By Cindi Andrews
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Millions in child-support money might have been wrongly withheld from thousands of parents in Hamilton County and across the state since 1986, the director of the county's Department of Job and Family Services said Thursday.

"If something's wrong, let's figure out what it is," Director Suzanne Burke said. "We're going to have to look at what's the best way to approach this."

Her department is doing a test audit of 10 cases. The preliminary results, with nine completed, Burke said: Seven had errors that cost the custodial parent money, one was correct and one found the parent had been overpaid.

The county review was prompted by allegations from the Association for Children for Enforcement of Support, a national child support advocacy group. Carrie Davis, ACES state coordinator, has audited 22 Hamilton County child support cases, resulting in an average refund of $1,533 in 18 cases.

The cases - like child-support errors uncovered by ACES in 2001 - involve parents who have been on welfare. Then, a new state computer system was found to have improperly withheld money between 1997 and 2000, and the state had to pay custodial parents almost $15 million. However, the new concerns stretch back to 1986 and could cover 18,000 of the 88,000 child support cases in Hamilton County alone, according to county officials.

The new problems are a combination of caseworker error and problems with welfare information received from the state, Burke said. Custodial parents who go off welfare are supposed to get their share of back payments before the payments are used to reimburse the welfare program. Often, however, the state is getting its share first.

"The reaction I got from (caseworkers) is that the money belonged to them until I proved otherwise," said Shelly Gibson of West Chester, a mother of two who got almost $1,000 back with Davis' help.

"Anyone who thinks there's a problem with their case - they can request an audit, they can request a state hearing," said Jon Allen, spokesman for the state Department of Job and Family Services.

"It's quite an extrapolation to turn a handful of cases in one county into hundreds of thousands of cases."

E-mail candrews@enquirer.com