David Kilgore on Self-service in Child Support Services
Our latest podcast delves into a fascinating topic: self-service in child support services. For our podcast guest, David Kilgore, the Director of the California Department of Child Support Services, “self-service” goes beyond the use of a website or an app to look at basic case information.
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David’s vision is of a program that hands more autonomy to the people who receive services–letting them select, for example, the types or levels of services they wish to receive from a program.
For one set of program participants, that might be everything that is currently on the table–from establishing parentage to sending out income-withholding orders to filing for contempt. A different set of parents, on the other hand, might only want parentage establishment and income-withholding orders. A third set might want something else entirely.
This approach keeps the full range of existing services intact for people who want them. It just expands our options with the hope of bringing more people into the program. As David puts it on the podcast:
There will always be a certain population of people who [say], “No, I don’t really want anything to do with that other person. I just want child support to handle this for me.” … I just think there’s a whole host of other people out there that want flexibility, that want options, and they want more control over their own case. And they don’t come to us because they’re not ready to relinquish and completely hand that over.
Our discussion with David grew out of a recent Western Intergovernmental Child Support Engagement Council conference, where David led part of a session called “World Café.”
David led the table in a discussion about enhancing self-service. What makes this such a great discussion, though, is that this one topic quickly branches into all kinds of other ones, such as public awareness of the program, how to address the needs of families in the context of what is required, and how this might lead to a more effective and more successful program overall.