By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau
For three years, Sami Kaneshiro has tried to pressure the state Child Support Enforcement Agency to chase down payments for her 7-year-old grandson.
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| State child support enforcement officials say handling public inquiries keeps caseworkers from their primary job: making sure support payments reach children.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser |
In a story familiar to many Hawai‘i parents, she wrote letters to the agency. She called. She visited the child support office time and again.
In frustration, she finally peppered public officials with e-mail messages, sending long complaint letters to members of Congress, the Honolulu City Council and even then-President Clinton.
Eventually, the former head of the child support agency called Kaneshiro to try to fix the problem. But child support officials said they need to develop a new and better system for fielding public inquiries and grievances.
For the second time in two years, the agency is asking lawmakers for $900,000 to hire 25 new employees to create a new "customer service" answer telephones, look up records and field complaints from the public.
Last year, lawmakers shelved a similar proposal for a customer service unit, but the situation is becoming more urgent.
The Child Support Enforcement Agency collects support money from absent parents and forwards it to custodial parents and guardians. It has about 105,000 active cases and averages three adults and children per case, which means about 315,000 people are involved with the agency.
The agency receives an average of 34,000 telephone calls a month, including more than 12,000 from people who indicate they want to talk with an agency representative. But only about 1,600 of those callers actually reach caseworkers.
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| Arnold Enoki said inquiries take caseworkers off cases. |
Each agency caseworker handles about 680 cases at a time, but caseworkers and investigators are being pulled off of their regular duties to field inquiries from the public, said Arnold Enoki, administrator of the agency.
That causes the staff to fall behind on its work, which then generates more calls from the public, he said.
The federal government will pay almost $600,000 of the cost of the new staff, so the new unit would bring more federal dollars into the state, said Attorney General Earl Anzai.
More importantly, federal law requires that when the state received a child support payment, it must process it and send it to custodial parents within two working days, Anzai said. The state already is being sued by parents who claim child support hasn’t processed payments quickly enough.
"That’s why this is important," Anzai said. "We cannot drop our main work and do customer service because we’ve got this kind of a gun at our head."
This week, the Senate Ways and Means Committee approved Senate Bill 131 to provide the money, but legislators aren’t yet sure how much money they will be able to spare for the project.
Kaneshiro, meanwhile, isn’t satisfied with the state’s handling of her grandson’s case, and said she doubts that giving more to the agency will help.
She said she believes her daughter’s ex-boyfriend is working cash jobs to hide his income, and said the state isn’t doing anything about it. To date, her grandson’s father owes $10,773 in overdue support, she said.
"They’ve got to show their worth as far as I’m concerned," she said of child support officials. "Why give them more money if they’re not demonstrating their worth?"
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