Not For Women Only
For Single Parents, Support Can Make a Difference
Not a day goes by that Mary Chambers doesn’t stare at the gaping bullet hole in the white-plastered wall of her bedroom.
It is a constant reminder of that night last May when shots rang out in front of the Washington, D.C., home she has shared with her daughter for the past nine years. One bullet from the shower of gunfire pierced the mesh-wired, bedroom window screen, barely missing Chambers’ head as she climbed into bed.
Her life — 35 years of it — flashed before her. It hadn’t been an easy one: working two jobs and raising her now 17-year-old daughter alone without much emotional and financial support from her child’s father.
And now this.
A bullet that almost killed her.
Chambers reflected on what she needed to do to get out of her neighborhood. As a clerical worker at the Child Enforcement Division under the city-run Office of the Corporation Counsel (OCC), Chambers realized she just might find the answers she needed from co-worker and shop steward Sabrina Brown.
Brown advised Chambers of various court procedures and how she could recoup the $10,000 — 15 years’ worth of back payment — owed by her child’s father.
“Every time I locate him, he quits his job,” she notes. “By resolving my case, hopefully I can move to a safer and better community.”
Chambers is not alone in what has been an elusive effort to collect much-needed child support. There are 13.7 million custodial parents in this country. A little over half (54 percent) have court-ordered awards and agreements for child support. Among those due support, about half receive the full amount, another 25 percent receive meager support and about 25 percent don’t receive a dime.
The failure of deadbeat parents — non-custodial parents who are able and mandated to pay child support, but who shirk their responsibilities — places an enormous emotional and financial burden on custodial parents. Without child support income (about $3,732 annually, on average), one in three custodial parents is poor.
Despite road blocks by non-paying parents, public officials and privateers, AFSCME child support enforcement workers — among 50,000 social workers — are paving the way to ensure that parents support their children.
Perseverance pays off. Nationwide, the AFSCME professionals — supervisors, technicians, counselors and crisis prevention caseworkers — track down deadbeat parents with the same intensity G-men hunt down the FBI’s “America’s Most Wanted.” They are getting their man (and, in some cases, woman) — millions of dollars are going to custodial parents to spend on food, shelter and medical expenses.
In Arizona, Glenn Vogt and other child support enforcement unit workers at the State Department of Economic Security — members of AFSCME Local 3185 (Council 97) — collected over $109.2 million — a 20 percent increase — in child support payments last year.
Innovative ways to collect. Some 2,000 miles away in Trumbull County, Ohio, AFSCME Local 3803 (Council 8) members like Marla Prevec Bluedorn collect millions of dollars in child support using creative avenues through a new state-wide computer system linked up with government and social services agencies and employers.
Bluedorn and her co-workers at the County Child Support Enforcement Agency (CSEA) help revoke drivers’ licenses, assist with intercepting Internal Revenue Service and state refund checks, issue bonds and liens, and submit orders for lump sum payments from profit sharing. Often they provide photographs for the state’s Web site targeting their “Most Wanted Deadbeat Parents.”
With these aggressive, in-your-face tactics, AFSCME members are in the trenches to ensure that deadbeat parents comply.
By Venida RaMar Marshall
