 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Mike Van der Steen. And as you know, every month we try to bring a different focus, a different department to share a little bit about their roles and responsibilities. And we have 20 departments, so it can take a while to get through the ringer. And today we're very pleased to have one of our department heads with us, Jim Groff, Child Support Director. Jim, welcome. Thank you, Anne. Thank you, Chairman Van der Steen. I appreciate being here to tell you about my department. Well, it's good to have you here. Why don't we start by having you share a little bit about yourself, your background, when you started in the Child Support Department. Okay, I started in Child Support about 22, 23 years ago. And I'm going on my 22nd year, or I will be completing my 22nd year. And I had two years before that in Health and Human Services as the accounting manager and then I moved over to child support and I've been there ever since and saw the department grow a little bit and then shrink just recently because of budget restraints and so forth. So, but we're doing as everybody is in the county more with less. Yeah, everybody's doing more with less. And 22 years in the department, you've obviously seen a lot of changes over your tenure. What is the mission of the Child Support Department? What does the department do? The mission is to serve the residents of Sheppoyton County who need child support services, which include establishing paternity for non-married couples, establishing court orders for the provision of health insurance and the collection of child support in our child support cases, to establish orders for children placed in foster care or kinship care and to monitor those court orders for payment amounts and periodically review and if necessary adjust our court orders. So, give us an example of what would be a typical situation if there is one, but what would be an example of a situation where someone would come in and want your assistance and what process would you go through? Well, the first thing we need to know is if they are in the process of getting married or not and if they've just been living together, what we need to do is ask them to fill out an application for services. Once that application for services is filled out, we open up a case for them and start working it. Prior to it being actually open, we do some background checking. We get income levels for the father as well as for the mother and then we put that all together and wait for the documents to come back to us and once they do, then we, as I said, open up a case and we start following it up and bringing them in and having them discuss with our specialists the need that they're looking for and the services that they're looking for. Now, you said in the process of getting married, you meant the process of getting divorced. So, if they're divorced, but if they're getting married, we have a lot of couples coming in that are just living together and are raising a family. So, sometimes they come in because they want to split up and leave. So, then we have to do something with them also. So, whether they're getting divorced, married, single, there's many different situations where someone may need to come into child support and seek assistance and you cover those areas and it's predominantly getting financial support to care for your child or their children and make sure that the responsible spouse or responsible father or mother is helping provide that assistance if they're not in that household. Right, and one thing that just has changed in the last five years has been that we have to make sure that someone carries health insurance for the children if not both parents. So, what type of staffing do we need in Sheboygan County in order to provide these services? A lot more than we have right now, but we have about 5,000 cases or just over almost 5,500 cases. And we have six people that handle the non-support cases, which are the majority of our cases. And then we have one and a half person that does the paternity cases. So, the paternity cases are where the child is not yet born and we're going to establish paternity once the child is born. But the other cases and non-4D cases that we have, those are our busiest cases that we have to do a lot of work on. Most of the time it starts out with locating one of the parents a lot of times and then it's finding out their employer, finding out their income, setting up court hearings to determine how much they will pay or will not pay. Because in some cases they both agree not to get child support or collect child support and because of that, we just have to monitor it to make sure they're carrying out what the order of the court has been. So, your total staff in the department? Our total staff right now is 12. And 12 staff are responsible for a little over 5,000 cases. That's total, but some do not work on cases at all. But they all have a helping hand in it. Right now just using our specialists, the one and a half paternity people that I have, they handle about 500 cases. So that's split fairly equally between the two of them. And then the other specialists, the other specialists that I have, their case load is about 800 cases. And the average statewide, if memory serves, is in that five to 700 range, is it not? That's what we used to be. And now, of course, we had to redistribute and do some other things. So now we're a little bit above the average. But if you look at larger counties, for instance, I don't understand how like Milwaukee County or Dane County can have a specialist, but 1100, 1200 cases that they're responsible for. It's a busy day, but the day goes fast and it's usually never the same. So we always have something new and different going on. And I'm sure you've received calls that they're looking for help and they can't get ahold of us. And we do what we can and when we can. And we do answer every call that we get. So what is your annual budget? You support 12 staff? It's a total budget. It's about almost a million one, I