About Our Programs

Child support enforcement is a complex process. Some steps are the responsibility of other agencies, and many that are our responsibility require the cooperation of external partners. The federal government, Florida’s courts, local law enforcement, financial institutions, Florida employers, and a host of state agencies all play a part in the successful collection and enforcement of child support on behalf of Florida’s children.

Child support enforcement is a federally funded program that has been administered by the Florida Department of Revenue since 1994. With offices organized into five regions around the state, services are provided by Department staff in all but two Florida counties. In Miami-Dade County, child support services are provided by the State Attorney’s Office; in Manatee County, they are provided by the Manatee County Clerk of Court. Legal services for child support enforcement are provided by both private legal entities and public organizations such as the Office of the Attorney General.

All of the many partners involved in child support enforcement pursue a common goal on behalf of Florida’s children - to get more money to more children, more quickly. Focusing on this goal and working as a team, we have collected over a billion dollars in each of the last three years.

Statewide improvements in Child Support Enforcement

The Child Support Enforcement Program is pursuing many initiatives to significantly increase the amount of support collected for Florida’s children. During the past year, we introduced two major statewide initiatives that are dramatically changing the way child support is enforced:

• We successfully implemented a new law that created a simplified administrative process to establish paternity based on genetic testing.
• The Child Support Enforcement Automated Management System (CAMS) was deployed in April 2006. Many case-processing activities are now automated, increasing efficiency. These two initiatives have a powerful impact on our ability to provide quality customer service and accurate, timely information.

One region’s innovations spark more statewide improvements

While some initiatives begin in Tallahassee with a new law or a management plan, others begin as innovations in local offices. In addition to implementing statewide initiatives to improve the performance of the whole program, each regional office seeks to improve its performance and measure its success. Working together to improve results helps region employees see the significance of their contributions and encourages them to share their expertise. By comparing results among regions, Revenue can select the best new practices to put into action throughout the state.

The story of the Tampa region’s achievements over the past year illustrates how this works. Last year, Tampa achieved the greatest improvement in the percentage of cases with support orders in place. This significant measure of effectiveness increased by 4.1 percent as a combined result of several strategies developed by employees:

• Data-mining techniques for identifying cases for follow-up action and a systematic process to take action.
• Better interaction with parents through an in-depth interview process.
• Enhanced collaboration with local partners through regular meetings and problem-solving for complex cases.
• More efficient judicial methods for support order establishment from the initial referral to the legal service provider to the timely receipt of a court order.

Now that the Tampa region has demonstrated the effectiveness of these methods, other regions can adopt them with confidence that they, too, can improve their results.

Collaborating across programs to improve phone service

Best practices are shared not only throughout child support but also among all programs in Revenue. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the team formed to address the answer rate in the child support call center. This team of agency employees researched all the issues of a modern call center - from technology solutions to learning from the experience of the General Tax Administration’s call center.

Call center employees suggested improvements to their own processes and brainstormed countless ways to provide better service. They rewrote and enhanced publications, web site information, and verbal exchanges.

As a result, the call answer rate improved dramatically - more than 90 percent of calls are now answered within 20 seconds. Call center employees can be proud of an answer rate well above the industry standard. They improved the experience for countless customers.

What we do

We serve families by helping children receive the support they deserve from both parents. Our main responsibilities are to locate parents, establish paternity for children born out of wedlock, establish child support orders to include both financial and medical support, enforce support orders, and disburse child support payments.

Child support services are available to any parent in Florida. Parents of children who receive public assistance from the Department of Children and Families are automatically referred to the Child Support Enforcement Program for child support services.

Teaming up with the Attorney General’s Office

In several areas of the state, the Department of Revenue and the Office of the Attorney General are partners in providing child support. The Attorney General’s office provides legal services for judicial actions in establishing, modifying, and enforcing child support orders. In early 2005, managers and employees of both agencies embarked on an unprecedented collaboration. Then-Attorney General Charlie Crist and Department of Revenue Executive Director Jim Zingale kicked off a year-long improvement initiative for child support enforcement in the Tampa region.

When the initiative started, the workflow processes for management of child support legal services were cumbersome, backlogs existed in many areas, staffing shortages negatively impacted the ability to handle the backlogs along with new work coming in the door, and communication between the offices needed improvement.

Focus on improvement

Four teams were formed to focus on the improvement efforts:

Workflow Design and Performance Management: This team analyzed and recommended improvements to the legal services workflow, from referral generation to order processing.

Partnership Management: This team’s goal was improving interactions between Revenue and the Attorney General’s office as well as other partners in the legal services area including judges, court administrators, hearing officers, clerks of court, and sheriffs.

Contract Performance and Resource Management: Another team analyzed and recommended improvements to the process for monitoring and communicating legal service provider performance, as well as obtaining and efficiently allocating resources.

Technology Management: This team reconciled the legal service data of three systems, eliminated duplicative data entry where possible, and redesigned the existing system to provide a more simplified workflow while producing performance management reports.

Encouraged by the results of these teams, the two agencies continued making improvements through 2006. Redesigned workflows eliminated steps that did not add value and simplified the "referral to receipt of order" process. For example, changes to the intake process reduced the average number of days from receipt of a referral to filing with the Clerk of the Court. Legal services performance in this key area improved from an average of 40 percent in March 2005 to 97 percent in January 2006, with sustained performance since that time. Continual focus on process improvement has increased performance in other key areas as well.

Communication between both agencies - as well as with other partners - has been greatly enhanced by the completion of a more effective meeting and information-sharing process. The closer collaboration has generated operational breakthroughs as well. For example, a courtroom management pilot in Hillsborough County has simplified the court hearing process. As a result, we have increased the number of cases on the schedule, decreased the number of cases delayed through continuances, and increased the number of child support orders established.