Southern Alberta

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A profile of Child Support Services dependents in Alberta
(PolicyWise for Children & Families, 2019-07-17) Jia, Ruiting; Twilley, Leslie; Cui, Xinjie
Child support payment agreements and court orders can support the well-being of children in single-parent or blended families. This report profiled Alberta Child Support Services (CSS) dependents (0 to 22 years old) from 2005/06 to 2010/11. CSS dependents are the children for whom child support was sought. Analyses examined these individuals’ sociodemographic characteristics and public service use patterns based on the reasons for the case closure and the amounts of money granted in proceedings to obtain child support. This report found that (1) there were 24,619 to 28,868 CSS dependents between 2005/06 and 2010/11, (2) the percentage of CSS dependents who met or exceeded educational expectations in the K-12 education system generally increased over the report period, (3) a higher proportion of CSS dependents were both high-cost health service users and mental health service users than non-CSS dependents, and (4) the monetary amount of a dependent’s CSS payment related to their educational achievement. These findings provide policy-relevant evidence that public authorities may consider as they seek to better support CSS dependents.