would say, right off hand. And that pays for the entire thing with the very little tax levy that we use right now. Right, right. Because you receive a lot of funding from the state and federal government. Correct. We get 66% funding from the state and federal government through the state. It's a federal funding that we get. They're federal reimbursement. And then we earn approximately 25% to 30% additional funding from state programs that are given to Child Support for their performance. If they meet the performance requirements that are set by the state and the federal government, then we do earn extra funds. And last question before I turn it over to Mike. What's your sense of the roles and responsibilities and the demands for your services? Does every individual that is a single parent or going through divorce or going to be remarried do 100% of these individuals come to you for child support services? Is it 90%? Is it 50%? Because clearly the more single mothers and fathers there are out there raising children, the more your department is required to help them, to assist them and make sure the children receive sufficient funding to be raised properly and take care of health care. We, in Shpoig County, we probably process about 65%, I would say. And that's based on the fact that any individual that receives any type of benefits through the county, they must, if they have young children and so forth, apply for our services. That's one requirement. But there are many other single parents out there that have good jobs or have agreements with the father of their children. And they agree to go it alone. And then maybe after five or six years all is not bliss anymore. And they come to us and they say, well, at this point in time I want to have your services. And then in a case like that, if they do not have any benefit coming into them from the county, then at that time we charge them, I believe it just went up to $35 for our services. And once they pay that, then the only other charges that we charge them for is an annual receding and disbursement fee, it's called. And that's something that goes directly to the state we don't see any of that anymore. Very good. Thank you, Jim. Jim, let's talk about some specific examples of the work that you do in your departments so our viewers can better understand those activities. For instance, when there's a divorce, what level of involvement do you have? Well, once people decide to divorce, they need to come to our agency if there are children and only if there are children because there's a lot of divorces where it's just the husband and the wife. And those are handled, but those are handled as we call them non-support cases because there's nothing as far as child support involved in that, but we just keep records of them all in the kids system, which is the state system that is operated here in Wisconsin. And so we get them the forms that they need and tell them what's going to happen. We set court dates for them if they need them unless they decide to run the court orders and so forth themselves, which they can do. They can take anything they want into the courts per se. They do not have to use our department. But when there are children involved and they're receiving benefits, then they have to go through our department. And we set up interviews with them and we do the paternity test to make sure that he is the father of the child or children and the whole thing that has to be done in order for us to go to court and have the judge decide what needs to be paid and so forth. It used to be that we were on, it was called a percentage standard and now that's no longer necessary. We base a lot of orders on the percentage standard but we don't use that per se because the judge can rule whatever he wants to. And then when there are children present in the divorced families what services does child support offer in the areas of visitation and custody? Visitation and custody are one of the many services that are offered, but the child support agency does not handle that. Visitation and custody is handled strictly through the court system. Normally what happens is, if somebody needs visitation rights or custody and they come to our agency, we send them over to the clerk of court's office saying they need to get either a pro se package or ask for a court order package for establishing custody and visitation. And then that is processed and handled through the family court commissioner and then the family court commissioner has, she has programs set up that she deals with custody and visitation and what kind of visitation it should be if it's going to be, that it's going to have to be representative there with them at all time or if they can have them for a weekend or whatever it's going to be. And then if everybody agrees to what is decided then that's why it's going to be set up and the court order will be established at that. Okay, now if a woman would come to your department who is pregnant and she doesn't know who the father is how can your department assist that person? Well, we start off with an interview and set up as to if she happens to know the name of the person or if she happens to know where this person lives or works because there's a lot of times we get somebody coming in to say that they were out of town and they ran into somebody and hooked up with them and they decided they were in love and all of a sudden she became pregnant. With that there are many examples that we could give you. I've often said I wanted to write a book about the different things that we've heard in the interviews and so forth but we wouldn't do that but once it's all set up and we find out as much as we can we look for them and then if they happen to have things like a social security number or where they work and telephone numbers and so forth we do do the contacts of all these individuals and find out from them. We have them come in and just ask them if they are willing to sign papers that said they are the father or if they're planning on signing what we call a voluntary