Net Loss: State social services falter, just when state residents need them most

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Net Loss
State social services falter, just when state residents need them most

Frank Klein

Marylanders seeking help flood the Baltimore County office of the State Department of Social Services on a recent morning.

By Erin Sullivan | Posted 11/4/2009

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It's 7:58 a.m. Monday morning at the Baltimore County Department of Social Services office at Drumcastle Center in Towson. The waiting room is quickly filling with people who've come to apply for food stamps, temporary cash assistance, energy assistance, and other public benefits. There's already a line five people deep at the energy-assistance desk, and a group gathers around the ticket machine that doles out numbers for those waiting for service.

Stephanie F. has come here with her mother today. She is 33 years old and unemployed. She lost her job as a pharmacy technician in February and represents a new generation of social-services consumer--the middle-income worker who never imagined themselves applying for welfare.

Shortly after she lost her job, Stephanie says, she had difficulty making her money stretch. She had to pay rent, buy food, and cover bills, and there was simply no way she was going to be able to afford to buy health insurance on her own. She says she comes from a family that has always worked to support itself--her mother worked in medical billing, her father was in the military and now works at the Port of Baltimore--and the very idea of applying for public assistance was humiliating.

She thought about it. She cried over it. Finally, she came to terms with it, and made a trip to Social Services to fill out the paperwork.

"I went in and applied for everything," she says. "But I was only approved for food stamps. I was not disabled, and I don't have children, so I couldn't get cash or medical assistance. Because I am single, I could only get food stamps."

Still, she was grateful for that little bit of help. While it lasted.

Food stamps, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is a federal/state program that provides up to $200 per month for qualifying individuals and $668 per month for a family of four to purchase food. The benefits are loaded onto a debit card for use at grocery stores and markets.

As with similar social "safety net" programs, such as temporary cash assistance and Medicaid, the processing of food-stamp applications is supposed to be fast. According to the laws regulating all three of these programs, applications should be processed within 30 days from the date they're filed. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen, and a growing number of Marylanders say they are not receiving answers about their applications for weeks, or even months, past that 30-day mark. These delays come at a time when the number of Marylanders who find themselves out of work for the first time in their lives, unable to find jobs that can cover the bills, unable to afford even the most basic staples, is growing as well.

Stephanie says she applied in March, but it took more than two months of frequent visits to the office (two to three times per week, every week, she says) and phone calls to case managers and supervisors before the Department of Social Services finally approved her in May. In the interim, she found herself at food banks and relying on help from her family to feed herself, barely scraping by.

With the exception of certain special-needs cases, individuals who receive food stamps must re-apply every six months to prove they're still eligible. Again, this process is supposed to be fast, but as Stephanie found out, that doesn't mean it will be. She says that as the six-month mark approached, she was worried that she hadn't received notification from the Department of Social Services about what she needed to do.

"I knew [the deadline was] coming up, because I was keeping track," she says. "So I called, and they sent me an application to fill out. I brought it in, but they lost it. I had a receipt, even. But I called and I called, and they never even called me back. It's been two months now, and this issue is not resolved yet."

So once again, she's making multiple trips per week to the Department of Social Services, sitting all morning and well into the afternoon waiting for someone to see her.

Stephanie's mother, who has come along to offer moral support, carries a lunch-bag cooler with supplies to get them through. The two have settled into the plastic-seated chairs lined up in rows in the crowded room.

Signs posted on the door and along the wall alert people that delays should be expected, as the number of applications for assistance has been on the rise recently, due to the depressed economy.

Right now, a digital display says that number 65 is being served. "I got 98," Stephanie sighs. The morning crawls along, and at 8:45, the machine finally jumps to 66.

"I waited one day from 7:30 in the morning to 3:30 in the afternoon," Stephanie says, "and when I finally got to be seen, I was told I had to go see another person, so sit back down and wait."

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stanleydevoe

1 comments.

Member since 11/4/2009

Why looking for a job? why dont you get a degree in Medical Assistant and I have heard people get paid like $15/hr to $100/hr look at http://bit.ly/3ZRQwI

Posted 11.4.2009 12:16 AM

kdoggy325

Guest

Been there, done that. I was laid off in June and was denied because the Essex office didn't bother to verify everything. I requested a hearing and was finally approved in October. I received my recertification letter 2 weeks later and tried to contact my worker. The worker hadn't set up voicemail and didn't return messages I left with the front desk. I work part-time in the morning and cannot sit in their office for hours, so I sent all of my recertification paperwork by certified mail. All this for about $60 a month food stamps. I still haven't heard from energy assistance and I applied for that in July. Child support is no help either. You can only get rent assistance enough for barely a month's rent. I don't know how they expect people to exist and Drumcastle Center is one of the better DSS offices. Essex is a craphole.

