Glitches Delay Payments for Child Support

Glitches in a new statewide computer network are delaying child-support payments for more than 300 Ventura County parents, and stalling efforts to garnish wages from delinquent parents.

“We have experienced significant difficulties,” said Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gregory D. Totten. “We’re very concerned, especially during the holidays, that people have the money they need to put food on the table.”

Since converting to the so-called Statewide Automated Child Support System (or SACSS) on Nov. 1, the district attorney’s office has run up against a number of operational problems resulting in payment and collection delays, Totten said. Currently, about 350 parents are getting their child-support checks three to 10 days late.

The district attorney’s office has received numerous complaints about the late payments and has gone so far as to write letters to landlords and other creditors on behalf of child-support recipients.

“We are definitely struggling,” Totten said. “But we are making extraordinary efforts to distribute money to the children and families that depend on us.”

Totten said his office, which handles about 36,000 child-support cases with monthly payments totaling from $2.5 million to $3.5 million, has been able to distribute the vast majority of checks on time, despite technical problems. The county auditor is helping by cutting checks stalled in the computer system, he said.

Representatives for Lockheed Corp., which designed the new computer system, has been working overtime with county officials to fix the problems. He said the top priority is to ensure that parents receive their child-support payments as quickly as possible.

“The bottom line is we want our customers to have a Christmas,” Totten said. “We don’t care if our vendor doesn’t have a Christmas.”

Federal law requires all states to have an automated child-support computer system in place by Oct. 1, 1997. Ventura County’s Child Support Division began its conversion to the new system Nov. 1.

In a letter to the Board of Supervisors earlier this year, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury said the installation and testing of the system were “expected to take a minimum of five days.” Notices were sent to parents to alert them of possible delays.

“Please understand these delays are temporary, and conversion to the SACSS system is expected to substantially improve child-support services,” Bradbury wrote in his letter.

But in a Nov. 27 letter to officials at the state Department of Social Services, Bradbury expressed concerns about the continuing glitches his office was having.

“Now 3 1/2 weeks after beginning the conversion process, these unresolved problems have dramatically undermined our business practices and are preventing us from fulfilling many of our responsibilities to the children and families we serve.”

Bradbury could not be reached for comment Friday.

In addition to delayed child-support payments, the computer problems have resulted in accounting and reporting problems that have greatly increased workloads for clerical staff, caseworkers and attorneys in the Child Support Division, officials said.

So far about 20 counties in California have either converted to the new automated computer system or are in the process of doing so, said C. Stanley Trom, director of the child-support program.

Ventura and San Francisco counties, which are experiencing similar problems, are the largest in the state converting to the system, he said.

Trom and Totten said they expect a “gradual reduction” in payment delays as Lockheed and county officials continue to work out problems. But they said Lockheed has not given them a definite time when all the problems will be corrected.

“We are optimistic,” Totten said. “But it’s a huge system. It’s going to take some time.”