New Monitors OKd for Child Support

Los Angeles County supervisors on Tuesday approved creation of an 11-member board to recommend ways to improve collection of child-support payments.

The Family Support Advisory Board is the outgrowth of a recent report showing that the district attorney’s office, with almost 300,000 active child-support cases, has one of the worst collection rates in the state.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay told supervisors that his office is installing a new computer system to help track parents who fail to make their payments.

The board accepted the recommendation of Susan Speir, founder of Single Parent United ‘n’ Kids, that the panel of seven private citizens and four county officials report to supervisors instead of just the district attorney. “The district attorney is the problem,” she said.

A report released by a coalition of women’s groups in February said that three out of four women who ask the district attorney’s office to obtain orders forcing fathers to pay child support never get one.