Tuesday, April 07, 2009
"DEADBEAT PARENTS" TARGETED IN SOUTH CAROLINA—REALLY THEY MEAN IT THIS TIME
On January 27, 2005, in an article titled Deadbeat parents targeted, Phillip Caston of The Post and Courier Staff wrote “South Carolina will spend $25 million on a computer database to record and track down deadbeat parents after being hit with more than $42 million in federal fines since 2001 for failing to implement such a system.” At the time, Larry McKeown, Director of the Child Support Enforcement Division at the state Department of Social Services, proclaimed that with the creation of the new system “"We at DSS will have a partnership with the 46 clerks of courts for enforcing child support payments…Rather than having to go to another county, they can access the information from anywhere…[the new system will improve communication between DSS and county clerks of court]…For example, if we find a person and input them into our system, Charleston County can quit looking for them…The system will allow us to monitor and remediate (sic) delinquent accounts more rapidly. Quicker response to a missed payment will accelerate efforts to get the non-custodial parent paying again."
On January 27, 2005, in an article titled Deadbeat parents targeted, Phillip Caston of The Post and Courier Staff wrote “South Carolina will spend $25 million on a computer database to record and track down deadbeat parents after being hit with more than $42 million in federal fines since 2001 for failing to implement such a system.” At the time, Larry McKeown, Director of the Child Support Enforcement Division at the state Department of Social Services, proclaimed that with the creation of the new system “"We at DSS will have a partnership with the 46 clerks of courts for enforcing child support payments…Rather than having to go to another county, they can access the information from anywhere…[the new system will improve communication between DSS and county clerks of court]…For example, if we find a person and input them into our system, Charleston County can quit looking for them…The system will allow us to monitor and remediate (sic) delinquent accounts more rapidly. Quicker response to a missed payment will accelerate efforts to get the non-custodial parent paying again."
At the time this article was published “South Carolina parents owe[d] more than $700 million in back child-support payments, with more than 70,000 people in the state dodging payments each year.” However, McKeown noted “One of the more effective ways of getting child-support payments is by withholding wages, a method that should work even more efficiently with the new system...With a statewide system DSS will enter the data and when it matches a case anywhere in the state, the automated system will generate a wage withholding notice to the employer the same day."
Four years have passed, South Carolina has been fined another $20 Million or so, and the total child support arrearages owed has almost doubled. And still the computer system has not been implemented. More important, the State of South Carolina has changed its Laws so that employers no longer have to file the New Hire Reporting Form. Therefore, when, and if, this computerized system is ever implemented, South Carolina will have an insufficient data base to effectively generate wage with-holding notices.
Labels: Child Support Collection, Computerized Child Support System, Institutional Mismanagement, Problems at DSS
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Sounds to me like DSS and the Family Court are in cahoots to make sure the folks that pay keep paying and paying and paying while the ones that don't get away with it. Not much different from rewarding the folks that don't pay their mortgages.
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