Wait times for social services draw fire

New Haven Register (CT)

Aug. 07--NEW HAVEN -- Frustrated with being put on hold for long periods of time by personnel at the Department of Social Services' Call Centers, more than 75 people were outside Friday morning waiting for the regional office to open for an update on their benefits.

They mostly had unresolved questions on SNAP (food stamp) benefits.

The line at 7:30 a.m. extended to the end of the building with little respite from the 90-degree temperatures as young and old, some with children in tow, waited for the office to open at 9 a.m. to get a shot at talking to a live person.

The latest data from DSS indicates that the average phone wait time was 96 to 107 minutes for the call centers -- February through May -- although many reported it was longer and in the end they still did not get the answers they were seeking.

Karla Arias of Ansonia nailed the third place in line by arriving at the Humphrey Street offices by 6 a.m.

She was looking to renew SNAP benefits for herself and her 11-month-old and had to show some paperwork. Arias knew she could get shut out if she didn't come early enough. She said getting answers on the phone can take up to three hours.

A man from New Haven said he had to come back a second time because they could not find the paperwork he had sent in. On the second visit, they were able to retrieve it.

"If they were doing their job in the first place, I wouldn't have had to come back," he said.

Another individual said the DSS worker interviewing her for food stamp renewal hung up on her, necessitating her to come to the New Haven office to complete the form.

She said she was missing a day's work at her temp job to resolve the issue.

The Call Centers, also known as the Benefits Center, were put in place in 2013 instead of the caseload approach, in which recipients were assigned an individual worker.

Almost three-dozen agencies and advocates wrote to DSS Commissioner Roderick Bremby at the end of June characterizing the wait times as "wholly unacceptable."

Staying on hold for hours is not possible for people who have to get to work or for those with limited phone card capacity, Sheldon Toubman of New Haven Legal Aid Assistance said.

The Call Center is the "point of entry for someone with a disability to request an accommodation and a wait time of nearly two hours is clearly a barrier to exercising rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act," the advocates wrote.

"It is the ony point of access for conducting mandated interviewing for SNAP" and some other benefits, they said in their letter.

DSS is the only place where the elderly and disabled can apply for HUSKY C, the Medicare Savings Program and MedConnect, according to advocates.

Bremley said the limitations on access noted by the advocates are incorrect.

"All DSS clients can come into any of the DSS field offices in person. Applications are accepted by mail, in person and online -- in fact we do not take applications over the phone through the Benefits Center," Bremley wrote. "Upon receipt of a SNAP application or renewal form, the Department proactively calls those who need an interview."

He challenged them on "widespread reports" that the department has wrongfully terminated people who have done "everything right."

Mory Hernandez, who works for the Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition, said in his experience it it nearly impossible to get service at the Bridgeport office after 11:30 a.m. with people told to come back the next day. He said this is hard on the disabled and those taking public transportation.

Shonda Moore, 38, was told her renewal for food stamps was fine only to be notified later that it had been cut off. She said this is what brought her to New Haven early Friday morning.

The advocates, in their letter, said the Call Centers are necessary to restoring benefits that were wrongfully terminated when the paperwork that had been sent in was not processed in time.

Audrey Brookes knows the problems from a personal perspective, as well as a professional one having worked in the health care industry for 27 years.

She said she has been trying to get her mother, 94, into a new nursing home for the past two weeks after she was knocked out of her wheelchair and fractured her neck at the facility in which she currently is staying,

Brookes said as far as she knew her mother's insurance had been renewed two months ago, but when she contacted a new facility to care for her mother, she was told the insurance had been rejected because the application lacked two bank statements.

Brookes said she got the statements and after three hours on the phone and offering to fax it over to DSS, was told she had to come into the office. She expected to be there all afternoon.

Brookes said she tried to upload the material, but that didn't work. "I had three people help me and it didn't work. Nothing is working," she said.

"It has been ridulous for years. If anything, it has gotten worse," Brookes said. She said the scanning center they have in Manchester "is a joke."

"Before the scanning center it was fine because you could call an individual worker, which got it right there," she said. After DSS switched to a new computer system in October, she said it has gotten "100 times worse."

"It's sad. Why should young mothers be standing out here in this heat?" Brookes said.

Bremley said they are not satisfied with long wait times, but he said much has been done in the past five years. He said more than 100,000 calls each month are resolved through its new Integrated Voice Response system.

He said these calls are not mentioned in the advocates' letter. He said the department has also seen more than 262,000 MyAccounts created and more than 263,000 online applications filed.

mary.oleary@hearstmediact.com; 203-641-2577

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