eliminate accumulated debt.