Child Support

* “Deadbeat Parents Plan Expanded” (May 15) spotlighted an enormously successful program worthy of your readers’ attention. Our joint pilot effort with the Franchise Tax Board to collect delinquent child support has already resulted in more than $10 million of additional collections, benefiting both families and taxpayers in Los Angeles County. The success of the pilot points up the need to update collection remedies.

While I laud the attention your front-page article gives to this important social problem, I want to emphasize a point that is often lost in discussions of child support: Not every parent who pays support to the district attorney’s office is a “deadbeat.” Because our services are available at no cost to the public, many parents (mostly fathers) who pay child support through our system do so regularly and willingly. They love their children and want to do all that they can for them.

Further, it is painting with too broad a brush to describe all parents who are behind in their court orders as “deadbeats.” As our recently inaugurated “Parents’ Fair Share” project has demonstrated in other sites across the country, many parents who want to pay support lack employment or basic job skills to adequately take care of their children. We must find ways to promote and encourage economic responsibility on the part of parents. We can begin by accepting the proposition that name calling is not the best way to get parents to do the right thing.

GIL GARCETTI

District Attorney

Los Angeles County