{"id":51841,"date":"2017-04-24T10:21:09","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T10:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/viconsortium.com\/?p=51841"},"modified":"2017-04-24T10:21:09","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T10:21:09","slug":"federal-auditors-give-high-marks-to-territorys-paternity-and-child-support-division","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.viconsortium.com\/?p=51841","title":{"rendered":"Federal Auditors Give High Marks To Territory&#8217;s Paternity And Child Support Division"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The initiative, \u201cOperation Support Our Children,\u201d has contributed to the Department of Justice, Paternity and Child Support Division\u2019s (PCSD) receiving very high marks in a recent federal audit conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration of Children and Family, Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), V.I. Department of Justice Public Media Officer Corliss Smithen announced on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>The OCSE\u2019s audit, conducted last year for fiscal year 2015, found that for the first time in many years, PCSD had reliable child support data that make the Virgin Islands entitled to receive federal incentive awards that PCSD had been denied in the past. OCSE\u2019s audit was conducted to determine the reliability of the data and the performance of PCSD. With a string of repeated failures for many years before the last audit, the Virgin Islands had obtained the dubious distinction of being the first U.S. jurisdiction to be denied federal incentive payments because of disastrous audit outcomes caused by the inability of PCSD\u2019s system and staff to produce accurate data for OCSE\u2019s auditors, according to D.O.J.<\/p>\n<p>Attorney General Claude Earl Walker, above, who heads the PCSD, received a formal letter of the audit findings from OCSE\u2019s director, Kimberly Smith.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Walker, in commenting on the results of the audit, said he was confident of a positive outcome as the Division has been working to address a number of outstanding issues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew that we had a good chance of passing because in 2015, Paternity had made rapid and considerable improvements to its data system, collections and distribution of child support with our <span style=\"color: #3366ff;\"><a style=\"color: #3366ff;\" href=\"https:\/\/viconsortium.com\/featured\/over-1700-vi-men-owe-more-than-29-million-in-child-support-ag-calls-it-un-american-downright-shameful\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u2018Operation Support Our Children\u2019<\/a><\/span> initiative, and so, failure was no longer an option,\u201d Mr. Walker said. \u201cIn 2015, we inherited an agency that could not produce accurate data for our federal monitors for many years, and at one point, for four straight years in a row, Paternity kept failing these audits, but no one knew why. It was rather embarrassing to be the only U.S. jurisdiction to fail in every category of the audit, and the consequences of failing included a denial of incentive payments and penalties for the territory\u2019s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, last year\u2019s audit found that the Division outperformed in every area after four years of failures.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOCSE could not determine Paternity\u2019s performance in critical areas such as how much money is collected and then distributed to the children, but this audit found that in every category, Paternity\u2019s data is now reliable\u00a0and performance has significantly improved. In fact, the Virgin Islands received marks between 92% and 100% in all areas covered by the annual audit,\u201d Mr. Walker said. \u201cThese findings mean that the Virgin Islands is now entitled to its fair share of incentive funds that are distributed to the states, territories and tribal lands.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Program Administrator at the PCSD, Kathryn Jensen-deLugo, gave an insight on how the audit was conducted.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were audited on eight performance measures. Of those eight performance measures, we had one score at 92%, two at 95%, one at 96%, two at 98%, one at 99%, and one at 100%,\u201d Ms. Jensen-deLugo said. \u201cThe eight performance measures include, but are not limited to, cases open at the end of the fiscal year, total amount of current support due, and total amount of support collected and distributed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Department HHS, Administration of Children and Family Regional Administrator, Joyce A. Thomas, will be visiting the territory on June 14 and will hold discussions with Mr. Walker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The initiative, \u201cOperation Support Our Children,\u201d has contributed to the Department of Justice, Paternity and Child Support Division\u2019s (PCSD) receiving very high marks in a recent federal audit conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration of Children and Family, Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), V.I. Department of Justice Public Media [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[191,2474,147],"tags":[3093,2847,3402],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Federal Auditors Give High Marks To Territory&#039;s Paternity And Child Support Division - V.I. 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