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Diana Cornwell is pleased to hear about changes to the welfare eligibility process, but they don’t erase the fact that a problem-plagued system eliminated her food stamp assistance for three months this year, sending the single mother of three to a food bank.
Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2000 and unable to work since 2004, Cornwell is set for a welfare recertification interview on Tuesday, when a call center employee is supposed to contact her between 2 and 4 p.m. If she misses the call or the employee doesn’t call, she fears it could trigger the same problems she experienced last summer, when she had to use money earmarked for utility bills to buy food. As a result, her gas service was disconnected.
Cornwell’s experience isn’t rare, unfortunately. Since Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration began rolling out the so-called welfare modernization, stories of missed phone interviews, lost paperwork and dropped benefits have become legion. They are undoubtedly a factor in the demand on area food pantries and soup kitchens.
Changes announced last week should reduce those problems. FSSA will streamline the eligibility process by reducing the number of questions on the application form and by eliminating some follow-up interview requirements. Food stamp recipients will be interviewed once a year instead of every six months. Clients with disabilities, like Cornwell, will be interviewed once every two years, as will seniors.
“These are great improvements on paper,” Rep. Suzanne Crouch, R-Evansville, told the Associated Press. “But we need to make sure they are improving the actual process.”
Dan Skinner, a Frankton resident who volunteers his time helping clients who lose their benefits, was more skeptical.
“Yes, it will help,” he said. “But it doesn’t get at the core problem of an antiquated computer system and of personnel not equipped to help.”
Skinner said hospitals, nursing homes and social service agencies have employees “working their hearts out to get help for people.”
In 2007, the state signed a $1.6 billion, 10-year contract with IBM Corp. and Affiliated Computer Services to implement the call center system and Web application program, mostly replacing the caseworkers in county offices. The system, which has been rolled out in all but 33 counties, works for some of the 1.1 million welfare clients, but it has been especially troublesome for older residents and those with cognitive disabilities that make it difficult to navigate a phone system or Web site.
The changes are expected to reduce the number of phone interviews with aid recipients by 32,000 a month. That will ease the bottleneck and reduce the opportunity for lost information, but it still leaves vulnerable Hoosiers at the mercy of call center workers who appear to be overwhelmed or unauthorized to help.
“I miss my caseworker. It’s nice having someone actually be nice to you,” said Cornwell, a Fort Wayne resident.
The FSSA employee formerly assigned to her from the state’s Rudisill Boulevard office had a disability himself and seemed to demonstrate empathy for her struggles. By contrast, she had to plead her case last summer to a call center worker who tersely told her she was going to have to be patient because “there are a lot of people in this situation.”
An FSSA spokeswoman said last week that the changes weren’t made in response to complaints from lawmakers but were just a part of the “ongoing development of the system.”
In the upcoming session, legislators should be prepared to speak more loudly to ensure that FSSA comes up with more than a Band-Aid fix to a system that is likely to continue shortchanging needy Hoosiers until its fundamental flaws are addressed.
