Child Support

In response to “County’s Child Support Collections Lag,” March 25:

Your article fails to acknowledge the efforts of Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner over the last several years to join together with advocates and responsible critics of the system to fashion returns in the delivery of child support services to the public.

The article seriously understates the success the district attorney’s office has had in turning child support enforcement around in Los Angeles County. In fact, the district attorney’s office has increased the amount collected for children by 15% since last July. This follows a year when collections rose by 10%. The performance of the last two years is all the more remarkable given the recession and the high rate of unemployment in the county, which makes child support enforcement all the more difficult.

Your article ignores what may be one of the most important factors in the effort to bring change to the district attorney’s child support enforcement effort. In January, 1990, the district attorney established an advisory committee of citizens and child support advocates to make recommendations about policy and about ways to improve the day-to-day operations of the Bureau of Family Support Operations. The committee is co-chaired by attorney Gloria Allred and includes child advocates from Single Parents United n’ Kids (SPUNK), the Los Angeles County Child Support Task Force and Children NOW. The committee has made numerous recommendations which have been endorsed and implemented by the district attorney’s office, among them:

* The highly successful 1990 “Support Our Kids Amnesty,” which netted almost $900,000 in money for children.

* Last October’s child support forum, designed to bring the public together with child support experts and volunteers from the district attorney’s office to get help in solving child support problems.

* Simplification and elimination of bureaucratic paperwork.

WAYNE D. DOSS, Director

Bureau of Family Support Operations

Commerce