ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996 TAG: 9601310058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on February 1, 1996.
Clarification
Part of a quote in display type in a story Wednesday on a Virginia
CARES program that helps parents meet their child support obligations
may have given the impression that David Keaton, the program's
employment counselor, had children. Keaton does not.
INSTEAD OF JAIL or continued missed payments, parents running behind in child support are receiving help from a Roanoke program that might lose its own funding.
After Ernest Baxter moved from Roanoke to Baltimore in 1991, he stopped paying child support for his daughter.
But living out of state didn't absolve him of payments. They kept adding up.
When he returned to Roanoke two years later, he found a state that had cracked down on parents who shirked their child support responsibilities.
The Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement wanted $3,000 in back payments from him.
The division located Baxter through his job. A collection agency started sending him notices. Twice, his wages were garnisheed.
Baxter was subpoenaed to court last March to explain his mounting child-support debt. He could have been jailed for 30 days.
Instead, a judge referred Baxter, 44, to a pilot program that helps unemployed or underemployed parents meet their child-support obligations.
Called OPTS - - the program is an extension of Total Action Against Poverty's Virginia CARES program. OPTS - a kind of Defensive Driving course for child-support evaders - is supported by the Roanoke Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court and the Division of Child Support Enforcement's Roanoke district office.
Virginia CARES is a program usually reserved for ex-offenders, but OPTS is open to anyone who's having problems paying child support.
``Maybe a person has lost a job or their job has ended, and they are not in compliance with a court order to fulfill their obligations of child support,'' said Rosana Anderson, Virginia CARES director.
``Instead of sanctioning them, [the court] will just defer the child-support order, refer them to OPTS and give them an opportunity to find work or give them time to meet their obligation.''
The program, one of only two of its kind in the country, was modeled after one in Dayton, Ohio.
OPTS received enough funding from the Department of Social Services to carry it for 12 months. The program began last February.
With the 12-month mark approaching, Anderson said she is searching for other funding sources. She said she would hate to see the program wind up like other government-funded efforts that flash and fade under the constraints of one-time funding.
Fifty-three parents have been referred to OPTS, Anderson said. Thirty-two of them have found employment through the program. Had the participants been sentenced to 30 days in jail instead of referred to OPTS, it would have cost the state $47,200, she said.
``We can certainly use all the help we can get,'' said Juvenile and Domestic Relations Judge Joseph Clarke. ``My impression is that this program is providing that help. This gives us another option.''
OPTS provides support services, counseling, vocational development activities and job-readiness and job-search activities. Participants meet daily for peer support group sessions, where they are free to express opinions - or vent, if necessary.
At a group session last week, six participants discussed several value statements with Correlli Rasheed, support group counselor.
``A man should be willing to take any type of job to support himself and his children,'' Rasheed said, reading a statement from a batch of papers. He asked the participants to agree or disagree.
Three agreed. Three didn't.
``You get a job that you don't like, and you won't be there long,'' said Tyrone Fluellen, an OPTS participant. ``Then you end up in the same predicament.''
``What I hear you saying is that how you feel is more important than taking care of your children,'' Rasheed said to him.
Fluellen slouched in his chair.
``I understand you've got to take care of your kids...'' Fluellen said, his voice trailing.
``If I've got a daughter, and I don't have a job, I'm going to find one,'' said David Keaton, OPTS employment counselor. ``Even if it means embarrassing myself, I'm taking care of my child, because I love her.''
``If you're in the woods, you'll eat worms to survive,'' Ernest Baxter said.
OPTS participants include ex-offenders whose child support accumulated during their incarceration. Virginia child-support enforcement guidelines require that anyone who has been ordered to pay child support pay a minimum of $65 a month - whether they are incarcerated or simply out of work.
The child-support payments continue to accumulate unless an owing parent petitions a court to revoke a support order or asks the enforcement division to make allowances for their child support administratively, said Terry Gates, manager of program evaluation and monitoring for the state Division of Child Support Enforcement.
Usually, ``Nobody does anything, and it just accumulates,'' he said.
Many of the OPTS participants - particularly those who have been in prison or jail - are trying to re-establish relationships with their children, Anderson said. Those parents are struggling with the double stigma of ``ex-con'' and ``deadbeat'' parent, she said.
``I hear some fathers saying, `If I don't have anything to give to my child, why should I see them? Why should I pay child support? Why should I have a relationship with my child?''' Anderson said.
``I don't think they always realize the important role they play in their children's lives.''
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. From left, Steve Robinson,by CNBErnest Baxter and Tyrone Fluellen participate in a group discussion
of child support at Options for Parental Training and Support in
Roanoke. color.