Let’s Get It Right! IDHS Local Offices Bungle File Transfers and Customers Lose Access to Benefits

In recent months the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law has been receiving reports from Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) customers who could not access needed benefits after reporting an address change to their caseworkers. IDHS customers are assigned to local offices on the basis of their zip code. According to IDHS policy, when a customer reports a new address in a zip code serviced by another office, IDHS must transfer the file to the new office and add the customer to the new office’s payroll.

This process rarely goes smoothly. Several months can pass from when a customer reports her changed address to her caseworker and when the customer is added to the payroll of the new local office. In the interim, many customers find themselves in a state of limbo, where no local office will help them.

Last summer a Shriver Center client and her children moved from a Chicago homeless shelter near the Garfield Local Office into an apartment near the Western Local Office. When she moved, she reported her address to her caseworker and asked the caseworker to transfer the file to the Western Local Office. A few months later, the client could not find a job and decided to apply for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). She tried to apply at the Western Local Office, but that office refused to take her TANF application because her case file was still at the Garfield Office. She went to the Garfield Office, but that office, too, refused to take her TANF application because she no longer lived in that office’s service area. After going back and forth between offices for several months (with two small children in tow and limited funds for bus fare), she finally sought legal help. With the Shriver Center’s assistance, she filed an appeal, demanded to talk to the heads of both local offices, and eventually straightened the matter out. Nevertheless, as a result of this file transfer mishap, her family went months without needed benefits, for which the family was fully eligible.

The Shriver Center has seen many cases like this one. Like the client above, many customers have been unable to apply for new benefits during this limbo period. Others have lost their food stamps and medical cards without notice and have been unable to get them reinstated without starting from scratch and submitting a new application. These gaps in benefits are especially problematic because IDHS customers are likely to change addresses when they are most vulnerable, for instance, when they experience homelessness, domestic violence, or some other crisis. IDHS needs to repair its broken file-transfer process.

If you or someone you know lost access to public benefits while waiting for an IDHS file to be transferred, contact Liz Mazur at 312.263.3830 ext. 225.