This will eliminate another 130,000 interviews per year, Surgener said, or 11,000 calls monthly.

In all, the new changes are expected to eliminate 390,000 interviews annually.

Though news of the changes was welcome, Denny Lanane of United Senior Action, a senior advocacy group, admits skepticism about the potential for improvement.

“We still think it’s going to be a system that’s going to have a lot of problems,” Lanane said.

Though FSSA maintains that the complaints aired by Lanane and other advocates had nothing to do with the changes, Lanane said he believes the state was swayed.

“To me, it’s an admission that the system wasn’t working the way they were doing it,” he said, “and they’re responding to public pressure because we’ve had press conferences all over the state. We’ve continually brought up to different communities all the problems that everyone’s having.”

Lanane said the system would not adequately serve its clients until case managers who deal with individual clients are returned to the system. Modernization eliminated one-on-one case workers, even for those clients who are elderly or disabled.

Clients must now find authorized representatives to handle their benefits applications if they cannot do so themselves.

In the case of seniors, the responsibility to get benefits for the clients has fallen on workers at area nursing homes. Lanane said he’s heard a myriad of complaints from social workers over-burdened by the application process for Medicaid and other welfare benefits. “I hear the same stories that we’ve been hearing ever since we rolled it out.”

Only 59 Indiana counties currently operate under the modernized welfare system, and Surgener said 33 counties remain under the old system. FSSA has not yet set a time frame for the rollout of the remaining counties.

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Madison County residents receiving food stamps

May 13,648

June 14,498

July 15,330