FSSA: Agencies work for clients' benefits

By Brandi Watters

August 20, 2008 08:57 pm

— ANDERSON — Amy Bond is not a state employee. She is not a social worker. And she isn’t trained to help people get food stamps.
But, according to Bond, she spends much of her time at St. Vincent Mercy Hospital in Elwood focused on Medicaid and food stamps.
“Over half of my day, almost every day,” Bond said, describing the amount of time she pours into helping local residents get state aid.
Food stamps and Medicaid, she said, are simply an added task in response to the recent modernization of the state welfare system. “The bulk of my time is subsequently spent with Medicaid because word gets out that somebody can help you.”
Bond’s story is echoed across the state as local service agencies participating in the state’s Voluntary Community Assistance Network, or V-CAN, field requests for help from welfare clients in response to welfare modernization.
The state underwent a modernization of the welfare system at the start of the year, rolling out the program in 12 pilot counties including Madison County.
Hoping to streamline applications processing, state officials instituted a 1-800 number and a Web site application process for those wishing to get food stamps, Medicaid and other welfare assistance.
IBM and Affiliated Computer Services were awarded a $1.16 billion contract to process applications over the next 10 years, effectively privatizing the state’s welfare system. The move was expected to save the state $500 million over the next decade.
On Wednesday, around one dozen local V-CAN representatives participated in a modernization tutorial hosted at Ivy Tech in Anderson. The session was aimed at helping them help others navigate the new welfare system.
Zach Main, director of the Division of Family Resources for the Indiana Family and Social Services Agency, or FSSA, said V-CAN was started as part of the rollout.
The idea, he said, was to create more access points for needy Hoosiers hoping to apply for state welfare assistance.
To date, there are 494 access points across the state where clients can access a phone, telephone or fax machine in order to send in or complete welfare applications, according to the FSSA.
Area agencies participating in the V-CAN include hospitals, township trustees, nursing homes, food pantries, homeless shelters, information and referral agencies, community centers, disability and mental health agencies and housing groups.
These groups provide assistance to those who cannot navigate the modernized system on their own.
Those providing access points and assistance to the state, however, are not being compensated for the time they spend working with clients, Main said. “The Voluntary Community Assistance Network is a volunteer network. The modernization system would still work if we didn’t build the V-CAN network.”
According to FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob, an informal V-CAN network has always existed in service agencies and hospitals. “A lot of these people were doing this work before with no training. Now, they’re doing it with training.”
Hospitals, he said, are particularly invested in helping clients get Medicaid since the state welfare system is a “payer.”
Other agencies, though, do not see any benefit for the man-hours spent helping clients get enrolled.
Food banks, he said, are currently suffering due to a lagging economy and limited donations.
“I think we need to think about how to specifically help food banks. They’re the one provider group in this which have really gotten under a lot of stress. It’s much more difficult for food banks today than two years ago.”
Despite devoting hours to helping people enroll in welfare programs, food banks and libraries, he said, do not see a direct benefit and compensation is not provided by the state.
“The guys who get nothing out of being V-CAN, other than the fact that they view it as their general mission, are libraries. The food banks are largely the same because they’re helping people sign up for food stamps but when they sign up for food stamps, they don’t get any of the money.”
While most caseworkers have been taken out of the picture, Main said, clients can still find caseworkers in each county office willing to help clients navigate the system. The system does not rely on the work done by those in the V-CAN system.
With more than 400 access points available to clients across the state, Main said the state has increased the places where clients can get services by 500 percent.
Wednesday, Bond said that being part of the V-CAN network at the start of the rollout was no small feat. “At the beginning, (it was) absolute chaos.”
Bond found that documents were lost in the new system and has since started writing clients’ Social Security numbers on each form to ensure documents end up in the right place. “Here lately, I haven’t really had a problem with them recently because I put the numbers on the bottom, I think.”
V-CAN training at Ivy Tech on Wednesday was a welcome gesture by the state, she said. “I got a lot of good knowledge from today.”
Main acknowledged that FSSA has had to make continuous improvements to the system since its launch.
While Main said that “documents are not getting lost,” state workers may have been taking too long to get the documents entered into the computer system set up to process applications. “Were we taking too long to attach those? Probably.”
Now, he said, state workers are filing application data within three business days.
As for the modernization of the welfare system, Bond is optimistic. “I think it has really good intentions and with a little more work on the kinks, it should be a good thing.”
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FSSA Facts:
To date, the Indiana Family and Social Services Agency has received 1.7 million calls about welfare programs to its call center and more than 40,000 online applications have been submitted.
Almost 900,000 hard-copy documents have been received and scanned.
Apply for welfare benefits online: www.in.gov/fssa
Source: Family and Social Services Agency

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