Jessica Pearson

This report presents the results of an experiment aimed at comparing the effectiveness of private vendors and public child support agencies in locating absent parents. Two Colorado counties participated in this privatized location experiment: Mesa and Archuleta. Both counties negotiated contracts with two private vendors that specialize in child support work and credit bureau reporting.

The Colorado Parenting Time Project was designed to assess whether identifying parents with visitation problems in the child support caseload and providing services aimed at resolving them improves parent-child contact and the subsequent payment of child support.

The OCSE-funded project described in this report led to the creation of Data Information Sharing (DISH), an interface between the automated databases for the Colorado Department of Human Services, Division of Child Support Enforcement (CSE) and the Colorado Judicial Department.