Posted 11.5.2009 12:19 PM

Rocket88

42 comments.

Member since 8/14/2006

You would think they could find a name plaintiff more sympathetic that Miracyle Thompson. Here's an idea: when you don't earn enough to support the children you have, DON'T HAVE ANOTHER ONE. You're welcome. You can dismiss your suit now.

The fact is that every government agency, state and local, has had staffing shortages as a result of the budgetary crisis. I'm not sure why food stamp recipients clerks should be preferred to, say, police officers, firemen, prosecutors, public defenders, bridge inspectors, highway engineers, public health nurses, or math teachers. Since virtually everyone benefits from "first responders," education, infrastructure, and public health, in fact, it seems to me that diverting even money from those agencies to beef up the staffing for the Department of Social Services is, in fact, the opposite of rational public policy -- "the greatest good for the greatest number."

I am not someone who bashes the poor, or social service programs. I am all in favor of TANF, food stamps, Section 8 programs, etc. Ii have sympathy for people who lose their jobs and suddenly find themselves depending on social services programs. But it doesn't make any sense that these programs should be excluded from the same reductions that all other State programs are enduring.

Unless someone here is going to build a time machine, return to the Ehrlich or second Glendenning Administration, and start imposing the budgetary discipline that Maryland hasn't imposed until recently, it makes no sense to simply demand that the State spend money it doesn't have to bolster a set of programs that only benefit a portion of the population, when all other programs are suffering.

Posted 11.8.2009 9:42 PM

hd

3 comments.

Member since 5/10/2007

I am writing with regard to the article “Net Loss” and more specifically, the comment that “if they’re overwhelmed, they should just hire more staff.” She’s right, it’s never that easy. FY10 budget cuts have resulted in a catastrophic loss of services provided by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Mental Hygiene Administration, which has translated to a drastic reduction in the number of licensed mental health professionals who provide services to a wide variety of consumers. Not only did I not survive a round of lay-offs, because of the timing of the budget cut I will have less than two weeks in which to tell my patients that their programs have been cut and assist them in finding new resources before November 15. Resources, such as local Departments of Social Services, that will almost certainly become paralyzed (if they were simply overwhelmed before!) by the sheer numbers of people who will be turned away from programs that had been providing them with food, shelter, mental health, and chemical dependency services and forced to spend their days in line at their local DSS office, joining the thousands of others whose applications have become critically delayed as a result of the lack of staffing, both at the professional and administrative levels.

Every social service available in this state has and will continue to suffer as a result of budgetary reductions, until we collectively begin to fight back and demand that the state restore funding to the programs designed to help our most vulnerable populations.

Posted 11.8.2009 10:11 PM

CY

Guest

I didn't write this, but I agree with it:

Point A: There are an overwhelming number of jobless Maryland residents seeking the aid of "safety net" benefits while job hunting and making ends meet.

Point B: There are not enough caseworkers to handle the influx of applications from unemployed residents.

...

Um...

...is it just me or is there a fairly clear solution to this problem?

Posted 11.9.2009 4:07 PM

MB

Guest

What this article fails to mention is the major abuse of these state assistance services. I can't wrap my head around the fact that people who honestly deserve said services have to go to such extreme measures to get them but every time I go to a grocery store in Baltimore City the person in line in front of my is buying not only their groceries but someone else’s all on the same independence card. As soon as they leave the grocery store, they part directions so it's fairly safe to say they are not together/family. Once a woman used her independence card to buy two grocery carts full of food for herself and another grown woman then went outside and loaded the groceries up in her shinny Cadillac SUV. This week my boyfriend was in Giant when a man approached him and offered to buy his groceries on an independence card if my boyfriend would in turn give him some cash. How do people like this get food stamps and people like Stephanie who actually need it don’t? How much money is wasted giving people food stamps that don't need/use them for what they are suppose to be used for? I was appalled to learn that you could buy crabs with your independence card. I can't afford to buy crabs for myself and I work full time, how can you justify buying crabs with an independence card? I don't consider crabs a nutritional necessity, they are a luxury if you can afford it. I've got an idea to create jobs, hire people to monitor grocery stores and report people who abuse food stamps. Free up caseworker loads of the people who abuse the system so caseworkers can devote time to those who actually need it.

Posted 11.10.2009 10:28 AM