“I’ve been here 27 years and the development of the agency, you know it takes a villages to raise a child, but it takes a community to run an effective CSEA,” Gray said. “We have dedicated staff, they’re committed.”
The agency collects in the neighborhood of $4 million to $5 million each month in unpaid child support. Last year they pulled in $55.6 million and their business analyst Dusty Dunaway said they are on pace to collect almost $500,000 more this year. Before the agency lost a third of it’s funding and staff due to state and federal budget cuts, Pater had 83 people in 2008, they collected almost $60 million of the $86 million owed.
Back in 2014 Pater got approval from county commissioners to hire four more case investigators and to replace two open positions, to up their collections.
Supervisor Miranda Phillips said they have very little turnover in a place where the jobs are highly stressful.
“You’re dealing people’s children and their money, the two main things in everybody’s life,” she said. “It’s a very stressful job and I think we do an excellent job of building the morale in the workers and trying to instill in them how proud we are of them. I think that makes a big difference when the employees are happy and they know they are appreciated.”
Pater said another secret to their success is using business analytics, a position he has also added at his other department Job and Family Services.
“The use of business analytics, I think we are an absolute leader in that,” he said. “If you can account for it and measure it you can make improvements. What they (his management team) literally do is brainstorm, ‘why is this case falling through the cracks, why is this segment of people not paying, what kind of work list can we do’.”
The agency handles cases that are instituted in the courts as well as via applications, say for separated or unwed parents. They also work with the prosecutor’s office on habitual non-payers who eventually end up with a felony non-support charge. Pater said that is always a last resort, because if someone is in jail — community service is the optimal punishment these days — they can’t pay.
Dunaway said she thinks their business model is another tactic that routinely puts them on top. They use an assembly line rather than jack-of-all-trades approach to case management.
“I think one thing that differentiates our agency from some of the other agencies is that at a lot of other child support agencies each case worker has their own caseload so they have to essentially be a jack-of-all-trades, and know how to do every single function” she said. “Our agency works more like an assembly line where employees specialize in certain job functions in two different teams. I think it allows employees to get really good at their jobs which makes us more efficient.”
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