A father will still get time behind bars for failing to pay at least a decade’s worth of child support, but questions as to how much he owes led to the reversal of his more than $66,000 restitution order on Friday.
While the firestorm over the Indiana Department of Child Services has died down, the Indiana General Assembly is preparing to begin its examination of the agency and possibly make recommendations for action during the 2019 legislative session. The Interim Study Committee on Courts and the Judiciary is scheduled to meet at 10 a.m. Wednesday in Room 431 of the Statehouse to review a host of issues related to DCS.
A slew of bills aimed at helping youngsters designated as children in need of services and another targeting overdue child support payments cleared legislative committees Wednesday with no opposing votes.
Lawmakers have offered more than a dozen bills to address a growing children in need of services crisis, many of which have won broad support in the General Assembly.
Several times while talking about the statewide computer system that keeps track of child support money, John Owens rapped his knuckles on the nearest piece of wood. Indiana’s technology, dubbed ISETS, processes almost $1 billion in child support payments every year. However, the Department of Child Services says in a report that ISETS is “built on dying technology” from the 1980s. The concern is one day, it will crash for good.