STATE OF ALABAMA
Press Office
|
December 15, 2004 Alabama Strengthens Child Support Enforcement MONTGOMERY - Improvements to Alabama s child support enforcement operations have resulted in a record-breaking year for child support collections, Governor Bob Riley announced today. "Alabama is doing the best job it has ever done to hold non-custodial parents accountable for providing financial support to their children," Governor Riley said. "Parents first obligation is to protect and care for their child. My administration has made it a top priority to ensure that parents ordered to pay child support live up to that important responsibility." More than $262 million in court-ordered child support payments were collected in Alabama during Fiscal Year 2004, the highest amount ever recorded. That figure is an increase of $6 million over Fiscal Year 2003 and an increase of $38 million since Fiscal Year 2001. This level of improved performance earned Alabama a $4 million federal bonus from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That federal money is being used to reduce the amount of state money needed to operate the program. Seventy percent of Alabama families that have child support cases received child support from non-custodial parents in Fiscal Year 2004. "Collecting child support makes it less likely that a family will have to go on welfare," noted Dr. Page Walley, Commissioner of the state Department of Human Resources. Among the improvements made to the system are enhanced efforts to establish paternity. Each year in Alabama, paternity is established for approximately 12,000 children. Alabama law also requires an order of support when paternity is established. As of September 30, 2004, paternity and support had been ordered for 145,217 of the 185,143 children served by the program. Other improvements include better training of child support staff at the Alabama Department of Human Resources DHR and the use of the internet to help parents retrieve a record of the child support paid by a non-custodial parent. |
|
|
|