A 2008 Report From The NH Commision For The Status Of Men - What About Dads?

The Following is directly off of the 2008 report from the NH Commission For The Status of Men posted on the State's website.

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What About Dads?

One study from the Urban Institute found that most foster children were not living with their fathers at the time they were removed from their homes. While in foster care, these children may experience even less contact with their nonresident fathers. The study examined child welfare practices with respect to identifying, locating, and involving fathers of children in foster care and found that on resident fathers are often not involved in case planning, and nearly half were never contacted by the child welfare agency. See What About the Dads? at

http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=411316.

In light of this finding, the Commission strongly recommends that the New

Hampshire Division of Children, Youth and Families identify and report to the legislature data regarding how many nonresident fathers they have attempted to contact and to what extent (number of attempts), and detail the methods of the attempts to contact them in order to participate in case planning for their child.

This Commission has also discovered that the Division of Child Support Services removed a job-description requirement for enforcement officers to redress violations of courtordered parenting provisions. Given what we know about the persistently low compliance rates of disenfranchised dads, this Commission recommends that DCSS should review its decision to modify the job description. Due to the importance of the father-child connection, we further recommend that DCSS enforce court ordered parenting provisions with the same level of diligence used to enforce child support orders. The Commission feels that considerable savings to the taxpayer could be achieved with a higher level of encouragement for father involvement in most areas of child-welfare policy. Research has discovered 90% compliance of court ordered child support by fathers who are involved with their children. (Braver, 1998)

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As you can see by this report, Child Support Services puts more of an emphasis on collecting support then they do in trying to enforce court ordered parenting plans.  Is it because they feel that if fathers are involved with heir children, statistically 90% of these fathers pay their child support and this would put them out of business?