Georgia’s social service agency is scrapping much of its flawed call-in system for food stamps and Medicaid, which has left thousands of people unable to get through on the phone to receive benefits, officials said Tuesday.
The state Division of Family and Children Services will be switching to a new system over the next year that augments the centralized phone line with work at county DFCS offices.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has presented numerous reports on the failed system over the last year, which was so bad that federal officials threatened to pull millions of dollars in administrative funding for Georgia.
But one expert who has studied the Georgia system for a decade worried that the new system will not have the needed staffing to make it successful.
“Unless they boost the workforce at the county level, workers will just end up with high caseloads, and they’ll just be moving the location of the gridlock,” said David Super, a Georgetown law professor.
The centralized call-in system, which came fully online in 2013 after an 18-month phase-in, has been a frustrating failure. Callers can be on hold for hours and thousands of calls go unanswered every month.
That is more than a mere annoyance: Last year, the broken food stamp system caused thousands of Georgians to lose their food stamp benefits or be blocked from applying. The federal government, which funds the food stamp program that the state manages, threatened to cut upwards of $76 million in administrative funding unless the state fixed a huge backlog of cases.
The state spent millions of dollars on employee overtime to bring down the backlog to assuage the feds, which did not pull its funding. It also attempted to fix the system, expanding the potential volume of calls it could handle. But that simply opened a flood gate of additional calls, which the state did not have adequate staff to handle.
The average wait time to get through on the call-in line stands at 41 minutes, with some people waiting longer than four hours on the phone, said DFCS spokeswoman Ashley Fielding. Consequently, people either hang up or are cut off in upwards of 70 percent of the calls, she said.
“Our hold times are not acceptable,” she said.
The food stamp program, formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, is funded and overseen by the U.S. Agriculture Department.
“USDA is actively working with the state to identify needed changes to ensure SNAP services are delivered in a timely fashion,” a spokesperson said in a written statement. “We have made clear our expectations — the state must take immediate steps to address the urgent need for improvement in access to SNAP benefits for eligible applicants.”
The call-in center has been the primary means to reach the state for people receiving food stamps, Medicaid and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Food stamp recipient Dionne Horn looks forward to the new system, saying the central call-in line has “just been a disaster.”
Horn, who is a single full-time student with one daughter, has had several instances when she could not get through on the phone and consequently had her food stamp benefits cancelled. She went months without benefits at times, leaving her and her daughter to often eat Ramen noodles.
“I wish they would never have changed the system in the first place,” said Horn.
DFCS Director Bobby Cagle wants largely to move back to the former system, in which many cases were handled by caseworkers at county DFCS offices. Under the new system, people will call or visit the county office for their initial interview and renewal of benefits. They will use the call-in center to report changes in their case, such as an increase in income or rent.
One caseworker will be responsible for one case at the county level, rather than the current system that works like an assembly line in which up to 15 workers handle a case. Officials believe the new system, which will begin phasing in within three months, will increase access and accountability.
“We need to stop daily assignments of work which lead to duplicate efforts and lack of accountability,” said DFCS Deputy Director Jon Anderson in a memo to staff Friday, which was obtained by the AJC. “Each case manager will ‘own’ the case from start to finish.”
Having one worker take responsibility for a case is also expected to increase the accuracy of the benefits received by people, Fielding said.
Last year, the AJC reported that Georgia wasted millions of dollars each year — about $138 million in 2013 — in overpayments to people who receive food stamps. The overpayments are partly offset by mistakes that result in underpayments to other recipients, but overpayments involve much more money, according to figures the AJC obtained from the state.
Super, the Georgetown professor, said there were problems with calls getting through even under the old system of handling cases at the county level. Workers’ voice mails overfilled and people were not getting called back, he said. In recent years, the state trimmed its county workforce as it centralized functions.
Fielding, the DFCS spokeswoman, said numerous workers who had been dedicated to the call-in line will be shifted to the county work. She also said the food stamp program has increased the number of full-time workers by about 600, or one-third, in the past year.
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