While many non-caring parents (NCPs) play an active role in their children’s lives, the sad truth is that many don’t. An absent or missing NCP can not only be uninvolved, but also seriously burden the families who depend on their support. Finding these parents is often critical to the health and well-being of children and families faced with utility bills, educational costs, or health needs.

In practice, finding NCPs often proves to be as challenging as it is important. While Indiana may not be the physically largest state in the country, Indiana is the 17th most populous state in the union with 6.76 million people. Quite simply, Indiana has a ton of people to serve and there is no shortage of opportunities to hide among the crowd.

Faced with this challenge, the Indiana Child Support Bureau (CSB) is taking an unqualified approach to finding NCPs. The department has always reached out to whatever information it could legally use to find and contact those parents who did not support their children in accordance with legal requirements. Results are not always easy to achieve, however, and the road to success is often a maze of dead ends and frustrations.

“We want better overall data”

At the beginning of 2020, CSB faced an additional challenge. A tool the department relied on to find arrest and detention data has been discontinued. Given the loss of that data source (and internal concerns about the quality of their other information), the department looked for a new solution.

At the beginning of their conversations with Thomson Reuters, CSB said they wanted confidence in the data that would allow them to make a good judgment about where and how resources should be used. Given what is at stake for the children CSB serves, the importance of reliable data is obvious.

This is not a revolutionary idea. Trustworthy data is paramount for any government agency tasked with finding people. These days, the digital paper path can be big and confusing for anyone. To be useful, all of this data must be valid, current, and decipherable. In a word, trustworthy.

A clear difference

The decision to switch providers for a nationwide organization is not always an easy one – even if a product abandonment forces that change. When Indiana CSB was looking for a replacement for the Public Records Toolkit, Thomson Reuters® CLEAR found a place at the table. Of course, there were the necessary requirements for trusted data, but ease of use, training, and deployment considerations also had to be considered. Remember, the time spent learning a new system did not serve the children who rely on CSB for support.

To address the trust problem, Thomson ran Reuters with transparency. When information needs to be accurate, understanding its source makes all the difference. CLEAR users can trust individual items such as addresses because the results contain the currency and source of the information. This background knowledge, the data behind the data, enabled the CSB team members to take their next step: Look elsewhere, delve into this data set or go ahead with confidence.

Fewer steps and more confidence

Clean data is one component of trust, but another element reduces confusion. Before CLEAR was implemented, CSB and District Attorney users often had to switch from one application to another to view a person’s entire story. This action is more than a hassle, it is a flaw in the process. Consider the possibility that an address record in one system may use different data than an arrest record in another system. The risk of losing the thread on your topic increases with every new application or new data stream.

In contrast, CLEAR places more of the information that CSB and District Attorney users need into a single user experience. For example, by recording arrest records in real time, childcare team members could not switch sources and double-check that the same person was being displayed in both systems. The data was trustworthy again and the simple friction of too many tools was reduced.

A user-centric experience

When looking for people who may not want to be found, the volume of data is only as good as the ease of use. Again, this was an opportunity for CLEAR to shine. The tool’s reports are not an overwhelming data dump, but use an organized, easy-to-read format. These simple things – like placing the person’s address at the top of the page by default – go a long way toward making the tool efficient, and the efficiency of the user.

To keep this promise, Thomson Reuters offered CSB and prosecutors a range of onboarding training courses. In the first month, the CLEAR team conducted 26 training courses for CSB employees, with a focus on the practical application of the tool. Employees learned how to do a reverse address lookup, how to use live data from within CLEAR to build trust, and how to use social media to find NCPs who might otherwise claim to be out of touch or their families to be able to support.

The new CLEAR users even learned how to customize their own report templates to prioritize the information they find most useful and to remove the “needle in the haystack” work of previous public records tools. These workouts are just the beginning. Thomson Reuters’ continued support and a more affiliate than seller attitude means the Indiana Child Support Bureau team and the children who rely on them are in good hands.

Visit our website and request a demo to see how Thomson Reuters CLEAR can help your business move forward quickly and with greater confidence: tr.com/clear