The Kids Are the Ones Who Pay Defects in child support collection system shouldn’t be tolerated

There is some good news about the drive to collect child support payments from deadbeat parents in Los Angeles County. For example, much of the rest of the state and the nation is struggling to meet an October federal deadline for having computer support payment tracking systems up and running. Los Angeles County’s system is already online.

But an audit released Thursday makes eminently clear that the county’s Bureau of Family Support Operations falls far short of acceptable performance. That’s doubly bad since even the best-run child support efforts around the nation manage to capture only a fraction of what is rightfully owed to custodial parents and their children.

The audit, performed by Price Waterhouse, found among other things that the organizational structure of the bureau was too diffuse and complicated to function properly. The bureau, run out of the county district attorney’s office, also lacks internal performance standards.

There is too little accountability, and parents seeking help confront an automated telephone system maze that would discourage the most stubborn telemarketer. Improved systems would benefit parents and free caseworkers to concentrate on families in need.

Those and other factors, the audit said, contribute to the fact that the bureau operates well below the unimpressive statewide average for recovering support payments, which also offset federal welfare expenditures for dependent children. Moreover, the district attorney’s office has achieved full compliance on just one of seven state performance benchmarks.

Price Waterhouse produced several recommendations for change. Those include establishing a better organizational structure and developing systematic follow-up on inquiries from custodial parents. The audit also urged the Board of Supervisors to jump-start the relatively inactive Family Support Advisory Board, which oversees the work of the child support enforcement unit and is appointed by the supervisors.

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti vowed to implement each of the audit’s recommendations but did so with a request for significant new hiring and funding. Here, county officials are correct in noting that Garcetti got 200 more employees two years ago and all of the job slots he requested in the current county budget.

Additional resources are warranted, but just how much depends on the county’s very tight finances and Garcetti’s ability to use his current work force much more efficiently.