Celebrating Child Support Awareness Month 2020

While this year is unusual in many ways, some things remain consistent. One of them is the impressive dedication of the child support community—and its annual celebration, Child Support Awareness Month, which rolls around every August. We’re celebrating this occasion in 2020 by honoring employees, sharing thought leadership, and calling attention to the importance of child support in the lives of the children and families across the country.

For nearly 30 years, Conduent has been a trusted operations partner to child support agencies nationwide, helping them improve services for children and families. Throughout the month of August, we’ll be leading a social media campaign with the hashtag “#MoreThanAJob” to highlight long-time child support experts who have dedicated themselves to the field, and we’ll share thoughts from our team on the importance of child support programs.

We’re also excited to partner with the National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA) to examine how child support directors across the country are handling the changes and challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.To this end, in conjunction with NCSEA, we recently hosted a focus group with a select, representative group of child support directors for a virtual conversation on how the pandemic has affected current operations and their long-term plans. Later this month, we’ll be releasing a white paper with results and insights from this conversation to share with the child support community.

And that’s not all to celebrate. 2021 will mark the 30th anniversary of Conduent’s first public-private partnership in the child support arena, through a payment processing contract with Los Angeles County. Expanding from that first partnership to provide a comprehensive set of child support solutions to more than a dozen states, we handled approximately $150 billion in child support during the past 10 years. Our SDU operations now process more than $11 billion, or approximately one-third of U.S. child support payments, every year.

In 2019, in recognition of its many years of advocacy and active partnership with stakeholders in the child support community, Conduent received NCSEA’s Corporate Associate of the Year Award. Recently, Robbie Endris, Regional Director of Child Support Services at Conduent, was re-elected to another three-year term on the NCSEA Board of Directors. Her new term begins September 1, 2020.

While the commitment of child support program employees and leaders should be celebrated all year round, August provides a particularly appropriate occasion for initiatives, honors and discussions on the topic. And we look forward to 2021, when we hope for a return to gathering and celebrating with our child support colleagues, clients and friends face to face.