Interview Questions and Answers

1. How has being on child support affected your life?

Interviewee: “It definitely showed up lot of struggles but at the same time I mean we’ve had to

learn to go without a lot more when we had it. It was good when we had it and it was bad when

we didn’t. It was huge. You learn how to balance things and it shows your priorities”

2. What were the priorities and problems you faced with child support?

Interviewee: “Depends whether I got it or not. Sometimes I didn’t even get it. Because we didn’t

always get child support we had to get Healthy Choice. I had no way of buying a $200 asthma

thing for my kid. An albuterol inhaler. I couldn’t pay for food and medical stuff on my own and

when we did have it it was a huge relief. I needed to apply for food stamps because of when we

didn’t get it and it put us in homelessness. Getting it and not was huge and without it I couldn’t

afford marching band and boy scouts for my kids.”

3. How did child support help empower you and help you achieve your goals?

Interviewee: “It helped me achieve my goals by being a better parent and providing for my

children, so yeah it gave us more choices to do with my kids. We were unable to do big

vacations and a night in the hotel was a vacation to us. There were some nights my kids had only

french fries to eat as a meal and they shouldn’t have to only have that to eat.”
 4. What would you like to see different about the child support system?

Interviewee: “I would like to see them immediately get garnished. Garnish the wages of the

person paying. Their dad said he would work at McDonalds so he wouldn’t have to pay child

support because he knew how to play the system. He would rather downgrade his job so the

payments are lowered.”

5. How do you feel about the child support payer being involved in child’s life?

Interviewee: “That is really good idea honestly. Even if they lowered it he would still be helping

out. Say if they lowered it $500 and all of a sudden my kids needed food, instead of ‘hey I’m

poor and need money’ maybe mom and dad could split the food and if you take the child support

I got and divided it by 3 (how many kids) then 30 days in a month it wasn’t even $10 a day. I’d

rather have him involved in life like in scouts that would be good or having a weekend off like

most parents do. That would have been very nice because I’d be saving money and get to do

other things other parents do like go on dates, go on girls trips, and I never got to do that kind of

stuff and I’d rather the other parent be involved if I had to do it again. Even if they just leave the

kid at the curb so the parents don’t have to see each other it would have been nice to of have.”

Summary

This interview ended up being more educational than I originally planned it being. By

hearing how the child support system affected the person I interviewed and their experience with

it, I am glad to hear that the changes I want to make to the policy seem to be for the better. I’ve
been thinking about the changes financially and wanting parents to be involved in their

children’s lives, but I haven’t thought about parents having free time or splitting the cost that

comes with children. The interviewee's quality of life is affected by gaining an income that

helped her raise three kids, but in her experience, she didn’t always get the payments. That made

her life more difficult as she had to find a way to care for herself and her children. The

interviewee's most pressing need was to care for her children. Their family was in a program for

those who couldn’t afford housing where they lived in different Churches every week.

Her needs were to secure housing and make sure her kids could eat. Eventually, she was

able to get housing. This policy goes with the social work values by recognizing the worth of a

person and the importance of relationships. This is because my policy recognizes the roles

people play in families and helps them get the aid they need while also trying to maintain and

improve family relationships. My policy empowers clients by giving them the aid they need and

the support they could use. By helping them, the client's life will hopefully improve, and giving

by giving both parties more choices. The parents getting the payments receives financial aid that

benefits them while the parent making the payment has options to reduce how much they pay by

being involved in the child’s life. The child may also benefit by having two parents in their lives

and by having what they need. The interviewee would be involved in the policy-making by

having the child support garnished from the paychecks of the parent paying, that way the

payments will for sure make it. One of the issues my interviewee faced was not always getting

payments or getting them late, but after her ex’s wages were garnished, she knew she would

always get it.