seized, spending weekends and evenings in a detention centre or being sentenced to community service.

Jailing delinquent fathers should be a last resort so their ability to earn and pay is not cut off, a new Government paper on court-ordered child support states.

The paper says Bermuda's fathers are among the most delinquent in the world in refusing to financially support their children.

Presented by Health and Social Services Minister the Hon. Quinton Edness in the House of Assembly last Friday, the paper contains a number of recommendations the Ministry plans to carry out to toughen up methods of collecting child support.

Single Parents in Action, formed last year by frustrated mothers and a few fathers, welcomed the paper yesterday saying it lifts some of the burden of securing payments off the custodial parent's shoulders.

But the group's spokesman Ms Laquita Zuill said she hoped the recommendations would actually be carried out. "We have to make sure that this time around a paper is not all we get,'' she said.

She said she was pleased to see the courts are now starting to jail delinquent dads instead of giving them chance after chance to pay.

"Once they are sent to prison it's amazing how quickly they find the money to pay,'' she said. "They are out within twenty four hours.'' She added the creation of a Family and Child Support Office would also help prevent some mothers from using the system "vindictively''.

"There will be people to take an outside look at individual cases and determine if the father legitimately can't pay,'' she said.

Ms Zuill suggested a further enforcement measure against delinquent dads -- a "stop list'' preventing them from leaving the Island.

"If they can afford to go away they can afford to pay child support,'' she said.

The paper stated 52 percent of parents who are supposed to pay child support failed to do so, "a proportion considerably higher than that of most other jurisdictions''.

The paper, written by a task force of senior staff at the Health and Social Services Ministry and Magistrates Court, also states child support arrears are growing beyond the $8 million level at the staggering rate of nearly $3 million a year.

The Ministry will start carrying out some of the recommendations this month -- including the alternative enforcement measures against delinquent dads.

Improved methods and services to be offered by the new Family and Child Support Office will be implemented in nine to 12 months time.

Although the Magistrates' Court Amendment Act was enacted in 1988 to deal with the problem, the paper admits: "It's passage did not make the difference hoped for''.

It is estimated the additional annual cost to the public of financial aid to single parents through social assistance, housing allowance and foster care is about $1.1 million. The task force's recommendations should save approximately $2 million over a five year period, the paper said.

It was also noted that the total cost of providing care for children today "far exceeds'' the maintenance awards being ordered, which on average are substantially less than the $86 a week provided by Social Services for children in care of foster parents.

The task force recommended: A Family and Child Support Office be created with a staff of four.

More decisions concerning child support be taken administratively instead of by busy magistrates.

Giving Government the power to act on a parent's behalf as soon as a payment is missed.

Creating a system of ensuring the level of payments automatically adjusts to changes in the cost of living.