18 “Terrace Review — Wednesiay, May 25, i988 a Tee
_ Maintenance order enforcemen
beginning in

Initiatives for strengthening
the family were announced last
month by the B.C. government,
and included is a new Family

Maintenance Enforcement pro- ©

gram, to be operational by sum-
mer. New legislation and $15
million over two years will help
separated parents with custody
— still mainly mothers — to ob-
tain overdue support payments,
without the time and expense of
using the court system. Tracing
out-of-province spouses who ig-
‘nore court orders has also been
made simpler. But if main-
tenance orders remain low, sim-
ple economics may make the
program less than attractive to
those women now relying on in-
come assistance to support their
families.

by Charlynn Toews

In announcing the program,
Attorney General Brian Smith
said the aim of the program was
to make sure that court orders
are upheld and to place respon-
sibility for family maintenance
where it belongs: on the
separated spouses.

Although the program will be
available to anyone seeking to
enforce a family court order,
particular emphasis has been
placed on income assistance re-
cipients seeking maintenance.
Changes to the
(Guaranteed Available Income
for Need) Act gives the govern-
ment the power to obtain and
-enforce maintenance orders on
behalf of their clients, and to
recover income assistance

GAIN

already paid out from the spouse

if he should have been con- ©

tributing to the maintenance of
the family.

While the potential savings to
the taxpayer are apparent, what
will this program mean to the
estimated 10,000 single parents
in B.C. receiving income
assistance who have main-
tenance orders, most of which
are in arrears?

Sandra Edelman is the Direc-
tor of the Family Maintenance
Project, a pilot project assisting
income assistance recipients in
Vancouver to obtain their court
ordered maintenance, Although
the project began in April of
1985, only about 400 files have
been opened. ‘We had original-
ly assumed a lot more people
would have participated, around
1000,’? Edelman said. ‘‘Perhaps
those who chose not to get in-
volved in the program had old
court orders but had never seen
a cent, and gave up. They may
have decided to make do
without the payments, and seen
trying to obtain them as a waste
of time and effort.”? —

In her experience, court
ordered awards are low, averag-
ing $150 a month for a family of
one or two people seeking
maintenance in provincial court,
although supreme court awards
tend to be higher. A.1986 survey
of child support awards, while
not comprehensive enough to be
statistically significant, also
shows low monthly awards
averaging about $300 a child,
even among high income

Speech and hearing — continued trom page 14

aneseaa eee

Adrienne Braid is the itinerant teacher for hearing Impaired children in
School District 88. Her work takes her to every corner of the district.

proximately 30 to 40 students
about whom Adrienne consults
with their normal teacher. With
the normal teacher, Adrienne
plans a program which can be
implemented without removing
the student from regular class.

Karen Nash and Adrienne
Braid consult together on
specific or difficult cases. They
use each other as sounding
boards. About three times an-
nually, they meet with fellow
professionals from Kitimat,
Prince Rupert, Smithers and
Hazelton for support, to discuss
new ideas and new equipment.
There is no speech pathologist in
Prince Rupert. The speech path-
ologist in Smithers was brought
from Birmingham, England to
fill the position.

Speech pathologists in. B.C.
are in great demand: last years

12 positions were advertised...

throughout the province. The
speech pathology course at UBC
services the provinces of B.C.,
Alberta, Saskatchewan and
Manitoba, and it takes only 15
students annually for the one-
year course. This year only two
people will graduate to’ B.C.
school districts, hospitals and
health centres. In Adrienne’s
five years as teacher of the hear-
ing impaired in Terrace, she has
seen four speech pathologists go
through the local position.
Karen Nash has been here for
two years. © a

Despite the fact that reports
must be written and updated and
teachers and parents kept in-
formed, most of Karen and

. Adrienne’s school time is spent

with the individual students.
‘Our priority is working. with
with kids,’’ explains Adrienne.

earners. .

The average maintenance
award for one child was $305,
for two $586, and for three $826
a month. For a single parent on
income assistance with one

child, monthly benefits range —

from $732 to $782, with two
$871 to $921, and with three
children $973 to $1,023.
Assistance with health care costs

and emergencies could add to.

these benefits. And while the
ideal of equality makes spousal
maintenance less and less com-
mon, the reality of many

‘Columbia also focused on the

savings to the taxpayer, not the
needs of women and children, in
its recommendation: ‘The ob-
jective of any maintenance pro-

_gram should be to render un-
necessary the provision of social
assistance to these individuals by
providing legal counsel to act in

proceedings to obtain or enforce
maintenance payments.”’
Single parents seeking
maintenance will have to know
the program is in place and how
it works in order to benefit.
‘*The program looks good,”

‘What's. the point of trying to get large
awards? They can only keep $100 a month and
the spouse is more likely to pay a lower

amount.”

Rob Watts.

mothers’ paid work history, in-
terrupted or even completely
sacrificed in order to care for
children, means their earning
potential can be severely limited.

