Volume 1, Issue 4 | October 15, 2019
Child Support Training Partnership
Fall Is Upon Us: Let Go and Embrace Change
Ah... fall -- the rustling of crisp leaves underfoot, the roar of the crowd when the home team scores a touch down, the scent of pumpkin spice literally everywhere! What's not to love about autumn? As with any seasonal transition, the move from summer to fall provides us with an opportunity to reflect and embrace change -- and my team has been experiencing a whirlwind of change over the past few months. Not only are we fully staffed for the first time in a long while, but we have actually expanded our team to include an instructional support specialist to administer our learning management system (LMS) and a communications specialist to promote the fabulous work of Iowa's child support staff. And speaking of the LMS, we are in the process of transitioning to a new system this fall. We launch our first two learning tracks this month. Lastly, we have recently revamped our instructional design process to ensure greater consistency across projects. Change is never easy, but when the work you do positively impacts the lives of Iowa's families, it is easier to let go of the old and embrace the new. Happy fall, everyone!

If your organization has recently undergone change, we'd love to hear from you. Have you recently created a onboarding process for new staff? Are you transitioning to a new LMS or looking for ways to improve your current system? What tweaks have you made to your training creation process. We're always looking for presenters on future calls or potential articles for our newsletter. Please reach out and share.

-Paula Burns, Instructional Development Coordinator
Iowa State University/Iowa Child Support Recovery Unit
Alternative Approaches to CS Collections
On August 15, 41 CSTP members from across the country met to discuss "Changing the Conversation About Child Support." Jennifer Hellerud, Deputy Director of San Diego Child Support Services and Ashley Joslyn of the Washington State Division of Child Support led the conversation. Jennifer discussed how San Diego works to help families achieve self-sufficiency and break the cycle of inter-generational poverty. Jennifer shared that their customers required them to think differently about how customers are handled. The division adopted a customer-first approach and moved from an enforcement focus to a "Here to Help" focus. Ashley shared how Washington state created “The Alternative Solutions Program” where the focus is “making families and communities stronger by connecting parents to resources and partners.” Both agencies have shown great success as a result of these changes. Review their presentation and learn more about their approaches.
 
The next CSTP Quarterly call will be held on Thursday, November 14, at 1 p.m. central/2 p.m. eastern . 
2019 NCSA Leadership Symposium
The 2019 National Child Support Enforcement Association (NCSEA) Leadership Symposium, “Leading Forward: Meeting Challenges with Vision & Service,” was held in Minneapolis, MN, August 11-14. More than 700 attendees participated in four plenary sessions and 38 workshops focusing on ideas, practices, processes, and technology that might allow child support enforcement agencies to better address the needs of their customers. Common themes included issues of racial inequality and systemic racism, the challenges facing incarcerated payors, and interagency cooperation to address the welfare of program participants.

One workshop, “Recognize, Respond, and Refer: Changing the Approach to Dealing with Family Violence,” discussed failures in flagging domestic violence in case management systems, limited safeguards for victims of domestic violence, and a lack of staff recognition of, and response to, domestic violence. The presenters also discussed the efforts of IV-D agencies in Arizona, Michigan, and Mississippi to more safely provide services to domestic violence victims. These efforts included training agency staff and attorneys on how to identify domestic violence, how to process and document domestic violence in case management systems, and how to proceed when a case has a domestic violence flag. For example, the Arizona Division of Child Support Services published seven letters to its staff to train them on its new domestic violence policy and procedure. In Michigan, the Muskegon County Family Court conducted training that included teaching staff to recognize indicators of domestic violence, such as body language, a party’s choice of words, and the presence of protective orders. As a final example of the training discussed in this workshop, the Mississippi Division of Child Support trained its staff on the importance of domestic violence coding in its case management system.

-Matthew Femrite, Legal Consultant
Iowa State University/Iowa Child Support Recovery Unit
Boosting Retention: How to Make It Stick
The learning and development (L&D) industry has struggled to overcome what is known as the “forgetting curve” for many years. We customize classes to support various learning styles. We design curriculum for active rather than passive delivery methods. We even purchase buckets of fidget toys to improve concentration. Regardless, researchers maintain learners still forget about 90 percent of what they learn in our classes.  It’s an ugly truth—or is it?

It may surprise you to hear scientists find the act of forgetting to be an advantageous process. According to Dr. Hermann Ebbinghaus, the father of experimental memory research, much of the information we remember is only of short-term importance. After a few days of exposure to new information, the brain appropriately suppresses nonessential data so it can “free up” space for new information that may have more immediate and critical value.  

