Mississippi currently requires that custodial parents pursue the non-custodial parent to get money to be eligible for the federal Child Care and Development Fund. This fund provides vouchers for child care to low-income parents in order for them to work. Advocates claim that the child support enforcement requirement pits single mothers against their non-custodial parents in order to get important support. Many cases involve women receiving informal payments. They fear that the involvement of the state could cause problems in their relationship with the father. Advocates for grassroots argue that the child support requirements are just one of many obstacles low-income Mississippians have to overcome in order to access child care and other public assistance programs. Many of these programs serve a fraction, but also perpetuate stigma and the notion that low-income individuals are less responsible with their finances. This perception is evident in the state law that contains the child support enforcement requirement for beneficiaries and creates a “welfare Fraud” hotline in the same statute as at least one Democratic lawmaker filed this year. Rep. Omeria Scott (D-Laurel) said that she introduced a bill requiring child support recipients to provide a list of all purchases made within the last three months to the state. Scott stated that while they aren’t against child support, they want it to be used for their child. Scott also said that women should spend the money correctly in 95% of cases. “I’ve had many men ask me if there was anything I could do… I’m certainly not saying that abuse is rampant, but I have had many men come up to me to ask me if I could tell them what the money was being spent for.” The nonprofit Mississippi Low-Income Children Care Initiative reports that the wait list for child support vouchers dropped from more than 10,000 to 200 within two months of the state’s 2004 child support and paternity testing requirements. This illustrates the impact the law has had on the initiative. After the rule change, 40% fewer children were being served by the initiative’s day care centers. If low-income parents cannot receive the voucher, they will still need to find child care. Kid’s World in Louisville’s Dianne Edmond Floyd said that they’ve provided care for children at a reduced rate when parents in their area had no other options. Floyd said that it was a loss for her to continue working as she couldn’t afford the normal rate at her center. Day care workers say that they have also faced financial hardships due to the lack of funding. Helen Taylor, from Starkville’s Brickfire Project, said, “Not having enough money to pay the light bills, the gas bill. We had to dig into ourselves personal pockets.” Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative (House Bill 1175) is being pushed for. This removes the child support requirement and forces the state match federal funding requirements. Both bills were authored by Rep. Lataisha JACKSON, D-Como. The second bill deals with Mississippi’s inability to allocate matching funds in 2017 for the program, leaving $13 million in federal funds available. The bill was introduced at a crucial time for the program. Parents awaiting vouchers has risen to more than 21,000. Although the Mississippi Department of Human Services has almost eliminated its child-care waiting list, advocates insist that the need to increase funding for child care continues. Carol Burnett, director of the Mississippi Low-Income Children Care Initiative, said that “it’s a bit more of a moving target as soon as we have people who need it than we can serve.” Burnett estimates that more than 100,000 Mississippi children can be eligible for a voucher, but the state serves anywhere from 17,000 to 20,000. Taylor stated that in her 40-year history of managing her daycare, there has never been one year when all the children who were eligible for a voucher have received one. Burnett stated that more children will benefit if the state provides funding and eliminates obstacles such as child support requirements for parents who apply for assistance. In 2010, the initiative conducted a survey of child-care providers and found that 74% said that parents are discouraged from applying for vouchers due to the child support requirement. The survey revealed that six mothers declined to apply at each center for this reason on average. Mississippi also has a requirement for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps), though it is not mandated by the federal government. Congress had considered including a federal child support requirement for SNAP nationwide in the 2018 Farm Bill. However, the measure was rejected due to increased work requirements. This is in line with the Trump Administration’s agenda regarding welfare reform. Burnett’s group wrote to Congress in May urging them to abandon the proposal. It stated that while everyone agrees that parents should support their children, the policy to do so shouldn’t punish single mothers and children. Federal law already requires applicants to have child support cases in order to receive federal cash assistance programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (or the Medicaid health-insurance program). Officials from the Department of Human Services have acknowledged the difficulties this requirement presents. In October, Dana Kidd (MDHS’s Deputy Administrator for Economic Assistance) told Mississippi Today that child support requirements can cause parents to withdraw applications for assistance. Some parents don’t want the child support system. They might decide to withdraw their application. Kidd stated that the state will eventually have to recoup TANF benefits paid out. The state then takes a portion of non-custodial parent payments to repay itself. Last year, the state processed 293,451 child maintenance cases and received $368.9million in payments. This is an average of $104 per child per monthly. Many child support cases are not paid to the mothers. According to the agency’s budget, it spent $40.7million to operate the child support enforcement section in 2018. Clarise Martin, an MDHS employee, has never received child support payments from either her father or her children’s father in the decades she has been complying with child support office requirements. She said that the agency began garnishing their social security checks in recent years, but the state has retained all the money. Kidd was asked if the policy is problematic based on the fact that it places single parents in a difficult position. She replied: “Yeah it is, but that is our state policy and federal regulation.” However, it can be difficult to use data to evaluate the state’s efforts to increase family independence. In 2017, the state human-services department recorded that one TANF application had been denied because the applicant refused money. Later, the agency admitted that they had not accurately recorded the information and has since updated their reports to show that the human-services department doesn’t include a category to indicate how many applicants didn’t comply with child support enforcement. In 2018, 4,523 applicants withdrew their TANF applications and 4,333 incomplete applications resulted in all of them being denied. The welfare program provides child care for the state’s approximately 5,500 TANF recipients. In 2017, the state donated nearly one-fourth of its $110 million federal TANF block grant, which was approximately $110 million, to the Child Care and Development Fund. Previously, the state had transferred less from TANF into child care. MDHS was criticized for publishing its 2016 approval rate of TANF in 2017. The agency had only approved 1.4 percent new applicants. The department did not include the TANF approval rate data in its next fiscal year 2017 and 2018 annual reports. This dataset was included in every agency annual report since at most 2004. Mississippi Today has records that show the agency approved 26% of applicants in 2017 and 23% in 2018. Officials from the agency have not responded to questions regarding the large variation in approval rates between 2016 and 2017. They have directed communication to the attorney general’s offices, who do not have any answers. According to federal financial data, the overall TANF population is still declining. The human-services department has been providing less information annually over the years. The agency’s 2004 annual report had 108 pages. 2013 Governor. The report was 54 pages in Phil Bryant’s first fiscal year as governor. In 2017, John Davis, director of human-services, saw the agency shrink to 28 pages. The 2018 report has 22 pages. In January, the Mississippi Ethics Commission issued an injunction confirming that the human services department had violated the Mississippi Public Records Act. This state statute governs public access and required records to be provided to the reporter within a reasonable time. MDHS has not responded to interview requests regarding this story, and has refused to answer dozens of emails and calls to Mississippi Today about this story since September.