Lawmaker Heo Jong-sik calls for immediate information sharing between child protection and allowance payment units
Child allowances for 925 children separated from their parents due to abuse were deposited into the abusive parents' bank accounts, a parliamentary audit has revealed. The total amount paid out came to 1.48 billion won ($1.09 million).
The payments continued because child protection units and child allowance payment units do not share information, meaning separation orders were not reflected in allowance disbursements in time, lawmakers said.
The findings come from an analysis by Heo Jong-sik, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker on the National Assembly's Health and Welfare Committee, of data obtained from the Ministry of Health and Welfare. The data showed that from last year through August this year, 1,802 children receiving child allowances had a record of being placed under protective separation. Of those, 1,458 had an abusive parent — either the father or mother — registered as their allowance guardian.
Of the 1,458 children, 925 — or 63.4 percent — continued to have their allowances paid into the accounts of their abusive parents even after a separation order was issued. The total amount paid to those accounts reached 1.48 billion won. Sixty-eight children had more than 5 million won paid to their abusive parent's account.
Under the Child Allowance Act, local government heads may change the registered guardian receiving allowances on their own authority when a child is separated due to abuse or otherwise requires protection. However, for 615 of the 925 children — 66.5 percent — no such guardian change was ever made. The allowances paid to those children's abusive parents after protective measures were taken totaled 1.12 billion won.
Even in cases where the guardian was eventually changed, the process took considerable time. For the 228 children whose guardian change was confirmed to have occurred after the protective measure, the average time between the separation order and the guardian change was about six months, or 185.5 days. For 56 children, the process took more than a year.
However, 552 of the 925 children had only received a short-term temporary protection measure and may have subsequently returned home. Even setting those cases aside, 373 children had been placed under a formal protection order or a victim child protection order. Their abusive parents' accounts received a combined 644.94 million won ($475,000), and 242 of those children never had their guardian changed.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare acknowledged the problem, saying there were gaps in the legal basis for sharing information on protective measures for abused children with the allowance payment system, and that information sharing between child abuse response units and child allowance payment units had been inadequate.
"Even if a system exists to change the guardian, it is useless if the allowance payment unit does not know a child has been separated," Heo said. "We need to establish a legal basis for protective measure information to be immediately reflected in allowance payments, and all cases where payments have already been made must be reviewed."
oskymoon@heraldcorp.com
