Posted on: Sunday, April 17, 2005
EDITORIAL
Child-support system needs an overhaul
A special report last week by Advertiser investigative reporter Jim Dooley is a chilling indictment of the state Child Support Enforcement Agency.
• CSEA has failed to collect more than a half-billion dollars in delinquent payments for parents and their children. • Its past performance has been so poor it has cost the state millions of dollars in federal payments. • The state continues to have problems delivering large amounts of delinquent child-support payments to families even though a 2002 court case ordered it to work harder to distribute more than $3 million in uncashed and returned checks. • A driver's license suspension program aimed at increasing child-support payments in Hawai'i hasn't lived up to expectations. • Audit after audit for more than 10 years has concluded the agency is badly managed and provides poor service to the children of Hawai'i. • Serious problems continue with the state's KEIKI computer system. • Getting through to a CSEA customer service representative on the telephone continues to be time-consuming. An unconscionable result of this history of failure is children have grown up and come of age while the parent raising them has had to struggle to make ends meet; other families have had to go on welfare.
The agency hasn't used all the enforcement tools at its disposal, does not deal well with the public and has been a drain on state coffers.
Problems of this magnitude must not be allowed to persist. And the CSEA, the Attorney General's Office and the state Legislature must all be held accountable.
Clearly heavy caseloads have taken a toll on the agency. According to Attorney General Mark Bennett, the average child support agency caseworker handles 520 cases — 70 percent higher than the national average.
The agency's caseload expanded 13 percent between 1999 and 2004, with no change in staffing. Bennett says the agency needs 90 more workers and has asked the Legislature for 30. Legislators have pared that request to 15.
Given the problems facing CSEA, that response from lawmakers is unacceptable. The Legislature has a responsibility to the state's children to give CSEA the necessary resources.
There is complicity in this failure, and our children are the ones who pay the price.
Audit after audit has provided a road map for improvements. It is time to set deadlines and mandate compliance.
And, finally, all of us — whether we have to deal with the CSEA or not — should ask why this state has such a dismal history of serving our children in this regard. Our inability to fix the child-support problem joins a litany of poor performance, including at the Hawai'i State Hospital, our prison system and school services for mentally and emotionally disabled students. Positive changes are long overdue.
