Discouraged TANF Applicants: Eligibility in the Brooks Case

The Shriver Center’s welfare advocacy attorneys have been working for years to challenge the Illinois Department of Human Services’ (the Department) illegal practice of whittling away at its welfare caseload by misleading people in need of public assistance into believing that they are ineligible for benefits.  Thus many eligible people either do not apply for assistance or abandon their applications. This policy is exemplified in the recent cases of Latisha and Jasmine Brooks, two cousins originally from Bloomington, Illinois, in which the Shriver Center was able to successfully challenge this illegal practice.

Latisha Brooks was seven months pregnant and living in a shelter for battered women and their children when she was referred to the Shriver Center for help with her public assistance application. The Center learned that although she was fully eligible to receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance, Latisha Brooks was only receiving Food Stamps and Medicaid. When asked why she wasn’t receiving TANF, Ms. Brooks had this to say: “In Bloomington you have to be on bed rest to get cash.”  That is what Latisha Brooks was told in the McLean County Office that serves Bloomington, discouraging her from even applying for TANF.  It is not correct Department policy – there is no such limitation on eligibility for TANF, and Latisha Brooks was in fact eligible for assistance.

Unfortunately, Latisha Brooks wasn’t the only person in Bloomington who was misled about her eligibility for TANF cash assistance; her cousin Jasmine Brooks was told the same thing by a caseworker in the McLean County local office of the Department when she too tried to apply for TANF after becoming pregnant.

People like the Brooks cousins who are misled about their eligibility or discouraged from applying for benefits at all often believe that there is nothing to be done after the fact.  That is not the case, however, because the appeals system is designed to rectify all kinds of errors after the fact.  The Shriver Center filed an appeal on behalf of Latisha and Jasmine Brooks and sought benefits dating back to the Brooks cousins’ first attempts to apply for TANF.  The Department settled Latisha Brooks’s case, which by then had been transferred to the Western Local Office in Chicago. Jasmine Brooks’s case remained with the McLean County Local Office, which refused to settle the case and issue her the back benefits to which she was entitled.  After a fair hearing, the administrative hearing officer found that Jasmine Brooks had been misled and wrongly denied the opportunity to apply for benefits for which she was eligible.  The Department paid Jasmine Brooks back benefits.

The story of Latisha and Jasmine Brooks is not unique.  It is consistent with many stories the Shriver Center has heard over recent years from clients and from organizations that work directly with large numbers of clients who attempt to access the TANF program when they are in need.  Top officials in the Illinois Department of Human Services agree that this practice should not be happening and that Department policy should be followed in all cases.  The Department and the Shriver Center are currently working together to assemble data to determine the scope of the problem, and they are hoping to use those figures to design a way to eliminate the practice of diverting eligible clients from receiving the benefits that they need to survive. 

The Shriver Center wants to know if you or anyone you know was not allowed to apply or diverted from applying for benefits despite financial and categorical eligibility. Please contact Aleeza Strubel at (312) 263-3830 ext. 229 , for more information or to report new cases.