The state’s legislative watchdog agency has recommended the Mississippi Department of Human Services hold their contractors accountable. The vast majority of the child support program under the MDHS was privatized under former Governor Phil Byrant according to a recent PEER report. Between 2015 and 2021 the study cites contracts with the company YoungWilliams did not include accountability measures. Ted Booth is with the legislative review committee PEER and says the focus was on how contracts are processed.
“The older contracts, they could monitor them, but It didn’t look to us like they were sufficiently crafted to be able to deal with performance issues,” Booth said.
The report notes in 2019 MDHS administered the contract in a way that appeared to give preferential treatment to YoungWilliams. The Child Support Program manages statewide services such as determining paternity, establishing support orders and enforcement which are legal services. YoungWilliams also handles the call center. The study takes issue with how all the services were contracted together.
“They used a legal service procurement method when a certain portion of the project when a certain portion of the work was non-legal services, which meant they followed a different route for getting approval of the process. That was a matter of concern for us,” Booth said.
Booth says the report recommends the legislature require separate contracts and approval processes in such cases. He says the recent company contract for 2022 - 2026 under the new administration at MDHS, is an improvement with performance targets that must be met.
In a statement MDHS wrote it is satisfied that the contract is a good investment of the taxpayers’ money in this important program.