If these welfare moms manage
to get even an average order en-
forced, they can only keep $100
of it, income assistance taking
the rest. Bill Anderson, area
manager for the Terrace district

Social Services and Housing, ex- -
plained the $100 limit also ap- .

plied to other income such as
wages, and was put in place so
people could take advantage of
some earnings and make the ef-
fort to find work while still
receiving income assistance.
Rob Watts, who until recently
assisted single parents seeking
maintenance payments, through
the Probations office in Terrace,
said the $100 limit simply en-

 courages income assistance re-

cipients to seek low monthly
payments, as they were more
likely to be successful. ‘“What’s
the point of trying to get large
awards? They can only keep
$100 a month and the spouse is
more likely to pay a lower
amount,”’ he commented.

The system currently in place
often requires single parents to
obtain or enforce maintenance
orders, or risk becoming ineligi-
ble for income assistance. Yet
since the cutbacks to Legal Aid,
many of these same people can-
not get free legal assistance.
Generally speaking, seeking
maintenance from a spouse does
not constitute urgency and thus
won’t be covered by Legal Aid,
even though the applicant meets
the financial eligibility test. ‘‘It’s
crucial to have a lawyer in court
with you if the respondent
comes to court with one,”’ Watts
said. “But in family law, only
contested custody is considered
urgent enough for Legal Aid.”

‘ ‘With the new system, income.

assistance recipients won’t be re-
quired to attend a court case, or
even initiate the action, as the
government has the power to ob-
tain and enforce maintenance.
But Social Services may not
necessarily be an appropriate ad-

support of a\ family ‘but the

‘political objective of. reducing

the welfare rolls, The 1984

‘- Report of: the. Task Force on

Public Legal Services in British

vocate for a single mom on in-
come assistance, if their main
motivation is not the adequate -

Susan Milligan from SCRAPS
(Society for Children’s Rights to
Adequate Parental Support)
said from Vancouver. ‘But

parents will! still have to go .

through the paper work, per-
haps rely on a lawyer to sign
them up. It should be an
automatic system like the one in
Alberta’ where all maintenance
orders are monitored. |

Nancy Zavaglia of Terrace,
who has been lobbying for im-
proved maintenance, agrees. ‘‘It

still puts the responsibilty on the

parent with custody to worry
about maintenance, to be the
heavy,’? she said. Zavaglia’s
main complaint is in how long
it’s taking B.C. to have a pro-
gram operational and available
to all parts of the province. ‘‘For
every day of delay, there are kids
doing without. And I’m not
talking about piano lesons, I’m
talking about the basic
necessities of life, like a warm
winter coat and bringing a lunch
to school every day.”

She also criticized the legal
system for encouraging income
assistance recipients to settle for
low awards, Milligan says judges

stem

are known to give low awardsif

the custodial spouse is on in- ©

come assistance. SCRAPS is. .

bringing forward two resolu-
tions to the National Action
Committee on the. Status of
Women, dealing wiht the issue:
@ That the Department of
Justice develop child support
schedules reflecting the true
economic costs of raising
children; and
'@ That the Department of —
Justice start keeping statistics on
child support orders.
_ The true eceonomic costs. of
. raising children has been
estimated to be about $600-a
month per child, Milligan said.
This is almost twice the average ..
court order and _ significantly
higher than welfare’ s relatively
generous benefits. Foster
parents in B.C. receive a basic
monthly maintenance and
clothing allowance of from $256
to $361 per child, plus additional
per diem rates ranging from $10
to $30, bringing those payments
to between $550 and $1000 a
month for children with special
needs. Average monthly day
- care costs in the lower mainland
are about $400 a month, with
Terrace averaging $300 — and
these child care providers are not
buying the child’s clothing,
school supplies, and meals that
single parents. are expected to
find room for in their monthly
$300 maintenance budget.

The second resolution is im-
portant because single parents
should be informed of what they
can expect to get, and to
demonstrate how low the awards
actually are, Milligan said.

With this information
available to single parents,
however, Social Services may —
have to take full advantage of
their power to obtain and en-
force their clients’ maintenance
orders. Simple economics may
lead their clients to prefer the
relative luxury of welfare.

~ Where

Monday, June 20 — The Terrace Child Development
Centre Soclety welcomes your attendance at their an-
nual general meeting at 7:30 p.m. at 2510 S. Eby, Ter-
race. Individuals seeking nomination as board members
must be members in good standing of the Society at
least 30 days prior to the annual general meeting date.
Memberships can be purchased at the Child Develop-

ment Centre for $2.00.

it’s at...

inn, for nightly —
entertainment. —
3086 Hwy. 16 East
635-6373 |

| FF onthern
MOTOR
=INNZ=!

REEL R AN BEER SORE

May 23 to June 4

Garry Garnet
and Son