By Dan Klepal
The Cincinnati Enquirer

An Ohio computer system supposed to make it easier to track deadbeat parents who do not pay child support is turning out to be a deadbeat to many.

Thousands of parents in Hamilton County — and even more across the state — are not receiving their child support checks on time because of computer problems at the Ohio Department of Human Services, which is supposed to collect and distribute those payments statewide.

In many cases, child support checks are arriving more than six weeks late.

Mindy Good, a spokeswoman for the Hamilton County Department of Human Services, said her office has received about 5,000 complaints a week on the issue for the past six weeks. And the county is not in a position to do anything about it, she said.

Ms. Good said her department has assigned 15 caseworkers to handle complaints. Before the county changed to the state-administered system, five caseworkers were able to do the job.

“All we do is act as a go-between,” Ms. Good said. “We have people calling and literally screaming at us because their payment is stuck somewhere in the system. Then they're doubly outraged when we can't help them.”

Don Thomas, director of the Hamilton County Deparment of Human Services, said the state took away the county's authority to administer child support but left the responsibility.

In the past, “If a check was sent to the wrong person, we would cut them a new check immediately and work it out later,” Mr. Thomas said. “The state isn't willing to do that.”

The state took over child support processing from Hamilton County in October, when the county put most of its cases into a new statewide computer system called Support Enforcement Tracking System (SETS). Each state in the country is required by the federal government to move to a centralized system as part of welfare reform.

The idea is that a centralized system will make it easier to find an Ohio parent who owes child support if they are working on a construction job in, say, Florida.

But the system isn't working properly. State DHS officials initially balmed individual counties for not knowing the computer system well enough. Now, they say, the problem is with the system itself.

There are some situations where the state is late in processing the payments, or state computers do not have enough information to properly cut and mail the check to the parent.

“It is not the department's intention to embarrass, or lay unnecessary blame, at the doors of the county agencies,” Jacqui Romer Sensky, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, said in a recent e-mail to counties. “We accept responsibility for the issues within our control that affect your ability to serve families. We are committed to correcting those issues.”

At the same time, the state is working with Bank One, adminis trator of Child Support Payment Central, to correct issues for which the bank has responsibility, Ms. Romer Sensky said. The bank has a $125 million, five-year contract with the state to handle child support payments.

Diana Redman, a state official managing the system, said Tuesday that she and Bank One officials have had “very candid conversations” about the problems.

For the week ending Dec. 4, the system logged 6,800 payments it could not process because of incorrect or incomplete information, Ms. Redman said. The same week, the state processed 239,231 payments without a problem.

In the past, counties often knew enough about their own child-support cases to provide information left off forms in order to process payments. Now, the centralized system needs all that information before the check is cut. The sheer size of the new system is causing backlogs.

And when a check is not mailed on time, an automatic letter is sent to the noncustodial parent saying the parent is late.

“These people are angry because they're not getting their checks on time, or they've paid and they get a letter saying they haven't paid,” Ms. Good said.

There are 78,000 child support cases in Hamilton County, but Ms. Good said about one in five county residents is touched by the system — either paying or receiving child support.

The state has 850,000 child support payment cases and collected $1.7 billion last year, said ODHS spokesman John Allen.

“This is a big program, and it's undergone dramatic change in the last two months, and we are working to address the concerns that the counties have,” he said.

The Cincinnati Enquirer

-- Anonymous, January 03, 2001

Answers

Support checks delayed

State takes blame for computer problems that are plaguing child-support payments

COLUMBUS: Some Ohio counties are fielding hundreds of complaints daily from parents furious about delays in their child-support checks, and the state and Bank One are responsible for the problems linked to a new computerized collection system, an official said.

``It is not the department's intention to embarrass, or lay unnecessary blame, at the doors of the county agencies,'' Jacqui Romer Sensky, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, said in e-mail to counties. ``We accept responsibility for the issues within our control that affect your ability to serve families. We are committed to correcting those issues.''

At the same time, the state is working with Bank One, administrator of Child Support Payment Central, to correct issues for which the bank has responsibility, Romer Sensky said. The bank has a $125 million, five-year contract with the state to handle child support payments.

Diana Redman, a state official managing the system, said yesterday she and Bank One officials have had ``very candid conversations'' about the problems.

``They know I would not like to be in this situation now, and I'd like to see ongoing and significant improvement by the end of this month and continuing through February and March,'' she said.

For the week ending Dec. 4, the system logged 6,800 payments it couldn't process because of incorrect or incomplete information, Redman said. The same week, the state processed 239,231 payments without a problem, she said.

Stan Lata, a Bank One spokesman in Chicago, said the bank official familiar with the system was unavailable for comment.

In the past, counties often knew enough about their own child-support cases to provide information left off forms in order to process payments, said Jon Allen, a Job and Family Services spokesman.

Now, the centralized system needs all that information before processing payment, he said. The state is working with counties and employers to make sure forms are complete.

``The state has 850,000 child-support payment cases and total collections for child support were $1.7 billion in fiscal 2000,'' Allen said. ``This is a big program, and it's undergone dramatic change in the last two months, and we are working to address the concerns that the counties have.''

The state switched to the new system in October to comply with the 1996 federal welfare reform law. It required states to set up a statewide bank account for collecting and disbursing child-support payments.

Since then, counties around the state have fielded thousands of angry calls from parents whose checks, once regular as clockwork, were delayed, lost or sent to the wrong person.

Franklin County has been averaging 350 calls a day from upset parents, said Joseph Pilat, director of the county Child Support Enforcement Agency.

``We all knew this wasn't going to be easy,'' Pilat said. ``We've been on now three months, and some things are not being corrected as quickly as we think they should be. If you're on the other end waiting for a check, it's pretty tough.''

Hamilton County is fielding between 4,000 and 5,000 calls a week, said Mindy Good, spokeswoman for the county Department of Human Services.

Jody Rule is a 31-year-old mother of four in Wooster who's fed up with the problems. For several years, her former husband's $164 check arrived every Wednesday.

``This past week, it was Saturday, some weeks it will be the next Monday,'' Rule said.

``Our county office had a very good system for disbursement, one of the best,'' she said. ``This system does not work.''

The Beacon Journal

-- Anonymous, January 03, 2001