Professional Knowledge of Child Support Staff: Evidence From the New Jersey Child Support Training Program

Child support enforcement (CSE) has experienced dramatic changes in the last decade; however, it is not clear whether child support staff is fully aware of the development. Using data from the New Jersey child support training program (n = 530), this article aims to evaluate the professional knowledge of child support staff. The results show that participants answered 55% of the questions on CSE correctly in the pretraining assessment. After the training, the participants answered 77% of all questions correctly. The findings reveal an urgent need for training for child support staff in a rapidly changing profession.