The latest CSTP news for you

Volume 2, Issue 1 | January 28, 2019

Child Support Training Partnership

Happy New Year: Check Out Our Graphic Icon

Welcome to 2020! According to Popular Science , it’s going to be an amazing year full of big technological advances: moon mining, self-driving cars, and a synthetic human brain — just to name a few. While these changes don’t directly impact the work we do as child support trainers, they do represent the notion of possibility , which is at the heart of CSTP’s mission.

This also happens to be the year of visual acuity. Did you know that having 20/20 vision doesn’t mean you have perfect vision? It’s an indication of the sharpness or clarity of vision at a distance, which seems appropriate for the upcoming year. While CSTP has been around since 2016, I predict 2020 will be the year when our mission and purpose really come into focus. So what better time to unveil our new graphic icon?

Thanks to Miles Tritle, communications specialist with Iowa State University, CSTP now has a visual representation of its mission and purpose. The light bulb symbolizes good ideas, while the filament, which comes from the Latin word for “thread," represents the sharing of ideas among CSTP members.

The colors also have meaning. Blue was selected because it creates feelings of trust, authority, and strength, while orange was chosen to represent joy, enthusiasm, and creativity. Taken together, these colors support CSTP's overall mission: “To advance the current and future state of child support training through networking, communication, and collaboration.”

Starting in 2020, you'll see our new graphic icon on all of our communications. Not only does this unveiling coincide with the new year, but January is also the first anniversary of our newsletter. CSTP enters the new year with a clearer vision of who we are and what we want to accomplish. Stay tuned!

-Paula Burns, Instructional Development Coordinator

Iowa State University/Iowa Child Support Recovery Unit

CSTP Members Introduced to "Learning Boosts"

The CSTP quarterly conference call was held on Thursday, November 14, 2019, and featured Veronica Riley, assistant director of the San Joaquin County Department of Child Support Services. Riley shared information about the 2019 Western Intergovernmental Child Support Engagement Council (WICSEC) Conference. This organization, whose vision is to “unite child support professionals and inspire excellence within the IV-D community,” supports the child support needs of families west of the Mississippi River. Check out WICSEC's website , which features learning opportunities for you to participate in directly from your desk throughout the year. WICSEC’s 37th Annual Conference will be held September 13-17, 2020, in Portland, OR.

Following Riley's presentation, two representatives from the New Jersey Child Support Institute discussed “Learning Boosts: Using Technology to Reinforce Learning.” Program Lead Alexander Figueroa and Instructional Designer Khalid Balgar covered the latest research on memory and the forgetting curve and how to increase retention through learning boosts. You can access their presentation on the CWRTP website.

The next CSTP Quarterly call will be held on Thursday, February 20, at 1 p.m. central/2 p.m. eastern . Among the presenters will be Larry Desbien, director of Colorado's Division of Child Support Services. Please join us!

Visit the CSTP Website

The Importance of Adapting to Survive Change

As circumstances change, whether it’s technology, politics, the climate, or some other outside force, one needs to adapt to survive. Adaptation means that the essence of who one is does not change, but maybe one’s morals, values, and principles are expressed within or through those changes.

I’ve had the privilege to serve in a judicial capacity for 27 tribes in 24 tribal courts in 5 states. In performing this function, I have witnessed the 27 tribes’ cultures in action. These cultures, as we are taught, have existed from time immemorial. For any group of living organisms to survive, they have two choices: adopt or adapt . This is exactly what tribes and their members have been forced to do.

The difference between adopting and adapting for survival is huge in terms of how an entity changes. Adopting involves changing one’s morals, values, and principles to fit those of another, thus changing one’s essence. Adapting allows one to change only the way in which one expresses one’s morals, values and principles, thus maintaining one’s essence. It is the difference between a melting pot and a stew .

In a melting pot everything (everyone) is put in a pot and melted down to become one thing, indistinguishable from any other thing (person). All things have the same essence: the same values, morals, and principles. In a stew, you have carrots, meat, potatoes, other vegetables, and spices. They affect each other, but their essence remains intact.

