FRO’s Service Standards

The Ministry of Community and Social Services (the Ministry responsible for overseeing the Family Responsibility Office) states that it “is committed to providing consistent high‐ quality, cost effective services, in an open and transparent manner. The Ministry’s objective is to provide accessible, responsive, reliable, caring, and accountable services to serve Ontario’s diverse population.”

Hmmmm. Not one of those adjectives describes my personal experience of this Ministry. In fact, I would use the antonyms of each of those words to describe my interactions with FRO.

What is a service standard?

“A service standard is a public commitment to a level of service that a client/customer can expect, under normal circumstances. Service standards typically address timeliness, accuracy, and accessibility of a government service. Monitoring service standards on an ongoing basis is important to identify the need for adjustments to the standards as necessary. Service standards are meant to be monitored, revised and improved over time so that the government can improve its responsiveness to the public and operate more efficiently.”

The Family Responsibility Office has set their customer service principles and standards as the following –

“We will help our clients and partners meet their court-ordered child and spousal support responsibilities by:

1. developing constructive relationships
2. addressing challenges
3. treating everyone with fairness and respect.

We will:

4. register cases within 30 business days, when all required
information is received and is accurate

5. issue processed payments to recipients within two business days

6. make available all updated case information on the Integrated Voice Response system within five business days.”

The Ministry’s Annual Performance Report, published in the summer of 2013, claims that FRO met  service standards five and six 100% of the time. The report claims FRO met standard number four 62% of the time.

I find that statistic surprising. Do you? Was your case registered within a month? The report says that more than half of all cases are. It took FRO five months to register my case – five times as long as their own service standard requires.

The report fails to evaluate how FRO did with the first three service principles.

I am wondering — how many of you feel you have a constructive relationship with FRO? How many believe they have been treated with fairness and respect?

Standards and principles are meant to be followed. They aren’t supposed to be empty rhetoric. In their Performance Report the Ministry states that “In the coming years, the Ministry will strive for continuous improvement in its service delivery supported by performance measurement.”

Do you have any suggestions we can offer as a client group that would assist FRO in delivering on its stated service principles and standards?