Parents (obligors) ordered by the courts to make financial child support payments, obligor-parents with 2nd families, and parents who are the sole support of their families may lose their jobs or be assigned fewer work hours -- and find themselves unable to make financial child support payments or support their families.

• Obligors are arrested and usually jailed because they cannot make court-ordered payments.

• 2nd families suffer when a parent is sent to jail. Children are left without a parent in the home (usually the father), income, however meager, is lost to the family, and children receive a negative image of the courts, law enforcement agencies, and of government.

• Single parents who are also obligated to pay support to another family find their children placed with relatives or in foster care while they are in jail. (Some obligors have custody of their children from another marriage or relationship, or as a result of the death of their spouse.)

• Single parents who have custody of their children, whether through divorce, abandonment, death or disability of the spouse, may lose their jobs and have to rely on welfare.

In these cases, the state must provide:

• Jail space that is needed for more "dangerous" criminals, and/or

• TANF and other public assistance programs that are already straining State and Federal budgets.

The Children’s Rights Coalition calls for the states to prioritize applications made to their employment commission and to other state supported job training and job-find programs if the applicant is a court ordered obligor or the sole support of a family.

This can be accomplished by requiring that the employment commission prioritize during its intake process in a manner similar to that used by many child protective service agencies for child abuse cases.

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