Private sector critical for success of welfare reform

AUSTIN, Texas (August 27, 1998) -- A new report by the United States General Accounting Office (GAO) indicates private sector resources will be critical for the success of welfare reform, said Casey Hoffman, attorney and president of Supportkids, the nation’s largest private child support enforcement agency.

“For welfare reform to work, the child support check has to replace the welfare check in this country,” Hoffman said. “If it doesn’t, there will be millions of children and families who will have no financial support of any kind.”

According to the GAO report, many families whose welfare benefits will expire as a result of time limits will not be able to depend on child support to supplement their income. In the states studied, one-third of the welfare recipients did not receive any child support when they reached the cutoff for benefits. Even in the two-thirds of cases where child support was received, the recipients did not collect the full amount due.

The GAO report states that even though welfare reform legislation provides new and strengthened child support enforcement tools, such as access to information from new hire and state wage reports and financial data matching for locating noncustodial parents and their assets, the government’s child support programs do not have the resources to implement these valuable tools.

In order for states to be able to collect child support before welfare benefits expire, the report finds that significant improvement in locating the noncustodial parent must take place. The GAO report urges states to commit additional resources to the child support program so that new enforcement tools are effectively utilized.

“Congress and states need to involve private attorneys in the effort to collect unpaid child support,” Hoffman said. “They need access to enforcement processes so that they may help supplement efforts of overworked, resource-starved government child support agencies. Furthermore, the enforcement tools which Congress has legislated for more effective child support enforcement, are to benefit all the children, not just those children who are in the government’s caseload.”

Prior to founding Supportkids in 1991, Casey Hoffman was special assistant to the Texas attorney general and served as chief of the state’s Child Support Enforcement Program from 1985 to 1990. Mr. Hoffman practiced family law in Massachusetts for 18 years and is a member of both the Texas and Massachusetts bar associations. He is a frequent writer and lecturer on the subject of child support enforcement.

Supportkids is the nation’s largest private child support enforcement company working on behalf of custodial parents. With clients in all 50 states, the company receives more than 20,000 inquiries a month from custodial parents seeking help in collecting child support.

While Casey Hoffman is also president of the largest national nonprofit organization of public and private child support enforcement professionals in the country, he is not representing that organization here today nor presenting its viewpoint on any issue.

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