Reflecting on National Child Support Awareness Month - Aug 2022

We are all familiar with the idea that money cannot buy happiness, but it can make a difference in the physical well-being of a child and their basic human rights to food, shelter, and education. In the event of parental separation, a child’s legal custody may be given to foster parents, but non-custodial parents are still responsible for making financial contributions to ensure that the child’s basic needs are met. With $32.7 billion collections in FY 2021, 13.7 million children have been supported in the USA, according to the report published by the Office of Child Support Enforcement at the ACF. In 1995, President Bill Clinton recognized August as Child Support Awareness Month to commemorate the implementation & importance of Child Support Enforcement Law in the USA. As we reflect back on Child Support Awareness month 2022, it is important for us to recognize the efficacy of this program and the continued efforts toward its improvement.

At Cardinality.ai, we couldn’t be more committed to the improvement of child support programs. We recently participated in the 2022 NCSEA Leadership Symposium. The NCSEA Leadership Symposium is an annual conference for the child support community to share and celebrate the application of best practices, partnerships, and innovative thinking within day-to-day management and operations of child support. We are on a mission to impact a billion lives and that ethos is evident throughout the organization, spearheaded by our leadership team, which sets high standard for commitment.

Did You Know?

As of 2018

• More than 25% of children, under the age of 21, had a parent living outside their household.
• Children living in poverty are three times more likely to have a parent living outside of their household when compared to children with both parents present.
• Close to 50% of Black children had a parent living out of the household.
• Only 45% of custodial parents, who were supposed to receive child support funds, received them in full.
• Only 62.2% of the total amount due was received for child support.

These are significant eye openers to the hardships that children face due to lack of appropriate arrangements and untimely support. While the humanitarian aspect of child support remains subjective, technology plays a vital role in expediting processes and improving outcomes.

Child support & welfare caseworkers are using siloed legacy systems, built with outdated technology that requires continuous manual intervention. A modernized intelligent child support solution that leverages data, technology, and artificial intelligence can solve the problems that antiquated legacy systems produce.

Elements of a Modern Child Support System -

• Intuitive & proactive - The system should preempt measures and actions to improve overall process efficiency and efficacy.
• Data backed - Data driven insights are reliable and holistic.
• Personalized & productive - Personalized calculations based on case specific factors, application interface, and nudges.
• Results oriented - Help improve collections and nudge the relevant stakeholders at the right time.

Cardinality.ai empowers government agencies to achieve better outcomes by eliminating friction and improving the citizen and caseworker experience with Artificial Intelligence (AI) SaaS Solutions. CardyFiscal, Cardinality’s smart Child Support solution is innovative and intuitive, elevating the stakeholders’ experience. It triggers alerts and nudges for caseworkers and supports proactivity. Highly configurable and customizable, CardyFiscal can be deployed within strict timelines and reduces the overall cost of ownership.

Case management solutions made available through interoperable technology are supported by data-driven decision making and real time tracking of case statuses. These solutions are intelligent and governed by data, effectively equipping stakeholders with the right information at the right time.

Establishing delinquency in case of a default in payment is critical, as it needs to be determined if the missed payment was deliberate or the result of a lack of funds. Personalization in terms of calculations, state specific rules, exceptions, and recommendations helps in such situations.

Our solutions are designed to support the efforts of caseworkers and government organizations as a whole. The technology is built with our mission in mind. Child support is critical to the well-being of children and their basic human rights, so we work from the inside out. When the technology is enhanced, operations improve, more children have their needs met, and we are one step closer to our goal to positively impact a billion lives.

Click here to learn more about our offerings and how we are supporting the cause.