As the Wisconsin Statewide Automated Child Welfare Information System (WiSACWIS) is being implemented statewide, the Department of Workforce Development/Division of Workforce Solutions/Bureau of Child Support (DWD/DWS/BCS) has informed the Division of Children and Family Services that many Kinship Care eligible children are not being referred for child support services. Without adequate parental information on the Kinship Care case files, the WiSACWIS/KIDS interface can not refer these cases and/or match the participants to a child support case.

Although the existing database systems, WiSACWIS and Web KCTS, do not indicate that these are required fields of information for reporting, data entry of the name of at least one parent is required. Effective immediately, parental information must be entered into the Kinship Care reporting systems. If you have information on both parents, please supply information for both parents. If you do not know the parent’s social security number or date of birth you should use the CARES and/or KIDS systems to help find this information. In accordance with HFS 58.04(3)(b), complete any forms required for the referral of the child's parent or parents to the child support agency.

Failure to enter the name of a parent in a case can result in the Kinship Care cases not being referred to the IV-D agency for support collection. Other resulting problems include:

• The failure to start a child support case of a child in Kinship Care.
  
  
• The failure to collect child support from parents to reimburse the TANF Kinship Care appropriation
  
  
• The continued payment of child support to the parent while the child is in Kinship Care. The support will not be assigned to the state and there will be no reimbursement to the TANF Kinship Care appropriation.
  
  
• The failure to redirect any support collected to the family once the child leaves Kinship Care.

If a good cause claim exemption for proceeding with the collection of child support has been granted, the Kinship Care agency must notify the child support agency in writing whether or not the child support agency should proceed to secure child support without participation of the Kinship Care relative caregiver (HFS 58.09(12)(a)).

You should discuss local practice for handling Kinship care cases with your local child support agency in order to meet the needs for both agencies.

If you have any questions about Kinship Care data entry on WiSACWIS, please contact DHFS Service Desk at (608) 267-7775.

Counties that have not yet implemented WiSACWIS should continue using the paper referral method to obtain child support services for these cases.

Thank you for your cooperation.