Tonya Younis works for the New York State Unified Court System and serves as the Resource Coordinator for the Parent Support Program.
She works directly with the Onondaga County Family Court to refer non-custodial parents involved in child support cases to community-based employment programs and other supportive services. In the spring of 2011 she spoke with Norma Feldman about the Parent Support Program.
How do you, as the Resource Coordinator, fit in to the big picture of the program?
I’m here in the court house full-time, and magistrates can send somebody after hearing the case and determining that they want this person to go through the employment program. They’ll send the person down here. I will screen them to see if they are eligible for the Parent Success Initiative (PSI) or any other community-based programs that may be available at that time.
What are the eligibility guidelines?
They are mostly income-based. The specific income guidelines change every year based on Department of Health & Human Services regulations. Also, there is an age requirement. When I first started, participants had to be between the ages of 16 and 45, but now it is 16 and up.
How do you determine the income?
We have a nice little sheet that the Department of Health & Human Services puts out that says, “If you have a family size of X, you can’t make over [this amount] yearly or monthly.” I don’t personally check on it. What happens is I ask them verbally and I send the referral over to PSI. When they have their orientation at PSI, the case manager goes in more depth with it. I believe they have to sign a verification form stating that this is the household income.
What role do you think collaborative, community-based programs like the Parent Support Program should play in the justice system?
I believe the Parent Support Program plays a very important role in the justice system. We have the time to spend with participants to explain that the court is really trying to help them, not penalize them, by mandating they participate in our program. I tell them, “The magistrates know there’s other stuff going on in your life and the court is trying to address that. We’re going to try to give you the skills and the help that you need to get back up on your feet so you pay the child support for your children.” We also give regular progress reports to the judges and magistrates so they know what’s going each participant, which is an important part of our role.
What are responses like to that offer of help?
It’s varied. A lot of times emotions are running high when they come in from the magistrates because you’re talking about stuff they really care about. You’re talking about money and their children. Some of my clients don’t get to see their children—they don’t even have visitation, so in their minds they don’t even understand why they should have to pay child support. Part of it’s an education process when they walk through that door. If they have questions about the fact that they can’t see their children, one of the wonderful things about PSI is that they provide legal counsel so they can bring an action and they can visit their children. So some of it is explaining and calming them down.
Do people see you as part of the court system?
They do, but I think after sitting and talking with me for a little while that changes. I let them talk too. The magistrates’ calendars are so heavy that they can’t have somebody in there telling a story for a half hour. They just would never get through their calendars. When they come in here they need to tell their story, so I just let them vent.
That’s not in your job description, is it?
That’s just how my personality is. Some of the clients who do have particularly nasty attitudes, I’ve printed out a sheet of how you conduct yourself in court that I give to them and we go over it. They tell me that that was it helpful. They want to feel like they’re being heard. I think that’s really important.
What challenges have you faced?
I get really frustrated because the economy is so horrible and a big part of my job I feel is being a cheerleader. Sometimes it’s really difficult to motivate somebody when I’m not really feeling that motivated myself because they might have a 7th grade education or a significant arrest record. You have to keep encouraging them, “You’re going to get something …you’re going to get something.”
Have you had any challenges from the court side?
Yes, the magistrates get frustrated about the eligibility guidelines, which change based on the funding of our partner programs. I’ll give you an example. I received an email from one of the support magistrates about a case. We couldn’t take the person because PSI counts the income of all blood relatives in the household income. The magistrate said to me, “He lives with his parents because he can’t afford to live on his own, so why are you counting the income because that’s not what I can take into consideration when we’re issuing the child support order?” I said to her, “Judge, I’m upset about it too. I want to help this person too, but I can’t.”
Have you found that the referral and compliance monitoring process has been smooth or challenging?
That was very challenging in the beginning, but I do think PSI bent over backwards to help the court project. I think we help each other because the court feeds in a lot of referrals into the program and they in turn have to give us information back for the magistrates, so it’s kind of a symbiotic.
PSI was not required to do the kind of court reporting and compliance before?
No, they were not. And also we had to try to change a mindset because prior to this program starting all of their clients had been voluntary. I had to find some kind of commonality to give them a reason to give me information about compliance, because they’re very protective of their clients and they viewed the courts as hurting the clients. They were very nervous about saying something that would harm their clients. I needed to explain it in a way, “You’re not hurting them, but we need to hold them accountable too.” I also told them they have a lot of power because if the clients are not doing what the program requirements say they should doing, then you can use the court’s power to make them do it because we’re all supposed to be helping the child.
One of the unique things about this program was that it was also collaboration with Syracuse University College of Law and different law students interned with the program in the courthouse. That was very helpful, actually. There were some challenges when the law students were here because this is not your usual law assignment—it’s more geared toward social work, probably. Even though we explained that, because it was located in the courthouse, I think the law students had a different idea about what was going to happen. That being said, they really did help me.
Would you say that students from a different academic background may have fit the program better?
Yes, absolutely—more social work. I think it’s a shock—it’s very different from law school. This deals with employment, not legal issues. It’s a challenge for them.
What lessons have you learned from being involved in a program like this?
I think there are some people who you can try to help but they still won’t work. That’s one lesson that was kind of surprising to me because I kind of wanted to think that if you give everybody some meaningful work they will do it, but there’s a certain segment of the population that … it doesn’t matter. So that’s one lesson.
Magistrate Davies also mentioned the underground economy.
That’s right and there’s a certain incentive to not to want to get on the books. Some of these guys have multiple children with multiple women so they say, “I didn’t even graduate high school and I have five children with five different women. I get on the books and I’m only bringing home minimum wage, what incentive do I have to work on the books?” And that’s a challenge too—trying to talk the clients into believing that the magistrates really want to see you on the books, it’s really worth your while to be on the books. I do it by explaining that if they’re not working on the books, they’re not contributing to Social Security and they’re not going to have anything when they’re old.
If someone wanted to replicate this program, what would your advice be?
To make sure that they have all of the community players at the table and that there’s a general understanding of how it’s all going to work before it’s actually implemented at the court level. I think in order to have the community feel invested in it, they have to feel as if they had a say in how it’s going to be structured. I also think that every community is different. Even though this is working here in Onondaga County, I believe Oswego County, for example, is a little smaller, a little more tight-knit, so it may be even more important that you bring people there to the table so they feel that they are invested in it too.
