OneVoice CSDA Newsletter,  September 2017

PI #6 – Percent of Current Support Paid by Percentage Band – Great Concept, Let’s Expand Our Thinking!

September 5, 2017 /
By Adam Perry, Child Support Program Manager, El Dorado County DCSS

I recently had the pleasure of presenting a tool at the CSDA Membership meeting in early July and then again during a webinar hosted by CSDA in late August. The tool was developed during my time as a Program Planner in Sacramento County and a Program Manager in El Dorado County to expand on the concept of PI #6 and provide a valuable tool to caseworkers to target cases that may need intervention.

The Practice Indicators (PI) was created to provide data on Local Child Support Agencies (LCSA) practices that affect the overall service provided to our customers. The Mission Statement for State DCSS is to promote parental responsibility to enhance the well-being of children by providing child support services to establish parentage and collect child support.  The PIs support the mission of State DCSS and let the LCSAs know how they are doing in the support of the mission and the service to the customers. The PIs are intended to support customer service outcomes for California families that require IV-D assistance.

Practice Indicator (PI) #6 – Percent of Current Support Paid by Percentage Band has been identified by many LCSAs as a valuable PI to closely monitor as it correlates directly with Federal Performance Measure (FPM) 3. Because PI #6 applies banding segments to only the year-to-date current support paid versus year-to-date current support owed, I identified an alternative way of applying the same banding segments to the monthly current support paid versus the monthly current support owed as well. This allows a caseworker to see more real-time changes in current support paid throughout the Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) and intervene more timely. This alternative method of gathering data also allows the LCSA to look at payment trends as well as conduct impact analysis.

Below is an example of why it is important to look at data in alternative ways.

Over the past year, the concept of banding was also applied to arrears distribution to help identify and target arrears cases that may need to have the arrears payback amount increased due to the length of time it will take the NCP to pay off the arrears at his current payment rate.

Caseworker Banding Tool – What is it?

The Caseworker Banding Tool is a tool that:

  • Expands on the concept of PI #6 to help identify current support cases that may need intervention
  • Applies the same framework to help identify arrears cases that may need intervention
  • Provides a tool for supervisors to measure impacts
  • Provides reports to identify trends in current support payments and arrears distribution
  • Provides data that allows LCSAs to be creative and target cases for specialized projects

Can the tool be shared?

Before the tool can be shared there are some things that we need to overcome.

  • Data Repository – Access to the data for all LCSAs
  • Excel Skills – Complex Template and Formulas
  • Large Counties = Large amounts of data!
  • Monthly Maintenance

 We are working on it with the help of the CSDA IT Committee and others.

  • Frank Shipley (Alameda) – Automation/Different platform?
  • Phil Kryder (Santa Barbara) – Making the data available for all LCSAs
  • Pedro Marenco (Sacramento) – Query assistance

Things are moving quickly and we are hoping to have the tool available to all LCSAs in November for the FFY 2017/2018.

If you are interested in looking at the webinar CLICK HERE (Members Only link)