CHILD SUPPORT AGENCY

Child Support Agency

Child Support Agency

Introduction

A large southeastern state agency decided it was time to replace a faltering legacy Title IV-D (Child Support) online transaction processing system. The agency wanted to re-engineer its core program business processes and realize its vision through a state-of-the-art child support system. The agency also wanted to implement technology that would allow for rapid implementation of changes resulting from federal and state regulations. It was anticipated that this initiative would reduce overall costs of maintenance and provide dramatic improvements in productivity by automating to a much greater degree its current manual processes. The department hired Deloitte Consulting LLP to help realize its vision.

The creation of the Child Support Agency (CSA) was first proposed in a 1990 White Paper, Children Come First, which also suggested the establishment of a formula-based system for the assessment of child maintenance. This represented a significant break with the past, for prior to this, matters of child support had been a matter of family law, and hence fallen under the jurisdiction of the courts. Their administration had thus been discretionary and characteristically variable. Under the 1990 proposals the calculation of child maintenance would in future be standardised and consistent, whilst the administration of the system-in other words, the assessment, collection and enforcement of child support-would be the responsibility of a bureaucratic arm of the Department for Social Security: the CSA.

Reform of the child support system must have seemed compelling to the Conservative government at the end of the 1980s. Lone parenthood accounted for one of the fastest growing areas of public expenditure. In 1980, there were 330,000 lone parents in receipt of Income Support (IS) and by 1989, the number totalled 770,000. Public expenditure was inevitably significant, given the heavy reliance of most lone parents on benefit. In 1989, 70 per cent of lone parents were in receipt of IS, and the cost of benefit had risen from £1.3 billion in 1981-2 to £4.3 billion in 1990-1. This image of lone parents as welfare dependent was further compounded by the apparent failure of the existing legal and administrative systems of child support. Maintenance orders could be made with consent and privately between couples, without recourse to a court, or alternatively orders could be obtained through magistrates' and county courts. The Department for Social Security (DSS) could also pursue a 'liable relative' for maintenance. In 1989, however, only 22 per cent of IS claimants were receiving maintenance, and only 30 per cent of lone parents in total. Rates of maintenance were also typically low, at around £18 per week for a single child(Henriques, 1967, 103).

Finding a means of reducing this apparent welfare dependency had obvious attractions for a government that was ideologically committed to shrinking the state. The White Paper's objective of ensuring that 'parents honour their responsibilities to their children whenever then can afford to do so' also struck a wider political and public chord. The 1980s had seen legal advances in the field of child welfare, with the 1989 Children ...