Child Support Specialist ; Statewide

Introduction

When you join the Maryland Department of Human Services (DHS), you join a team of more than 5,000 employees across the state dedicated to positively changing the lives of more than one million Marylanders each year. We do this by providing economic support, preventive services, and caring for children and adults. We aim to deliver services so that we more quickly meet the needs of the people we serve.

At DHS, we grapple with hard questions to find new ways to foster a culture of bold innovation. We do this to ensure that in Maryland, we leave no one behind. All approved candidates will be placed on this list of eligible candidates in one Best-Qualified randomized scoring band for at least one year. Placement on this list is not a guarantee that you will be offered an interview for any given vacancy.

This recruitment has been reopened to allow for additional application submissions. If you have already applied and been approved for this recruitment , please do not reapply; your application remains under consideration.

ASTD
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STATEWIDE This Statewide recruitment has been opened to establish a list of eligible candidates to be used to fill current and future vacancies occurring in our Local Departments of Social Services throughout the State. Please indicate the counties in which you are willing to accept employment on your application.

A Child Support Specialist I is the intermediate level of child support work. Employees in this classification investigate and analyze child support cases and initiate appropriate actions to establish, maintain or enforce support payments for dependent children in accordance with applicable federal and State laws, rules and regulations. Employees in this classification perform duties related to establishing paternity and child support orders, negotiating agreements for child support payments and health insurance coverage and maintaining and enforcing the collection of current and past due amounts.

Examples of Work:
Obtains, verifies and analyzes information from custodial and non‑custodial parents, employers, financial institutions, private and governmental resources, health insurance carriers and others and uses that information to locate non‑custodial parents, establish paternity, verify income and assets and determine the ability of non‑custodial parents to pay child support and provide health insurance;
Negotiates voluntary agreements for payment of child support and liquidation of arrears with custodial and non‑custodial parents in accordance with State regulations and guidelines;
Initiates and prepares a variety of documents for administrative or court hearings, such as support payment modifications, wage with holdings, earnings assignments, interstate transmittals, subpoenas, bench warrants and show cause orders in order to collect current or past due child support payments;
Identifies circumstances that contribute to a problem in collecting child support or providing health insurance coverage, determines which private and governmental services and programs, such as mediation services, employment and job counseling services, visitation access program or young fathers’ program address the problem and refers parents to those services and programs;
Monitors the receipt of child support payments and reviews case records and payment activities to determine the need for and type of enforcement activities warranted;
Investigates and resolves disputes resulting from license suspensions, tax intercepts and other remedies used to enforce and collect child support;
Initiates and negotiates establishment and enforcement of new or existing child support orders in out‑of‑state cases;
Prepares and presents testimony for judicial and administrative hearings related to child support enforcement and collection;
Prepares and reviews case records to ensure the validity of information to be presented in court by the legal services attorney;
Maintains and updates case records by using automated systems and case folder documents;
Responds to inquiries from custodial and non‑custodial parents, employers,…