Published: July 26, 2008 09:20 pm         

Welfare concerns prompt forum

TERRE HAUTE — Opponents of Indiana’s new partially privatized welfare intake system are asking to hear from people with concerns about the new system at a meeting this week in Terre Haute.

The forum, set for 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday at Chauncey Rose Middle School, is designed to give people who have lost food stamp or Medicaid benefits a chance to speak out, organizers said.

“We want to hear from local people that have been affected by this,” said Glenn Cardwell, former Vigo County director of Family and Children Services and an organizer of the event.

The new welfare intake system, which allows welfare clients to apply for benefits over the telephone or on the Internet, is “just not working for a lot of people,” Cardwell said. Many welfare clients are not computer savvy and have trouble with the telephone application system, Cardwell said. “If you know the client group, you wouldn’t use this kind of system,” he said.

While telephone and Internet applications are now available, no one is being forced to apply for welfare benefits in those ways, responds Zach Main, deputy director of the Division of Family Resources for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration. Welfare offices remain open around the state, including in Terre Haute at The Meadows shopping center, where prospective welfare recipients can meet caseworkers face-to-face, he said.

Allowing clients to apply online or on the telephone simply makes the system more convenient, Main said. Under the old system, clients complained that they had to meet with caseworkers face-to-face in welfare offices during regular state office business hours, he said. “We had, from a customer service perspective, a broken system,” Main said.

Yet Cardwell believes the new system is leading to an increase in denials of benefits because welfare recipients are becoming frustrated with long waits on the telephone or because caseworkers have no incentive to work with a client long enough to ensure applications are processed correctly. Some clients have to wait on hold up to 45 minutes, Cardwell said.

“Can poor people use the system?” Cardwell asks. “I feel like that ought to be the final test,” he said.

But average telephone wait times are “nowhere near 45 minutes,” Main responds. The average wait time has been under five minutes during the past several weeks, he said. Longer wait times can happen, “but that’s certainly not the norm,” he added.

The state’s contract with IBM, the company running the new intake system, provides an incentive for the company to be error-free no less than 95-percent of the time, Main said. The contract requires intake workers to follow a new employee manual and rule correctly on benefits, he said. “There is absolutely no incentive for them to say no [on benefits] when they should say yes,” he said.

But, according to Cardwell, the Hoosier counties where the new system first was introduced have seen a decline in food stamp recipients. The 12 pilot counties where the new system was launched have seen their food stamp roles fall 8.3 percent, he notes. This means Indiana is getting back fewer of the dollars Hoosiers pay in federal taxes, he said. Food stamps are paid for with “100 percent federal money,” Cardwell said.

But Main believes the decline in food stamps in the pilot counties could simply be because the new system is rooting out people who were not qualified. The second goal of the new intake system is to make the application process more accurate and uniform across the state, he said.

“The idea that we are somehow, we are just denying applications for no good reason, is not correct.” Main said. “We are making decisions now as of the letter and the spirit of the law,” he said.

Town hall meetings to discuss the new intake system have taken place in Bloomington, Muncie and Anderson, Cardwell said. The Muncie meeting attracted 500 people, he said, while the other two meetings attracted around 150 people.

Indiana signed a 10-year, $1.16-billion contract with IBM to take over the state’s welfare intake system, Main said. Many former state employees were offered jobs with the IBM subsidiary operating the new system, he said. The new system will save the state around $490 million over 10 years, Main said.

Arthur Foulkes can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.





Check it out

What: Community Forum on the new welfare intake system

When: 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Chauncey Rose Middle School at 1275 Third Ave.