MAHONING COUNTY State review affirms need to improve CSEA

The county could collect nearly $500,000 a month more in child support with better case management.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning County officials say they got nothing new from a state review of the county's child support enforcement agency, but it still will be helpful.
"There was nothing in that report that I didn't already know," said Dee Crawford, executive director of the Department of Job and Family Services.
What they got was affirmation that the agency needs change, something Crawford and county commissioners said they've been trying to accomplish for three years.
Ohio Auditor Jim Petro released a 154-page report Tuesday, detailing the findings and recommendations developed by his staff after a yearlong performance audit of the CSEA. The audit cost $60,000 and was requested in July 2001 by Crawford, commissioners and county Administrator Gary Kubic.
"We asked for this audit because we wanted to improve ourselves for the sole purpose of getting more money for children," Kubic said.
Recommendations
The report offers 58 recommendations for the agency to improve its efficiency and ensure quality customer service.
Chief among them was improving case management operations and achieving performance levels of child support enforcement agencies in counties of similar size and situation.
For purposes of the audit, Mahoning's CSEA was compared with agencies in Lorain, Montgomery and Tuscarawas counties.
The report indicated that of the four counties, Mahoning has the lowest number of child support cases being enforced. As a result, it collects a much lower amount of support payments per case.
Support payments could be increased by switching to a generalized case management system in which case workers are responsible for all aspects of a case, instead of shifting cases among workers based on specialized functions.
Such a move would also improve customer relations, because clients would then have a single contact at the agency for their case.
If the agency implements those and other changes, such as more aggressively pursuing court-ordered support payments, it could bring in an additional $458,000 a month in child support payments, the report says.
But Crawford disagreed, noting that many children who are owed support come from families who live in or near poverty.
"When you're looking at the median income in Youngstown being about $17,000, there's not a whole lot of money you're going to get, even with a court order," she said.
Seeking improvement
Still, she and others within the agency intend to use the report as a building block for improvement.
The report also recommends that the agency not fill more than 15 vacancies, creating an annual "cost avoidance" of about $548,000 in salaries and benefits.
Kubic and Commissioner Vicki Allen Sherlock said the county has been cutting staff at the agency for the past three years, mostly through attrition. It has saved about $1 million over three years, Sherlock said.
Still, commissioners have had to pump general fund money into the agency each of those years to keep it above water. They hope the recommendations in the report will help eliminate the need for that subsidy.
The audit also strongly recommends that the agency improve its customer service operations and appoint someone to oversee the agency on a full-time basis.
The CSEA is under the umbrella of Job and Family Services, of which Crawford is executive director and Sara Scudier is assistant director. They are also responsible for overseeing the county human services department.
No director
Mahoning County has not had a full-time CSEA director for some two years, when it was merged into Job and Family Services.
Kim Norris, spokeswoman for Petro, said the county is not required to implement any of the changes recommended in the report.
She said the agency has shown signs of improvement recently, and noted that Petro's report includes five commendations for positive steps, such as using staff attorneys instead of sending cases to the prosecutor's office and having an internal auditor perform staffing analysis.
bjackson@vindy.com