Clients raise concerns over spousal, child support collection program

HALIFAX – A dozen Nova Scotians took part in a focus group this week to discuss ways of improving the province’s Maintenance Enforcement Program (MEP).

The program collects court-ordered spousal and child support payments, and the focus group on Monday was part of a review looking into the program’s policies and effectiveness.

Gwen Williams, one of the 12 MEP clients who got involved, said she found out about the focus group a week before it was held.

“I don’t really feel like they wanted to really hear what we had to say, because there’s so few people there who didn’t know about it until the last minute,” she said. “The report that they’re going to do to bring some changes is due in a couple of months and it’s too little, too late.”

The review is expected to be completed by the spring.

Duncan Wetzel, another client, said he also worries the focus group wasn’t properly advertised and was held too late.

“It feels like a last-ditch effort, we need to get input from clients, we’re going to put this on, we’re not really going to contact anybody,” he said.

There are 33,204 clients signed up with MEP in Nova Scotia. Wetzel said while he worries the 12-member focus group was too small to be fully representative, he believes those who took part raised several important issues with the program — issues he hopes will be included in the review.

“The main concerns, despite the differences in their situations, were all similar,” said Wetzel. “I think everybody walked away with the feeling that there’s some issues here that need to be addressed.”

Wetzel said some of the issues are communication, enforcement and education. Those are all problem areas Williams said she noticed 20 years ago when she first entered the program.

“I don’t want my children, or anybody else, to go through what I went through,” she said.

Williams joined the program in 1995, and said what followed were years of frustration as the program did little to enforce court orders. Now that she is out of the program, Williams advocates for more enforcement.

“It’s almost like you have this wall of silence that’s hiding all these suffering people, and it’s shameful that this has been allowed to continue,” she said. “It can’t continue, it just can’t. Enforcement has to be automatic. There has to be some consequences to a payer not paying.”

MEP officials declined a request to be interviewed. In a statement sent to Global News, a spokesperson with Nova Scotia’s Justice Department said Monday’s focus group was one of the tools used as part of the MEP program review.

“Understanding that a focus group might not be convenient for everyone, we have an online survey available for all MEP clients to complete and provide their feedback,” the statement said.

The online survey can be found here.