paternity admission form and if they are going to do that they have to wait until after the child is born and if the child has not been born once we're done with all these questions and getting as much information as we can then we have to wait also for the child to be born and then once the child is born then we set up paternity tests that we conduct right in my office and once we get the buckle swab which is a swabbing of the inside of the cheek we send that into our paternity analyst and they process it it usually takes about 10 days to get that back to us and once it's back then we call the people back in and let them know that they are at least 99.9% that's definitely the father and then we go from there and then we set up and go into the process of establishing what they want what they're looking at doing if they're planning on living together if we'll be living separately and we'll need other things and we do as much as we can for them Thank you In most situations where child support is being paid I think we expect that they're living with the mother and the father is paying that child support Earlier you mentioned something about the Wisconsin support collection trust fund Could you explain a little bit about how that works? Sure About 15 years ago I want to say it was probably prior to that all the monies and so forth that we collected for child support were handled through the county and at that particular time we collected the funds dispersed it from the county even cut checks there the first people to do that were the clerk or court staff and then at one point in time those people in the clerk or court staff they were transferred to the child support agency and they became child support people and they processed all their paperwork and then when the kids system came on board about 10 years ago I think it was at that particular time the state decided that they wanted to do a statewide agency to handle the distribution and collection of funds so that's when the Wisconsin collection and trust fund became was created and at first it started off in Madison and then it was changed to Milwaukee and it still is in Milwaukee right now and all the collections that are taken in are either sent directly from the employer to the trust fund or in a very limited number of cases we do still collect funds at the county we process that on a daily basis and send that all to the trust fund also and then they have a five day turnaround period in which they have to excuse me not wrong they have a 24 hour turnaround period to get that they have to distribute the money and send that to the custodial parent either in the form of a check or in a debit card contribution or direct deposit into their personal checking account okay now if someone doesn't get their direct deposit or their debit card how can you assist the person with those kind of problems and that happens we do have an occasion to find out that somebody didn't get their debit card or the money wasn't placed in there at the proper time and then we asked them to call the trust fund or not excuse me the debit card holder which at this particular time is JP Morgan slash Chase and they usually handle any problems that they have with debit cards if it's something that they're getting a check or a direct deposit those are the trust fund handles and we'll usually call the trust fund and say such and such a check came in it was this company that sent you the check it supposedly you supposedly received it according to our records that we can see on the screen on such and such a date and it was sent out on two days later can you tell us if that was cashed and then they process it and let us know if it was not cashed they can issue a new check but they usually wait 30 days for it to be done unless there's some extraordinary circumstances that there's a very big need that they need the monies right away and then what they'll do is they'll stop payment and then issue a new check okay now the circuit court puts people under certain orders if they don't comply how do you enforce those orders we usually contact the NCP or if it's a CP not following the order of the court we will contact them and find out what the problem is and if they're willing to follow the order of the court and if they decide not to what we need to do is get a motion package ourselves and we will take it into court again for contempt because if they don't follow the orders of the court then it's a contempt charge against them and so we set it up and we have block times in each of the courts that we can use and we follow it and set up in our next available court time in one of the next available block time in one of the courts then to come in so that they can have their case held before judge now the people here obviously are living here at the time they start working with you but if one or the other moves out of state how do you continue to follow and process that case if it's the person with the child that's who the court order stays with and that's who's jurisdiction it is so if the father moves out of state and does not have the child he has to let us know where he's working what his new address is and anything else that we may need to know and then we inform the child support agency in that new city or new state wherever he may be and let them know that this is our case and they may be coming to them for help if they are please let us know so that we can we can get that information updated on our system and if both move out of town or out of the state then what we try to do is have the new state take over again wherever the child is because we've had a lot of cases where somebody moved to Oklahoma and somebody moved to California so you have to find out who has jurisdiction over that it's usually following whoever has the child that's where the courts want to see the court order being monitored okay then with court orders is there a time limit on those orders? as far as how long they must pay it's once the child reaches 18 the courts normally do not have them pay any longer unless they're