U.S. federal law requires states to take steps to secure child support from parents who have a child in foster care. Federal policy also allows for the consideration of the "best interests of the child" when determining whether to pursue child support. Despite this clause, in practice, decisions about child support often focus on the responsibility of parents to provide financial support and on the revenue generated by charging parents for their child's care. Consequently, current child welfare policy in Wisconsin often results in both custodial and noncustodial parents being ordered to pay child support to offset the costs of their children's stay in foster care. Given that research has shown that a $100 child support order to offset foster care cost is associated with a 6.6-month delay in reunification and that counties only recover about 3% of child welfare expenditures, the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF) established a collaborative workgroup to refine the referral policy.

Employing participant and direct observations, content analysis, in-depth interviews, and a statewide survey of child welfare stakeholders, this mixed methods study examines DCF's efforts to develop and implement a modified referral policy.

This dissertation finds that the collaboration was made possible by guidance from the federal government; research on the interaction of the child welfare and child support systems; and strong support from senior leaders within DCF. It also indicates that the vast majority of child welfare workers agreed that there is a connection between economic resources and child welfare involvement, but most staff were unaware of the modified referral policy. Finally, it highlights the various barriers and facilitators that emerged throughout the collaboration. Barriers included the negative effects associated with perceiving the collaboration and modified policy as a mandate, differential power dynamics and initial distrust between collaborating groups, a limited understanding of collaborating groups' policy and practice contexts, missing stakeholders, and a bottleneck in DCF's policy dissemination process. Facilitators included strong and dynamic collaboration leaders, the ability to enlist the help of experts, the support of senior officials, and having empirical research that was able to help facilitate buy-in from stakeholders.