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At the heart of the nation's child support enforcement system are children and families. In its 2005-2009 Strategic Plan, the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) explains that "child support is no longer primarily a welfare reimbursement, revenue-producing device for the Federal and State governments; it is a family-first program, intended to ensure families’ selfsufficiency by making child support a more reliable source of income" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2005, p.1, emphasis added). Among OCSE’s guiding principles are that child support services are most effective when cultural differences are respected, and child support enforcement programs have an obligation to provide public education and outreach to all families in need. Specific strategies OCSE has identified include customizing their approach to service delivery by, for example, "deliver(ing) culturally-appropriate services to clients who are tribal members or members of minority groups, ? address(ing) perceived obstacles to payment, including access to children, matters of procedural justice, and affordability of orders, and ? "develop(ing) targeted, specific initiatives to deal with special populations" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2005).

Consistent with these goals, the Urban Institute partnered with the One Economy Corporation in applying for a special improvement project (SIP) grant from OCSE to develop high-quality online child support information specifically developed for families in low-income and ethnic and culturally diverse communities. This grant was awarded and used to prepare three sets of bilingual web pages (one national and two local) that are now available to millions of Americans across the country, and can also be used as models for other local and national sites (see next pages for "screen shots"). The main "products" of this grant are the new child support web pages, which can be viewed live at www.thebeehive.org (see Appendices A & B for screen shots). This report provides the history and background for this project, describes the work completed under the SIP grant, presents interesting findings not apparent on the website itself, and discusses lessons learned for similar future efforts.

Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).

The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.

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