Brady, Rep Blackwell: Look Into Child Support Enforcement Sanctions

Brady, Rep Blackwell: Look Into Child Support Enforcement Sanctions
by Van Stone vspfoundation@yahoo.com (215) 747-8746

In Philadelphia City and any city in the state of Pennsylvania non-custodial parents are in deep trouble. A process that have long been added to Family Court-Domestic Relations Branch (Support Enforcement) in the Pennsylvania state to help the unification of child and parent is being abused by the family court system. What is this system? Networking For Jobs-Parent Referral Program. The program is suppose to help non-custodial parents that are out of work to find steady work once completing an employment training period of at least 6 months. The program is an excellent support piece to job ready skills where the non-custodial parent can gain free certification training in fields like public safety, office work, and paraprofessional staffing that require certain classes of drivers license. This program even provides free tokens to the participants as they go to and from Networking For Jobs weekly class. The issue is the non-custodial parent is forced to participate. Congressmen and State Reps are not happy with –forced.

What’s worse is as we all know well, no one, no matter what ones family status is, a parent or non-parent, looses their civil liberties in the state of PA to the family courts based on parent status. But loosing rights based on parent status is happening in family court anyhow. The state of Pennsylvania does not empower Judges, Hearing Officers, or Program Directors to punish based on lack of work, job training, or reporting to class. Yet, there seems to be a whole lot of threats, penalizing and imprisonment going on when the non-custodial parent intentionally chooses not to participate in the Networking For Jobs Program. Non-custodial parents want to find a job on their own free will. A right!

The program has an assigned Referring Officer and that’s a good thing. The Referring Officer is supposed to help the parent that is out of work and behind in child support payments prepare themselves for classes that without guarantee will set them up for long term seasonal jobs. Meanwhile, the child that needs money to come into the custodial parent’s hand from the non-custodial parent that is in Networking For Jobs class will not get a dime. Funding is provided by the state to pay a Referring Officer’s a salary, and tokens to a person that is out of work to get to class. But there is not one brown cent that goes to the kids who could use the cost of tokens and a Referring Officer’s pay each week. Did I mention that 100 S. Broad St. Land and Title Bldg-suit 1210 is the location where Networking For Jobs non-custodial parents is ordered to go? A loss of rights!

When you are a non-custodial parent family court orders you to read and sign the acknowledgment of appointment location, date, and time. And they must report promptly for the appointment and cooperate with the requirements of the Networking For Jobs Program. If they don’t go they will immediately become subject to the enforcement sanctions of Family Court that includes, but are not limited to, the sanctions for Contempt Of Court. In case you don’t know what Contempt of court means I’ll be glad (based on first hand experience) to help you out. It means the Judge will have you hand cuffed and put in county jail for as long as 30 days or up to much, much more. What’s wrong with this picture is that the Judge, the Referring Officer, the Trainers etc., all get money being involved in this program. And they don’t seem to care if kids are left home alone while a parent is in jail. Class is more important than a kid keep from abandonment. Remember lots of non-custodial parents have kids that are not involved in court custody issues. But many family court judges don’t seem to be interested in parents that care for kids without family court participation.

The child of the non-custodial parent gets zero when parent is jailed. And it cost the state to hold the kids parent in jail. Since support is about unification with parent and child I have to think about what state legislators would be best to speak with about this Enforcement Program. Two of the most responsible legislators in Pennsylvania, Congressman Bob Brady and State Rep. Thomas Blackwell come to mind. Both having a long history of solving child-welfare issues in the state of PA will make it very easy to chat with them and begin dialogue to fix child support enforcement sanctions. Brady and Rep Blackwell work well for the rights of civilians.