Bugs Found In Child-Support Program Lack Of Training On New System Means Money Wasted, Audit Shows

A complicated new computerized case management system has helped uncover a number of problems with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s child-support payment program.

But legislative auditors found the program generally does a good job of getting about $60 million a year in child-support payments to more than 73,000 Idaho families. They said many of the problems they identified are caused by a lack of employee training or familiarity with the computer system.

The Idaho Child Support Enforcement System, among the first of its kind in the nation, “has features that allow the department to better serve clients. Many of these features, however, are not fully understood by support officers and others,” the audit report released Monday said.

“The department’s focus has been to develop and install this system, while employee training and monitoring by management has not been fully addressed.”

Health and Welfare said a private company completed a comprehensive reference manual on July 31 for child-support workers. Experts on the system also have been assigned to each child-support office around the state.

Among the problems found by legislative auditors in a sampling of 70 open cases:

Workers were still trying to locate non-custodial parents in cases that should have been closed. As a result, “resources are wasted pursuing these cases while other cases go unserved.”

Workers were pursuing a man suspected of not paying child support even though he already had been determined not to be the father, while in three other cases paternity should have been pursued but was not.

Letters were sent warning parents their licenses would be suspended for not paying child support when they already had signed wage-withholding agreements. “This type of action tends to aggravate clients and increase costs,” the auditors wrote.

Apparent coding errors in the accounting system resulted in ledgers indicating much more money had been distributed or deposited to clients’ accounts than had been collected.

Rebates totaling $3.4 million received from producers of baby formula, based on the amount of formula purchased by the state’s Women, Infants and Children program, were not deposited as soon as they should have been. About $260,000 received each month was not deposited for up to 22 days after it arrived. Health and Welfare said the deposits now are made by electronic funds transfer.

The agency also plans to transfer about $600,000 to child-support services from savings it has realized as a result of welfare reform. The transfer will allow the hiring of additional staff to help reduce caseloads from up to 900 families per worker to about 750 families per worker.