Computer Glitch Has Workers Worried : County: In letter to district attorney, employees say the system has delayed the processing of child-support checks, resulting in complaints and threats.

Workers in the Los Angeles County district attorney’s family support division say they are being bombarded with thousands of phone calls--and even threats--because of glitches in a new computer system that have delayed the processing of thousands of child-support checks.

The workers made their concerns known in a letter to Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti in which they appeal for better communications between administrators and staff and increased security measures.

“We hear the tears of frustration, the insults and the threats from an increasingly angry and confused public who want to know when we are going to get our act together,” said the unsigned April 25 letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Times.

“Workers are feeling unproductive, stressed out and even frightened of being harmed by some irate individual who has a bone to pick with the district attorney’s office over the handling of his or her case,” the letter continues. “We feel incompetent. We feel powerless.”

The letter was written by workers in the Family Support Division’s West Covina office, but staff in other offices say the sentiments are shared and supported by nearly everyone.

One family support worker in the Encino office said staff members have received numerous phone threats and feel especially vulnerable because of the bombing of government offices in Oklahoma City.

“We’ve had people call in and say, ‘We’re coming over to get you,’ ” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used. “It’s a lousy feeling and [district attorney’s officials] are not telling anybody what is going on.”

Garcetti could not be reached for comment. Wayne Doss, director of the Family Support Bureau, said officials are aware of staff frustrations and insecurity, and are attempting to address the problems.

“Because of the sometimes volatile nature of domestic relations, problems that crop up tend to be more emotional,” Doss said. “I think concern among employees has been exaggerated as a result of Oklahoma City.”

Doss said the district attorney is assessing security needs at every family support office and is adding key-punch door locks to some offices and surveillance cameras in others.

He said the department is working quickly to fix the computer problems that have caused agitation among staff and the public.

The $55-million computer system began operating in February but has been plagued with problems almost from the outset, when a programming error delayed distribution of about 18,000 checks for several weeks before the problem was discovered and fixed.

There have been continuing problems, the most serious of which has been the inability of the system to link up properly with another computer in the county’s Department of Public Social Services. The system’s problems appear to have been exacerbated by the entry of outdated information on the welfare status of some clients.

The result has been the incorrect routing of nearly 3,000 cases to the welfare office, where they have been held in limbo for days or weeks while matters were sorted out, delaying the disbursement of checks.

In an almost equal number of cases, child support checks that should have been routed to the welfare office instead have been sent directly to welfare clients. As a result, these clients have received more than they were owed.

Teresa Torres, a 37-year-old Baldwin Park mother, had not been on welfare since September, 1994, and had been receiving support checks for her 9-year-old son directly until the new computer system began routing her checks to the welfare office. Since January, she has received only one check.

Were it not for help from her mother, she might have had to live on the street, Torres said.

“I have had no food in the house for my son and have been thinking of going on welfare, but I don’t want to do that,” said Torres, who is attending school and wants to be a nurse. “They say there is nothing they can do and that they may be able to get this fixed in four to six weeks. But if the check is somewhere out there in computerland, they should be able to do something.”

Sandra Semtner, chief of finance for the Department of Public Social Services, said she has staff working full time with the district attorney’s office to try to sort things out.

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Doss said his office is now able to update the welfare database daily. But he conceded that it probably will take months before all of the problems are resolved.

The continuing mishaps and angry public outcry have prompted Supervisor Mike Antonovich to call a public hearing July 17 to which Garcetti has been invited.

Antonovich deputy Lori Howard said the offices of all five supervisors have been deluged with calls from custodial parents who have not gotten checks and non-custodial parents who contend that they are being tapped for child support payments that they do not owe.

Despite the problems, officials in the district attorney’s office say that the overall performance of the computer has been good. They say that the state-of-the-art system is producing dramatic improvements in child support enforcement.

In a press release last week, Garcetti said that about 75,000 absentee parents were located in the past month, compared to 25,000 in all of last year.

In addition, the numbers of court-ordered support payments jumped from 1,795 in March to 3,261 in April. The district attorney’s Bureau of Family Support is projecting the establishment of 24,000 paternities by the end of the 1994-95 fiscal year, compared to 17,407 in the last fiscal year.

Nonetheless, advocates point out that even with improved numbers in some areas, the county still lags far behind the rest of the state in collecting child support.

In the 1993-94 fiscal year, the latest for which statewide statistics have been compiled, Los Angeles County located 6.9% of the absentee parents, a 43% increase over the previous year. But even with the improvement, the county ranks second-lowest in the state, according to the state Office of Child Support. The statewide average is 33%.

Los Angeles County’s overall collection of child support in non-welfare cases improved to $498 per case from $450 per case. But the Los Angeles numbers are substantially below the statewide average of $602.

Still, Doss noted that the district attorney’s family support program had recently passed a state performance review--for the first time--which means the county will recover an estimated $2 million to $3 million more in incentive revenues from the state.