Tribes and their communities have faced attempts at physical and cultural extermination — from forced sterilization, slavery, boarding schools, allotment, presentation of smallpox blankets, guns, forced removal, and the like. Native people have survived, but they have done so as individuals or tribes through adopting or adapting.

A specific example of Native people adopting another culture’s values at the loss of their own is in the area of domestic violence . Traditionally, women and men were equals. If one gender was a more valued, it was women, slightly, because they brought in new life to our people. Men and women may have generally had different roles to play in Native society, but that did not prevent one or the other from crossing over to play the other’s role. Even in their distinct roles, women had a great deal of power and were leaders within the tribe.

The interaction between tribes and their governments and the European or American governments created tension in negotiations. The Euro and American governments did not and would not deal with women leaders. Their patriarchy saw women as lesser beings and women’s roles as less valuable. Initially, the Natives held a stronger position in the balance of power with European countries or England and America. But as that position weakened, so did the maintenance of Native treatment of women.

We have gone from societies that honored our women to one that abuses our women. There was no adapting how we honored our women, but rather we adopted the European/American view of our women as chattel, subservient, and lacking value. This is a change in the essence of who we are as tribal people. As a judge, I deal with various individuals who have lost their way both as perpetrators and as victims.

I see the job of the court as doing what is necessary to attempt to restore pre-adoption values, morals, and principles. For the court or any other department to do this, education, training, and understanding are required. This is true not only for the perpetrator and victim, but also for those who work with the perpetrator and victim. Education’s purpose is to show what the previous ways were (are) and why they were (are) important. Training’s purpose is to provide the process for all involved to make that return. How that change represents a better way is the purpose of understanding.

This is the approach I take in court. I believe a holistic approach is important to accomplish the above goals. One must understand how mind, body, and spirit are connected. Further, this understanding allows people to be in balance. I have trained my courts and the departments that work with those courts and their participants in how to seek that goal.

- Charles H. Tripp, Tribal Judge, Attorney, and Consultant

Legal Advocates for Indian Country, LLP, and Indian Collaborative Consultants, LLC

DV Training for Iowa’s Child Support Recovery Unit

In April 2019, Martha Stewart and Jay Grey, instructional development specialists with Iowa State University/Iowa Child Support Recovery Unit (CSRU), attended a two-day domestic violence training hosted by the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), Region 7, in Kansas City, MO. The training was facilitated by Jeffery Stocks, regional program specialist, and Michael Hayes, senior programs manager.

After this experience, and using the materials generously shared by Hayes, a CSRU workgroup was convened to develop training for Iowa’s Child Support staff. The final product was comprised of several parts:

An online pre-training that introduced the topic of domestic violence
A domestic violence simulation, developed by the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence ("In Her Shoes")
A presentation by the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence
A presentation about applying this knowledge to child support work, highlighting best-practice recommendations for all staff

Across October and November 2019, six trainings were presented, and more than 300 staff from across the state drove to Des Moines to attend the 4-hour sessions. Based on participant evaluations, response to the training was overwhelmingly positive, and, although the topic can certainly be distressing, participants commented they appreciated the experience, their increased awareness, and especially the instruction as to how they can use this knowledge in their job to assist and support victims of domestic violence. Several people even shared their own experiences with domestic violence and were met with the compassion and understanding we hope to show our child support customers.

And, while some of Iowa’s child support offices maintain listings of local resources, perhaps the biggest training take-away was the distribution of Iowa legal and domestic violence resources (compiled by the training workgroup) with contact details and service explanations. In researching these resources, the workgroup found Iowa, despite its reputation as a less-than-diverse state, has domestic violence advocate organizations that serve Hispanics, African migrants, and Asian and Pacific Islanders. Who knew?! Training participants were encouraged to use these digital resources as a starting point to compile expanded listings for each office’s community, county, and region in the state and to be proactive in offering these resources to customers.

Now that the face-to-face training sessions are complete, all the materials (the simulation, resources, videos, and narrated PowerPoint) will be put on Iowa’s learning management system (LMS) for staff who were unable to attend and for future child support employees.

-Martha Stewart, Instructional Development Specialist

Iowa State University/Iowa Child Support Recovery Unit