The key to counterbalancing the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve is to prevent the learner’s brain from suppressing class content along with yesterday’s grocery list. Our industry has already taken strides to increase retention. We encourage participants to create and practice mnemonic devices and coach supervisors to regularly debrief class content with their staff. While effective, both techniques are entirely dependent on the commitment of team members beyond course designers and instructors. A new technique puts the power of improving retention back into the hands of L&D professionals. 

Learning boost activities include short, web-based confirmations of learning often developed using rapid authoring tools. These objects are designed to spur students to recall content from a previous learning experience. The New Jersey Child Support Institute (NJCSI) at Rutgers University and many other learning organizations have adopted the learning boost method by periodically emailing 2-3 question recall activities in the days and weeks following the completion of a training program or course. The practice is currently being used in several NJCSI courses.

The science behind the learning boost comes from memory researcher Dr. Henry Roediger. In his study, Roediger asked a group of students to read essays on topics in science. Afterward, he gave half the students a prescribed period of time to reread the text and the other students the same amount of time to respond to a series of questions assessing their recall of the material. When the students were repeatedly tested on the content in the following days and weeks, Roediger found the students who took the test did significantly better than those who simply reread the material. (see figure 1) 

Informed by this research, trailblazers like Dr. Art Kohn have been aligning learning boost programs with their training events. According to Kohn, “if you provide your learners with opportunities to recall subtopics in the hours and days after training, you reshape their forgetting curve.” Interestingly, even if a learner answers the questions incorrectly, the brain tags the information as important because the effort to recall the information was exercised.

After exploring Kohn’s methodology, NJCSI programmed its learning management system to send two-three question surveys, quizzes, polls, and reflective questions one day, three days, seven days, and fourteen days following piloted classes. Since the practice was employed, our learning boosts have a 72% completion rate . Our design is intentional. Research suggests with every boost, learning content becomes more and more embedded into long-term memory. Even fewer automated boosts may be effective. So, the next time you find yourself dreading the forgetting curve, consider creating and emailing a few simple learning boosts. The small amount of effort required promises to pay dividends. 

-Lauren A. Davis, Learning and Development Supervisor, Instructional Technology
New Jersey Child Support Institute/Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Michigan Hosts Child Support Gatherings
Michigan’s IV-D program proudly supported two important events in September. From September 8 to 11, the National Council of Child Support Directors (NCCSD) met on Mackinac Island, and from September 11 to 12, the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) supported the fifth Employer Symposium.

Mackinac Island is a one-of-a-kind island sitting in the Straits of Mackinac between Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas. It was a beautiful time of year for folks to gather there because the crowds were gone and the weather was sunny and pleasant. The island is historical and a popular destination because of its lovely water views from virtually every part of the island and because of the quaint and charming inns, stores, restaurants, harbors, and churches. It also includes the only state highway in the nation that doesn’t allow cars. That’s right. All full-time residents and visitors, such as those attending the IV-D gatherings, cannot use motor vehicles but instead must travel by bike or horse-drawn carriage while on the island.

Visitors to the council and the symposium came from far-and-wide, including Guam and Alaska, and had to traverse to Mackinac by plane, train, car, shuttle, and ultimately, ferry and horse-drawn carriage. Though the attendees were worn-out, the island is so lovely and charming that they quickly let their exhaustion slip away.

Michigan’s IV-D staff did the state proud by going above-and-beyond to ensure visitors’ (many who had never been to Michigan, much less to Mackinac Island) travel and the logistics were as smooth as possible.

The Employer Symposium was attended by a wide-range of professionals from the employer community. OCSE and NCCSD sought to ensure the symposium agenda was well constructed and covered topics employers and IV-D programs wanted to discuss. Also, the theme was to develop actionable steps to resolve lingering challenges. Our employer partners are dedicated to making the important role they play in the work we do a success. Topics included New Hire Reporting, verification of employment, income withholding, lump-sum reporting, and medical support.

The most recent OCSE report on the symposium (from 2016) can be found here .

-Michael Adrian, Program Development Division Director
Michigan Office of Child Support
Looking for a Few Good People
CSTP is always looking for volunteers to present on upcoming conference calls or to contribute to our new quarterly newsletter. If you're interested in either of these opportunities or would like to get involved with CSTP in other ways, please contact Jalynn Almond (newsletter) or Shawn Peterson (quarterly calls).
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