Paula Roberts, Esq.

Paula Roberts is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP). Her current work focuses on policies for establishing and disestablishing paternity, improving medical child support, child support guidelines and their impact on low-income and incarcerated obligors, and the intersection of welfare and child support policies with initiatives to promote marriage in the low-income community.

Ms. Roberts began her career in private practice in Newark, New Jersey, and then moved to the Law Reform Unit of Essex-Newark Legal Services where she focused on housing and child care issues. After moving to Washington in 1976, she worked for several years at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) where she litigated child nutrition issues and headed FRAC's efforts around welfare reform. After a two-year stint at the Legal Services Corporation's Research Institute, she joined the CLASP staff in 1982 as a senior staff attorney. At CLASP, Ms. Roberts has worked on welfare reform, block grant, minimum wage, and child care concerns. However, her primary focus is on child support enforcement as an anti-poverty strategy. She is the author of more than 10 books and 40 law review articles on various aspects of paternity establishment and child support policy from the perspective of low income parents. She has served as an advisor to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) in developing the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act (UIFSA) and the Uniform Parentage Act (UPA 2002). Roberts was also a member of the Congressionally-mandated Medical Child Support Working Group and the Medical Child Support Indicator Working Group.

For her work on behalf of low income children, she has received the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement’s (OCSE) Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Child Support Enforcement Association’s (NCSEA) Community Service Award, and two Golden Heart Awards from the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support (ACES). She has also been honored by the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of Chicago and the Eastern Regional Child Support Enforcement Association (ERICSA).

She is a graduate of Smith College and Fordham University Law School, which awarded her the Louis J. Lefkowitz Public Service Alumna Award in 1997.

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Last updated January 9, 2006