26th District – YoungWilliams – office at 615 North Kansas Ave., Liberal, KS 67901 – handles Grant, Haskell, Morton, Seward, Stanton and Stevens counties

16th District – YoungWilliams – office at 1509 Avenue P – Dodge City, KS – handles Clark, Comanche, Ford, Gray, Kiowa and Meade counties

Courtesy graph

Regional locations open in September

By THERESA FREED

• DCF Director of Communications

TOPEKA – Kansas Department for Children and Families (DCF) Secretary Phyllis Gilmore announced Thursday, efforts to privatize Kansas Child Support Services (CSS) are on schedule.

“We anticipate a seamless transition,” Secretary Gilmore said. “Files are about to transfer, training will soon begin and regional contractor offices have been established.”

In June, DCF announced the vendors who will perform full-service child support activities for all 31 judicial districts in Kansas. The vendors are YoungWilliams, Sunflower Child Support Services (formerly Lee Fisher), 18th Judicial District Court Trustee and Veritas, HHS.

In Kansas, DCF’s Child Support Services division historically collects more than $200 million annually in child support payments. Through increased efficiencies, DCF projects collections could increase by approximately $52 million during the first three full years of the contracts.

“Child support can make a big difference in the financial well-being of children who are living in poverty,” Gilmore said. “The more money we can collect, the better.”

Contractor offices in the DCF Kansas City and East regions will “go live” on Sept. 16. Those in the Wichita and West regions will “go live” on Sept. 30 (see map below).

Letters will be sent to all custodial parents, notifying them of this change. After the “go-live” dates, custodial and non-custodial parents will be able to visit the new area offices to discuss their child support cases. Prior to the transition dates, customers should continue to utilize their current DCF office.