HARRISBURG — Some Pennsylvania families who need the government’s help to collect child support received unwelcome news in the mail this summer: They must now help defray the cost of that service.

The Department of Public Welfare has sent out notices informing parents it will deduct a $25 annual fee from child support payments to custodial parents who receive at least $2,000 a year and who have never received cash assistance welfare benefits.

As small as that may seem, Rep. Kate Harper considers it a big deal for single parents who struggle to feed, clothe and shelter their children — and an outrage for the government to take any money intended to fulfill a child’s basic needs.

“These people are taxpayers — this is their own money,” said Harper, R-Montgomery. “This is one parent paying to another parent for the benefit of their children.”

The fee is collected on a per-case basis, meaning that parents with more than one child-support case in Pennsylvania will pay the fee for each case.

Harper hopes the outcry from affected parents will be loud enough to prompt her colleagues to support legislation she introduced last month to repeal the fee. But persuading Democrats who control the House to revisit the issue in an election-shortened fall session will be a tough sell.

All states are being required to collect the fee under the federal Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which Congress passed to slow the growth of benefit programs such as Medicaid and student loan subsidies.

The states have the option of paying the costs, charging the custodial parent, or charging the noncustodial parent. Two-thirds of the fee goes to the federal government; the states keep the rest.

Like most other states, Pennsylvania has chosen to place the burden on the custodial parent under a bill signed by Gov. Ed Rendell in May.

The federal law requires the fee to be paid when states have collected at least $500 on a family’s behalf. Pennsylvania is covering the fee for parents whose yearly child support amounts to less than $2,000, but those who get more have to pay the fee out of their pockets.

In a tight budget year, the state could not afford to absorb the full cost, which would have been $2.6 million for the 2007-08 federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30 and $3.2 million for the next year, welfare department spokeswoman Stacey Witalec said.

Officials determined that the state could more reliably collect the fee from parents who have custody of their children, given that about half of the parents who have been ordered to pay child support are in arrears to the tune of $1.4 billion in all, Witalec said.