FRANKFORT, Ky. (Sept. 26, 2003) - The Kentucky Cabinet for Families and Children’s Division of Child Support has honored Oldham County Attorney John Fendley as the state’s top-ranking child support contracting official.

At a ceremony Thursday, Cabinet officials announced the state’s top 10 contracting officials, as measured by their combined performance in child support establishment, paternity establishment, current support collection and collection of past-due support. The Cabinet, which administers child support enforcement jointly with its local contractors, rated the performance of contractors in all 120 Kentucky counties during the fiscal year that ended July 1.

In second place for the 2003 fiscal year was the previous year’s top-ranked contractor, Steven Dallas, for his record of child support enforcement in Harrison County. Dallas, a special prosecutor, also handles child support cases in Boone, Owen and Gallatin counties, which also were among the state’s top-performing counties in child support enforcement.

Other honorees, in rank order, are Adair County Attorney Jennifer Hutchinson-Corbin, Allen County Attorney William Hagenbuch Jr., Green County Attorney Jeff Eastham, Lyon County Attorney Lindell Choat, Washington County Attorney Hamilton Simms, Trigg County Attorney H.B. Quinn, Logan County Attorney Thomas Noe and Larue County Attorney Dale Morris.

In most instances, the Kentucky Division of Child Support contracts with a county attorney to administer its work, but in some cases a special prosecutor can be appointed.

Oldham County has had one of the state’s top performing child support programs for several years, but it had never before taken the top spot. Fendley said it was simply a matter of "doing the same thing and getting better at it," and he gave credit to his child support director, Vicki Turner.

Cabinet Secretary Viola Miller said local contractors’ efforts have helped give Kentucky some of the nation’s highest rates of improvement on all measures of child support enforcement. She said the quality of the child support program contributes strongly to the success of other services, including adoption (by helping establish paternity) and the Kentucky Transitional Assistance Program (by helping families obtain financial support that can pave the way to self-sufficiency).

Over the past year, the Cabinet and its local contractors have worked to eliminate duplication of duties. The contractors now bear most responsibility for direct services to clients, while the Cabinet provides technical assistance, case reviews and other forms of support.

Steven Veno, the Cabinet’s child support director, predicted that this division of responsibilities and the collaborative approach that goes with it will mean that, at next year’s award ceremony, "when I read those numbers off, they’ll be even higher" than they were this year.

In previous years, child support establishment, paternity establishment and current support collections were the only measures considered in rating contractors’ performance. Veno said the Cabinet added a measure of arrearage collection to give contractors a goal in an area of child support enforcement that Kentucky and other states have had trouble with.

Each county’s performance rating is based on the ratios of: open child support cases to child support cases with an order for support established; open paternity cases to cases with paternity established; current obligations due to current amount paid; and cases with past-due support owed to cases with past-due support collected. The following table shows these ratios for the county child support programs administered by the top 10 contracting officials.

Rank	County	Establishment	Paternity	Currnet Support	Arrears	Total
1.	Oldham	89.83%	91.63%	70.80%	39.82%	292.08%
2.	Harrison	87.14%	88.09%	68.48%	42.79%	286.50%
3.	Adair	86.20%	92.05%	63.78%	40.51%	282.54%
4.	Boone	87.63%	87.99%	72.78%	32.06%	280.46%
5.	Owen	86.31%	87.05%	66.58%	38.11%	278.05%
6.	Allen	83.43%	86.46%	67.63%	36.88%	274.40%
7.	Green	80.69%	90.36%	61.27%	35.23%	267.55%
8.	Lyon	78.76%	92.79%	64.00%	31.75%	267.30%
9.	Washington	75.90%	85.56%	67.81%	33.63%	292.90%
10.	Trigg	79.91%	86.44%	63.77%	32.62%	262.74%
11.	Logan	87.05%	91.78%	59.02%	24.04%	261.89%
12.	Gallatin	82.22%	83.26%	60.67%	35.14%	261.38%
13.	Larue	74.96%	85.48%	68.25%	32.66%	261.35%