Many children have a parent who lives outside their home and supports them with monthly cash payments through the child support system. The San Francisco Department of Child Support Services (SF DCSS) is piloting a voluntary program that explores an alternative—allowing parents to meet their child support obligations through agreed-upon, in-kind contributions of goods and services. This model is a recognition of families’ desires for more flexible contributions and builds on the Yurok Tribe’s model of child support services, which allows parents to support their children in ways beyond monetary support, including providing diapers, fish, firewood, and child care.

This brief explores San Francisco’s motivations for offering an in-kind child support alternative and details both the pilot itself and the process by which they developed it. The brief is structured as a series of key questions:

• Why offer a noncash (in-kind) alternative for child support?
• How does San Francisco’s noncash alternative pilot work?
• What are the potential downsides of in-kind child support orders for children and families?
• What risks or advantages do in-kind child support orders create for the DCSS and the Unified Family Court?
• What did it take for San Francisco to design and implement the pilot?
• What would it take for another California county to implement a similar approach?

The goal of the brief is to document San Francisco’s experience to inform other counties that may be considering offering in-kind child support alternatives.