Procedural Justice in the Child Support Process Lessons from an Implementation Study of the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt Demonstration

The federal Office of Child Support Enforcement funded the Procedural Justice-Informed Alternatives to Contempt (PJAC) grant to fund projects which implemented the principles of procedural justice in working with parents facing contempt. This report analyzes implementation of the PJAC model. The model includes a case review, outreach and engagement, case conference, case action plan, and case management. The research showed child support employees felt the model was beneficial to parents, although it wasn’t without its challenges. Engaging the parents was difficult. Case managers were limited in the services they could offer.