pursuing a high school degree and they move it to 19 and then it ends at 19 okay thank you very much Jim with that I'll turn it back over to Adam to finish up thanks Mike Jim you covered a lot of information and one of the things I really respect and appreciate about your department is it's incredibly important work and it's work that most people don't appreciate I know that your staff deal with sometimes some angry parents or some upset people and they're looking for assistance they're looking for direction they're wondering where their payment is they're wondering why the father or mother isn't fulfilling their obligations and I just want to say thank you to you and your staff because it's very very important work if these dollars or financial support is not being collected for these children obviously that can create a real hardship and other deeper more expensive programs ultimately might be needed for children if they don't get the appropriate upbringing or the appropriate health care so again I thank you and your staff for the important work if folks watching this have questions or want to learn more or you covered a topic and they're not real sure you know how that all plays out who do they contact how do they get more information well we have full numbers set up for our own agency and all the direct numbers numbers of any of our staff are listed on our website but for Sheboygan County Child Support in general our general phone number is 920-459-3041 and then if you want to fax this information because there are times when people we usually ask people to write down their questions so that we know exactly what they're asking for because often you hear things and it's different from what they're actually saying so the fax number is 920-45903 590-399 and then there is a website for the Child Support Agency which is www.co.sheboygan.wi.us and then we have an email address specifically for Child Support which is Child Support All One Word at co.sheboygan.wi.us and then also once you have a case with us we supply the email addresses for your case workers so that you can email them directly and then you also get the direct phone numbers so that you can call them directly if you have a question and most of the people that do call they'll still use the 4590-3041 which is our receptionist and many people don't believe this but our receptionist and the other person that answers the phone when she's not available basically know everything that there is about your case because they can look it up on the kid's system and see it all there in green and white so they can help you as much as your specialist can now if you want specific details about the court order and things like that then you may need to talk to the specialist and most of the time they're available to take your calls and I'm more than happy to meet with you if you make an appointment with them in advance and let them know and if you didn't catch all that contact our county clerk we're on the website, we're in the phone book and our county clerk knows all the departments and all the departments' numbers and certainly we'll get you in touch with someone at Child Support and I know periodically I get calls where people get in the phone tree there and they don't immediately get a hold of someone and certainly we apologize for that but don't give up there are different numbers as you just heard and there are different ways of getting information so Jim thank you for joining us today and again thank you for the important work you do I have so much more to say but I guess too little time to say it some well I do want to take a minute and a half before we wind up because this is Chairman Mike Van Der Sneen's last term he had two consecutive terms as county board chairman by rule now he's done and next week or by the time you watch this program we'll likely have a new county board chair person sitting next to me in the future but I just want to say how much I've enjoyed working with Mike Van Der Sneen he has been an outstanding county board chairman an outstanding leader and just an excellent county board supervisor when I think of the last four years and the work Mike has been involved with and the leadership that he has provided Sheboygan County has so much to be proud of during Mike's tenure Sheboygan County completed a second program evaluation and prioritization process where we looked at every program and service and ranked them which helped us make difficult decisions established priorities, funding decisions we created a shared purchasing agent with the city of Sheboygan that we share between the two Mike took the lead and once again revisiting shared dispatch or joint dispatch which is actively now being considered and negotiated fiscally Mike produced property tax relief three of the four years that he was in the helm as county board chairman our fiscal reserves are healthier now than they were before he started our bond rating is higher today than it was when he started he had the courage to propose a half percent sales tax to maintain critical programs but as importantly reduce property taxes reduce our debt service Mike also received a Wisconsin good government award and bottom line is and I could go on and on believe me a lot of good things have happened under chairman Mike van der Steen's leadership so Mike I just want to say thank you you've been a pleasure to work with and I'm glad we're going to continue to be able to work together as you serve your residents in Sheboygan County Thank you for those kind comments Adam it's all due to the good team we have here yourself all the department heads that makes it all possible it wasn't Mike doing it I may have been the person that was chairman but it was everybody's efforts making it happen so thank you and thank you to all the department heads and you specifically Jim and thank you for joining us next month we're going to have our corporation council here Carl Bissing again another very important member of our team and until then thank you for your support and we'll see you next month