Forge Your Trail is a program from Oklahoma Human Services and is run by the University of Oklahoma Center for Public Management. The program helps parents move towards getting caught up in their child support payments and improve relationships with their children. The project’s core idea is people usually want to take care of their kids. The challenge is they don’t see how they can do that with so many other demands.
The program has coaching sessions focused on skills to help someone plan and achieve their goals. These skills help with personal organization, keeping deadlines, sticking to schedules, and working through complicated paperwork. These are the same tasks needed to find a job and to be able to keep it.
Parents are guided through a journey of ongoing assessment and goal setting focused on jobs, managing finances, and navigating through government red tape. The coaching is done in a way to have long-term success.
The Bridge
Each person’s situation is assessed and tracked using a bridge framework. The Bridge to Self-Sufficiency(c) is held up by five major pillars. These are all connected and are all equally important.
Another pillar is for the encouragement the parent needs while on their child support journey. Although parents are offered to be in the program due to owing child support, the mission is to help them to set goals related to financial well-being. Some goals are finding a good job, saving money, and improving financial skills.
The Bridge guides the coach and the parent to decisions to help with what is happening now and looks towards the future.
Each parent is assigned a trained coach who will use tools to assist unemployed or under employed non-custodial parents. The goal is to remove barriers the parent has to financial stability. Plus, they want to move from crisis management to planning then to reaching their goals. Coaching also looks at the poverty and stress-related trauma that can make decisions hard to do.
These techniques can be used online and through the telephone. They focus on helping parents find what they need. The content of the conversations is kept confidential. The fact a parent is working with a coach is shared with Child Support Services, so they know a parent is working to be able to provide support in the future.
Has your situation changed since your court order?
If you don’t make the same amount of money from when the child support was ordered, you may be able to ask the court to take a look at the amount. DHS Child Support Services has a way for you to ask the court to review the amount without you having to hire an attorney. It is called a Pro Se Modification. Below is a link to CSS’s website so you can obtain the forms you need.
An address or contact information for the other person(s) in the case
Your Family Group Number (Oklahoma CSS case number)
Your Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH) case number
Address of the CSS office where your case is assigned.
If you don’t know the above information, you can contact CSS at
(405) 522-2273 (OKC area) or (918) 295-3500 (Tulsa area)
Your coach can also help you with organizing your information.
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Google has a program for job-ready skills through flexible online training. These programs include Digital Marketing & E-commerce, IT Support, Data Analytics, Project Management, UX Design and Android Development.
How much does this cost?
Google has announced the $100M Google Career Certificates Fund. This fund helps nonprofits Social Finance, Merit America, and Year Up offer career support, job placement, and stipends to help drive $1B in aggregate wage gains and provide career advancements for more than twenty thousand American workers.
Many parents need help with being able to set up visitation with their children. DHS CSS cannot help with custody or visitation issues but there are other resources which can help. There is a federal grant which provides local resources to help parents with access and visitation issues.
Children and Family Services, Inc.
210 South Cockrel Ave Norman, OK 73071 Phone: (405) 364-1420
Services
Supervised Visitation and Parenting Classes (primarily serves Cleveland County and surrounding area)
Child support can be challenging for parents who run a business. They are working for the success of both their families and their business. The United States Small Business Administration has resources available. These include business guides, funding programs, training, and local mentors.
This website is helpful for multiple legal issues including Housing, Relationship Abuse & Domestic Violence, Work & Unemployment, Family Law, and Consumer & Debt information. The Family Law information is especially helpful in the areas of Divorce, Child Support, Name Changes, Adoption, Guardianship, Paternity, Custody/Visitation, and Marriage. This information includes some self-help forms that do not require an individual to hire an attorney to use.
This website is maintained by the State of Oklahoma under the Be a Neighbor program to provide information about local neighbor organizations for individual needs. Resources can be identified for specific counties and address many areas such as Food, Housing, Health, Mental Health, Clothing, Family Support, Employment Pathway, Schooling/Mentorship, Transportation, and Spiritual Guidance.