Montgomery County Child Support Enforcement Agency: by the numbers for state fiscal year 2012
$99,958,164: amount of child support payments coming through the state to Montgomery County families.
103,919: number of calls for assistance made to the county’s child support Call Center.
104,274: parents served by the county agency.
52,135: children served by the county agency.
The Montgomery County Child Support Enforcement Agency will be moving from the Reibold Building in downtown Dayton into the Job Center on Edwin C. Moses Boulevard.
“There have been conversations about this going back a long time,” County Administrator Joe Tuss said. “It’s about integrating all the various pieces of the system, Job & Family Services, Workforce Development, Child Support.”
The Job Center is one of the largest one-stop employment and training centers in the United States, according to the county. This public/private partnership is made up of forty plus organizations housed in an eight and a half acre facility. Tuss said many of the clients served by Child Support receive services from the county’s Department of Job & Family Services and other agencies housed in the center.
County residents with legal custody of a child can ask the Child Support Enforcement Agency to establish a support order. The agency also does paternity testing among other duties.
Robert Gruhl, the county’s assistant director of Job & Family Services, beginning Monday will lead the nine to 12-month effort to figure out how to physically integrate Child Support’s 140 employees with the 250 county employees already stationed at the Job Center.
Gruhl’s salary will temporarily increase from $94,556 to $104,000 as he plans the transition. Sarah Fields, legal division administrator, will run the day-to-day operations of the agency. Her salary will go from $69,076 to $82,659.
The two agencies have separate computer, telephone systems, and Call Centers and follow different state regulations.
“We’re bringing two different cultures together,” Gayle Bullard, director of the Montgomery County Department of Job and Family Services said.
The two Call Centers take different approaches and Tuss said he’s unsure whether they can be integrated, but the county will look for ways to make both more efficient.
In Child Support, Call Center operators, responding to about 103,000 calls a year, are customer assistance oriented. They can make adjustments to case information and serve the client directly. The Job & Family Services Call Center operators, answering 10,000 calls a week, don’t have the time to provide direct service due to the volume.
Tuss said it’s too early to say how much the relocation will cost.
“It’s too early to tell if it will result in a net savings. If in fact we save some money in the process, that’s a bonus.” Tuss said.
Even though Montgomery County owns the Reibold Building, Child Support doesn’t get free rent. The agency pays $11.49 per square foot per year for the 38,023 square feet it occupies for a total of $436,884.
At the Job Center, owned by the Society of St. Vincent DePaul, the county pays $12.26 per square foot per year for 140,672 square feet or about $1.7 million annually.
“If you’re going to spend the money, you want to do it right,” Tuss said. “We anticipate it will create a more efficient and effective service for customers and tax paying citizens.”
Tuss said the county has no plans for the space left vacant in the Reibold Building by the departure of child support. The offices of Public Health: Dayton & Montgomery County remain in the building.
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