Tanguler Gray has served for more than 29 years in child support at the state level in Georgia, and, now, at the federal level as Commissioner of the Office of Support Child Services. As Commissioner, Gray envisioned “Engagement” through significant changes for the agency, not least of which was a shift in how the child support program is perceived by the families it serves. June 2023, Commissioner Gray announced that the US Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children and Families (ACF) that oversees the national child support program was renamed from the Office of Child Support Enforcement to the Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) to underscore the program’s commitment to serve and support whole families. Commissioner Gray is also a member of the current class of Ascend Fellows. We caught up with her to learn about how her leadership style has evolved, what she’s taking with her back to the office, and the big challenges OCSS faces next.
How did you get connected to the Ascend Fellowship in the first place?
I was nominated to this program by a colleague and have been so pleased to be accepted into this very, what I feel like is, a prestigious leadership program. I’m one of 20 fellows for the 2023-2024 class.
I get emotional about how much I’ve learned through the techniques, resources and curriculum that truly does escalate and lift up our existing leadership roles and responsibilities.
What kind of impact has your time as an Ascend Fellow had on your work?
In addition to the core curriculum they have developed for the fellows, Ascend has done a fabulous job of lifting up and elevating our leadership roles and responsibilities by exposing us to other leaders building political will, changing systems, and driving policy agendas needed for the prosperity and well-being of all children and families.
I work for the federal government, but the 19 other fellows are from nonprofits or private organizations helping families cross the economic divide and climb the economic ladder, advancing equitable health and housing solutions, and ensuring access to quality early care and education. All of my co-fellows are people with large leadership roles and responsibilities trying to address the needs of families, especially families with low incomes or at or just above the poverty level.
Something else that’s been really powerful for me is learning and applying different leadership styles. We’ll look at articles from famous authors and diverse thinkers and leaders across time, we learn the history, identify the leadership style, and then identify what we have learned from that particular text. It’s been really informative and enlightening taking what we’ve learned and applying it to our own leadership styles.
What are the big changes that you’re most proud of in your time as Commissioner of the Office of Child Support Services?
The first is that we changed the name of the office to the Office Child Support Services. On June 5, 2023, the Administration for Children and Families published a notice in the Federal Register to announce that the Office of Child Support Enforcement is now the Office of Child Support Services (OCSS). This name change reflects the program’s commitment to serve the whole family and provide services that promote family self-sufficiency so children receive reliable support from both parents.
Then we eliminated the non-federal share for our tribal child support communities. This rule responds to consistent feedback and recommendations from tribes about the hardships the non-federal share creates for tribes with existing child support programs and those considering a program. Eliminating the non-federal share requirement promotes equity and honors tribal sovereignty and the trust relationship between the federal government and Tribal Nations.
And we made modifications to state program performance standardsfor future public health emergencies. This rule allows the ACF Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) to provide temporary relief to states from certain child support program performance standards and penalties when states are affected by natural disasters and other calamities. State child support programs are required to achieve performance levels in parentage establishment, support order establishment, and current collections. Failure to meet these performance levels subjects a state to financial penalties. The need to offer relief to states from penalties during natural disasters and calamities became apparent during the COVID-19 pandemic.
What are the big challenges still ahead for Child Services?
When child support was founded, it was designed to serve heterosexual parenting couples based on Western interpretations of gender, sexuality, and family structure. We need to change with the times to stay relevant to our future populations. Here’s an example of what that means: We need to move away from gender-specific, to non-gender specific language in our legislation in order to continue to serve the evolving family structure. That’s going to require a lot of review and monitoring and changes in order for us to stay relevant to the needs of modern families.
We also need to transition our program from the enforcement perception to a whole-family strategy program. The child support program has done some strong enforcement actions that weren’t always in the best interest of the entire family in times past, and changing our image is going to be hard. But we’re going to do it not as an enforcement or collection program, but through partnerships with fatherhood organizations, researchers, universities, and nonprofits.
This is where Ascend comes in, actually. It can be so powerful in helping get the word out about changes we’ve made so far. But at the end of the day, being seen as an enforcement or collection program really limits our ability to support our families in a holistic way. The Office of Child Support Services is about supporting child support programs to adopt and implement holistic, family-centered policies and practices that build partnerships with parents instead of adversarial relationships.
