Public Policy News
Ohio Fatherhood Policy
Advance Fatherhood Ohio! Summit
OPNFF, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, the Ohio Office of Child Support, the Ohio Commission on Fatherhood and the Ohio Justice and Policy Center sponsored the Advance Fatherhood Ohio! Summit on Friday May 30th in Cincinnati. Over 200 people participated in this successful event, including fathers, mothers and a wide variety of public and private agencies. The Summit focused on public policy issues affecting fathers who have contact with public agencies, particularly child support and the criminal justice system.
click here for program agenda and materials
and
click here for participants comments and Q&A
The Summit was organized around 3 panel discussions:
Can We Get This Right for the Children? Ohio Child Support Guidelines Council
Presentation by Dan Cade, Section Chief of Child Support Legal Department, Hamilton County JFS Child Support Division;
click here for presentation
Panel: Tarus Adams; a local mother; John Garner, Cincinnati-Hamilton County Community Action Agency, David Fleischman, Ohio Office of Child Support
While Daddy is Away: Implications for Incarceration and Child Support
Panel: Tracy Q. Jones; Dr. Jennifer E. Williams; Terence Cook, Lighthouse REAL Dads; Stephen A. JohnsonGrove, Ohio Justice and Policy Center
Going Away and Coming Home: Federal and State Reentry Policy Initiatives
Presentation by Ohio Representative Clayton Luckie and Scott Neely, Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
Panel: David Brooks; Crystal Willis; Gary Sims, Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
Ohio Commission on Fatherhood Transition Report
Governor Ted Strickland appointed Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones as Chair of an Agency Review Committee in November 2006. The committee was charged with reviewing the Ohio Commission on Fatherhood and providing recommendations for a fatherhood agenda in the new Governor's administration. Jones, the original architect of the Commission, assembled a group of fatherhood practitioners and advocates from all corners of the State to perform the review. The report was delivered to Governor Strickland in late January 2007. It calls for the re-engagement of the Ohio Commission on Fatherhood, $20 million in TANF dollars to fund fatherhood programming and a series of father and family friendly policy reforms.
click here to download full report
click here to download executive summary
The Ohio Practitioners' Network for Fathers and Families is pleased to release our Public Policy Agenda
The Agenda outlines public policy issues affecting the lives of fathers and families in Ohio in 5 general areas: Child Support; Job Training and Employment; Welfare Reform/TANF; Fathers, Families and Professional Support; and Incarceration and Reentry.
We welcome comments on the issues outlined in the agenda. This is a living document that will continue to evolve and change in response to the dynamic public policy environment in Ohio and Nationally. Click here to comment.
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Federal Fatherhood Policy
Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act (S. 3607)
Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN) and Barack Obama (D-IL) introduced the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act of 2006 (S. 3607), on June 29, 2006. This bill was reintroduced to the new Congress on June 29, 2007. According to comments made by Senator Obama upon introducing the bill, it will “provide support for fathers who are trying to do the right thing in making child-support payments by providing them with job training and job opportunities and expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. It also stops penalizing marriage in the tax code, and makes sure that children and families, not the government, receive every penny of child support." A summary of the bill is available here:
click here to download
click here for the full text of S 3607
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Child Support Issues for Low Income Fathers
The Potential Impact of Increasing Child Support Payments to TANF Families - an article by Laura Wheaton and Elaine Sorensen of the Urban Institute on changes in Child Support rules that will allow up to $200 a month in child support payments to be "passed-through" directly to custodial parents and not counted when determining a family's TANF benefits. These new rules will take affect in October of 2008. States will have to change policy to adopt them.
Click here
for a pdf version of the article.
Assessing Child Support Arrears in Nine Large States and the Nation - this report, commissioned by the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement conclusively shows that the vast majority of child support arrears are owed by poor fathers with either no income or reported income of $10,000 or less.
Click here
for a pdf version of the article.
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Incarcerated Parents and Reentry
Debtor's Prison - Prisoners' Accumulation of Debt as a Barrier to Reentry - an article originally published in the Clearinghouse Review Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, makes the case that the increasing debt burden of incarcerated fathers due to criminal financial and child support obligations results in a hardship that reduces the chances that ex-offenders will reentry their community and families successfully.
Click here
for a pdf version of the article.
Parental Incarceration: How to Avoid a "Death Sentence" for Families - another article originally published in the Clearinghouse Review Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, discusses the impact of parental incarceration on children and the importance of preserving and reunifying families.
Click here
for a pdf version of the article.