Virginia

Automatic Income Withholding Case Clean-up Project

Description/Goal

The need for a case clean-up project was identified as a safeguard to assure that accurate information would be processed on the batch-generated Income Withholdings. A preliminary review of test Income Withholdings was conducted during the week of March 15, 1999. This allowed staff to identify situations that could result in possible over-collection and negative exposure. It also enabled staff to identify situations that could result in possible incorrect participant data being processed, as well as identifying service issues, notification issues, and other clean-up issues. The report was used to update/correct pertinent information that was related to Income Withholdings.

A comprehensive list of data elements that would have the most direct impact on Income Withholding, was identified. Among them were: case type, interstate status (Initiating or Responding), medical support, noncustodial parent employment history, correct order information, Health Insurance Order indicator, Alternative Payment indicator, pay order type, and correct extension information.

Workers were given a variety of routine and ad hoc reports to assist staff in identifying items that needed to be corrected so that the income withholding would not result in an over-collection of arrears.

The clean-up project, which began April 9, 1999 and ended May 27, included all Child Support Enforcement staff directly involved with processing Income Withholdings.

Results

Extra precautions were taken before the automatic generation of the Income Withholding was implemented and the results have been excellent. There have been few, if any, adverse effects. As of July 1999, 8,933 Automatic Income Withholdings have been sent to employers. The Income Withholding clean-up project resulted in batch income withholdings being sent to employers with accurate information from the APECS system. Collections have also been noted on some of these cases.

Location

This clean-up project was implemented statewide in all of the 22 Child Support Enforcement offices in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Funding

The funding source was Regular Federal Matching.

Replication Advice

Conduct some type of clean-up effort before implementing the automatic generation of the Income Withholding form. It is better to take a proactive approach at preventing negative exposure and interruptions to customer services than to have to deal with the repercussions later.