Celebrating Child Support Awareness Month – and 30 Years of Making a Difference
What do you remember from 1995? Ebay went live, Michael Jordan came out of retirement to play basketball again, and the digital optical disc data storage format – more commonly known as DVD – was invented. And President Clinton established the official recognition of Child Support Awareness Month every August to call attention to the accomplishments of the child program and its employees. Ever since, August has been an occasion to honor those who help families and children with the goal of achieving self-sufficiency.
Four years before President Clinton’s proclamation, Conduent embarked on its first private-public partnership with a government child support program to process child support payments for families and children in need. Alex Camacho wrote about his personal experience in the early days of payment processing here, and he’s one of many Conduent team members who has been working in child support for decades, whether in the private sector, public sector, or often both. Child support is more than a job for our team.
Fittingly, our child support subject matter experts will kick off Child Support Awareness Month by attending and presenting at the National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA)’s Annual Leadership Symposium, the industry’s premier annual leadership event. Nearly 500 child support and human services professionals are expected to gather in Austin, Texas, to network, learn, share and build leadership skills at the first in-person national child support industry event since February 2020.
If you’re headed to the NCSEA Leadership Symposium, come visit the Conduent team at booth #2 to learn more about our child support offerings, talk about challenges your program is facing, or just catch up and re-connect. Kim Newsom Bridges will also be leading a plenary session focusing on how the pandemic wrought wide-ranging changes in the child support program, many of which child support directors are now considering making permanent.
We’re proud to have a 30-year history as a trusted operations partner to child support agencies across the country, helping them improve technology and services for children and families. From that single payment processing contract in 1991, we’ve grown to process more than $11 billion, or approximately one-third of all U.S. child support payments, every year. During the NCSEA Leadership Symposium in 2019, Conduent was named Corporate Associate of the Year in recognition of its many years of advocacy and active partnership with stakeholders in the child support community.
Throughout Child Support Awareness Month we’ll be sharing thought leadership, intelligence, observations and successes from our experiences nationwide to keep child support programs in the spotlight. Some things have changed since 1995 and some haven’t – our commitment to this industry, our clients, and the families we all serve remains as steadfast as ever.