took further steps yesterday in its bid to improve the system of collecting child support from deadbeat dads.

It is seeking to update the records on some 2,200 single parents currently listed as collecting child support through the courts.

"We want to see how many of those are real cases,'' Magistrates' Court administrative officer Mr. Tracey Kelly said.

He pointed out many of the single parents listed might no longer need or want the help of the courts in collecting child support. And some of the deadbeat dads and moms might have died or left the Island and their whereabouts was now unknown.

"We just don't have updated information on them,'' he said. In an advertisement in the Official Gazette yesterday, parents with child support orders who are having difficulty receiving payments owed to them are asked to contact the Office of Family and Child Support before December 11.

"The office is in the process of reviewing actions needed on specific files and must have current information on both parents' addresses, phone numbers and employment status and dates of birth for your children,'' the advert said.

Mr. Kelly said the office would then feed the information into a computer. The only records the office currently had were on paper and tucked away in filing cabinets, he said.

The next step in making the collection of child support more efficient, Mr.

Kelly said, was to increase the number of people running the office from two to four.

Since the office was set up earlier this year, some $2.3 million of the $8 million in maintenance arrears has been collected. That is $223,000 more than was collected last year.

Mr. Kelly told The Royal Gazette last month that bailiffs are now able to do their jobs more efficiently under the new Family and Child Support Office.

The office brings parents together to discuss problems and works out reasonable answers.

But it also allows bailiffs to take immediate action against parents, mostly fathers, who fail to meeting maintenance payments.

The courts are also given powers to prosecute non-paying fathers. In the past it was up to the mother to take court action.