:: Winning Strategies :: NJ Child Support Case Study

CASE STUDY

New Jersey Child Support

The Challenge and the Approach
New Jersey’s Child Support Program promotes financial and medical security for children in need of support. It helps parents meet the needs of their children by offering a full range of child support services. These services are provided through County Boards of Social Services, County Probation Divisions, and Family Case Management Offices.

The Child Support Program is supervised by the state Department of Human Services, Division of Family Development, Office of Child Support Services and is administered in individual counties. The county offices include: Boards of Social Services, Family Courts and Probation Divisions.

Because of the number of offices that service and administer under the Child Support Program, communication among these groups is a difficult challenge. In addition, most of the offices are not only separated by geography but by different and varied technological platforms.

Working with the Child Support team, Winning Strategies analyzed the challenges constraining the Child Support Program system and the different internal business processes that could be improved. We then proposed and implemented an Internet based communication solution.

Accessed through any browser, the communication tool allows groups of Child Support Program administrators to work together on developing programs in a collaborative effort, coordinate events, review documents, hold conversation forums, centralize work and review materials, among other capabilities.

Results
The NJ Child Support Web site receives roughly 5 million hits a month. With that said, it was imperative that the back-end communication between members be commensurate with the quality and popularity of the Web site. Acting as a communications management system, this tool has greatly opened the way Child Support team members interact with one another. Events and news are being coordinated between members like never before. Master documents are being held in a singular place where team members can review them, alter them, and consolidate the flow of information. Information is being streamlined and forums are acting as communication mechanisms, allowing the Child Support Network to run at full technological capacity, a capacity never envisioned before the initiation of this program.