Mary Quinn of Quincy says she received some child support payments for her daughter, Kayleigh, and son, Danny, after The Patriot Ledger’s deadbeat series, but it was not enough. She has to work two jobs to make ends meet.

Deadbeat trail slow, painful

Changes help, but child support enforcement
remains cumbersome, inefficient

For months, the state Department of Revenue has been hiring more workers, trimming the wait time on phone calls and assigning workers to particular cases to try to improve an admittedly flawed child support enforcement system.

Some parents say they are encouraged by the changes, yet many who turn to the state for help in collecting child support say the system is still egregiously slow and inefficient. And the bottom line is that they still are not getting their money.

A Patriot Ledger special report in September described an understaffed and overburdened child support enforcement program. Children in Massachusetts are owed $1.3 billion in support. Taxpayers spend $52 million each year going after deadbeats and another $304 million in welfare benefits to help support children whose parents don’t pay.

Fathers interviewed for the special report complained that the state overcharged them, miscalculated how much they owed or lost their money altogether.

Mothers, meanwhile, said they felt helpless dealing with a system that didn’t do enough to chase down the money owed to their children.

All the parents said trying to get through to the state on the phone was nearly impossible. They encountered constant busy signals, two-hour waits and always a different voice at the other end of the line.

The state has addressed some of those problems, partly as the result of a $900,000 review of the agency by a consulting firm, Policy Studies Inc. That study is expected to be complete in about a month.

Carrie Sylvester, 37, of Marshfield, who is trying to collect the $15,000 her ex-husband owes in child support for their two children, has noticed a change. Last year, it drove her crazy to call the state, and she was once on hold for an hour and 40 minutes.

More helpful

Virginia Daniels has been fighting 15 years for child support.

But more recently she was connected with a helpful worker who now continues to follow her case. The worker even gave Sylvester her direct number. Although Sylvester still hasn’t gotten any money from her ex, she feels encouraged.

“They actually return my calls,” she said, noting that the state represents her in court. “Even though I’m not getting any money, at least I feel like somebody is on my side.”

But other parents remain disgusted with the Department of Revenue, believing workers are not doing enough. Melissa Jones, 37, of Brockton calls the department once a week, but has not been assigned a caseworker and has been told repeatedly that there’s nothing they can do to find her ex-husband and make him pay.

“It’s the same runaround,” said Jones, whose ex-husband owes almost $24,000. “They’re not helping me.”

Indeed, despite the improvements, many say the department still has work to do.

Office caseloads remain at about the same level, although the department expects improvement when more staff is added and cases that don’t require services are closed.

The state is planning to add an additional 15 call center positions, but for now, the average wait time is 38 minutes for people who do not plug in personal identification numbers when they call the department. That may be an improvement over eight months ago, but many say the wait is still too long.

Although collections have increased over the past five years, there are still tens of thousands of deadbeats who aren’t paying. For example, of the 120,000 child support cases with court orders, 46,500 - more than a third - did not pay in March. And there are still about 22,000 deadbeats who owe their children at least $10,000 and have failed to make a payment in six months or longer.

Private agency faster

Lisa Cangeme, 29, of Whitman got tired of dealing with the Department of Revenue and receiving only sporadic child support payments since 1998. After state officials told her repeatedly that they couldn’t locate her ex-husband, she contacted a private agency. The agency found him in three days.

“I just gave them the same number at his mother’s house that I gave the Department of Revenue,” she said.

With the private agency, Cangeme has seen results. Her ex, who used to pay a small portion of what he owed every six months or less, is now paying monthly. But the private agency is taking a cut - 34 percent - of what it collects. Cangeme would rather deal with the state so all the money goes straight to her children. But even after the private agency found her ex, she said, the Department of Revenue has told her they can’t get through to him.

“(The private agency) has no trouble getting hold of him, whereas the Department of Revenue says they can’t find him,” she said. “I don’t understand that.”

The Patriot Ledger has encountered its own roadblocks in dealing with the Department of Revenue.

Spokesman Tim Connolly refused to talk to a reporter for this story, nor would he put the reporter in touch with anyone else in the department, saying the agency was not pleased with the way information was presented in the Ledger series last year. Connolly would answer the reporter’s questions only through e-mails, and it took a week to get answers to 12 questions.

Cautiously optimistic

State Rep. Stephen LeDuc, who said in September that the child support enforcement program was “grossly mismanaged” and in need of a major overhaul, met with department officials about two months ago. He said the agency has made some strides, but still has work to do.

“They are methodically implementing reforms,” said LeDuc, a Marlboro Democrat, who intends to hold a public hearing on the department’s efforts in June or early fall. “I’m cautiously optimistic that the general public will see some noticeable differences in collecting child support for children. But a lot of this stuff isn’t changing fast enough. We’re still talking about a state bureaucracy.”

State working on improvements

Some changes the state is making:

Contracted with a private company to track down hard-to-find deadbeats as well as missing custodial parents.

Using direct deposit accounts and debit cards to speed up payments.

Hired 58 staff this fiscal year. Looking to add 20 more by year-end to improve service.

Next year’s budget has proposal for $2 million increase for child support enforcement.

Launched single caseworker per client program rather than having clients to speak to different caseworkers every time they call.