Senate bill will take food assistance away from families while costing North Carolina millions
Today, the North Carolina Senate will vote on a bill aimed at punishing parents who struggle to keep up with child support payments by taking away their food assistance. Senate Bill 551, the Child Support Cooperation Act, is based off of myths and stereotypes rather than an actual understanding of what families with low-incomes actually need.
Here are some realities about the negative impacts of child support enforcement in SNAP:
1) Taking away food from struggling parents will not result in increased payments.
Under this policy, North Carolina can choose to punish custodial parents who choose not to open a child support case or modify or enforce an existing support order, in addition to parents not keeping up with payments. Child support enforcement for SNAP families is already fairly strong. In fact, over the past 20 years, the amount of financial support paid by parents has increased by 22 percent. Additionally, the program already provides incentives for parents who do cooperate.
2) This policy risks increasing food insecurity among survivors of abuse and the children they care for.
The reality is that many non-custodial parents are providing informal support. Parents who earn low wages and have inconsistent schedules may pay when they are able. Other parents may support their children in other ways by co-parenting or buying supplies. Parents who choose not to participate in the child support system often do so for good reason. For example, a study from Texas found that more than 4 in 10 mothers who did not receive any type of child support were survivors of abuse.
Senate Bill 551 doesn’t acknowledge that people’s lives, circumstances, and needs are complex. Instead, this blanket policy threatens to remove food from people already struggling to make ends meet who are caring for children.
Read more: http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2019/05/06/senate-bill-will-take-food-assistance-away-from-families-while-costing-n-c-millions/