Administrative Failures Linked to Dramatic Decline in TANF Caseloads

A major research report casts light upon significant and troubling deficiencies within Illinois’s public benefits system. The deficiencies are largely due to the inefficacy of an administrative system in which paperwork is too frequently mishandled and lost, confusion about scheduling and appointments persists, verification requirements are misinterpreted or misapplied, and administrative errors are not identified and remedied in a timely manner. The report, entitled Accessing the Safety Net: Administrative Barriers to Public Benefits in Metropolitan Chicago, was released on May 24 by the Public Benefits Hotline Steering Committee and the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago (LAF).

A study conducted by a team of University of Chicago researchers, Accessing the Safety Net is a careful analysis of data collected over one year from Chicago-area residents who contacted the Public Benefits Hotline. Operated by LAF, the Hotline is a call-in service dispensing free advice, administrative advocacy, and legal representation to applicants and recipients of public benefits, including food stamps, Medicaid, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). These public benefit programs, administered through the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS), are crucial sources of support for lower-income families and individuals who experience challenges in trying to meet basic nutritional needs, obtain medical care for themselves and their children, and achieve economic stability within their households.

The Hotline was created in 1997 to help Cook County residents who were having trouble with Illinois’s public benefits system in the wake of welfare reform following the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The Act significantly altered the landscape of federal welfare policy, for example, by doing away with the entitlement program Aid to Families with Dependent Children and creating the TANF program, which introduced new work requirements and time limits on receiving assistance. The Act also shifted much of the authority over welfare policy from the federal government onto states; thus individual states had greater freedom in designing and implementing their own TANF programs. With this new freedom came less accountability to the public at large and to the individuals and families most in need.

The Public Benefits Hotline Research Project was designed to evaluate Illinois’s response to welfare reform by analyzing data collected through the Public Benefits Hotline. Since its inception, the Hotline has received more than 33,000 telephone calls and handled more than 16,000 cases. Hotline data analyzed for Accessing the Safety Net were collected between August 1, 2000, and July 31, 2001, three years after the initiation of welfare reform and during a period when difficulties associated with implementing a new program should have mostly been resolved.

Findings from Accessing the Safety Net reveal that administrative performance—marked by disorganization, confusion, inaccuracy, and nonresponsiveness—creates barriers to accessing public benefits. Key findings of the study include the following:

• Administrative failures are linked to a decline in welfare caseloads. An analysis of the Hotline data shows a positive and statistically significant relationship between the volume of Hotline calls reporting problems and rate of decline in local office TANF caseloads.
• Routine problems in case processing block access to benefits. Lost and mishandled paperwork, confusion over scheduling and appointments, and miscommunication between agency staff, clients, and among different departments are among the hassles that clients encounter.
• Mismanagement, confusion, and errors occur often when determining eligibility of benefits. Verification documents are lost or misplaced while some clients are asked to supply documents that exceed verification policy requirements. Also, documentation of clients’ participation in or exemption from work activities (needed for TANF and sometimes food stamps) is often done incorrectly, or verification rules are misinterpreted, caseworkers fail to help clients obtain inaccessible documents, and records are not promptly updated.
• Difficulties accessing benefits were most acute in the TANF program. Nearly half (46 percent) of all calls to the Public Benefits Hotline were to report problems with TANF. (Thirty-three percent of all calls reported problems with food stamps, and 21 percent had difficulties with Medicaid only.)
• Working families are particularly at risk of losing access to food stamps and Medicaid. Management record-keeping and information systems are poorly designed to handle routine changes in employment and work hours, which are common features of low-wage jobs.

In light of the rise in Illinois’s poverty rate in recent years—12.6 percent of the state’s population lived in poverty in 2003, compared to 10.7 percent in 2000 (see U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Poverty Tables, Table 21, www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/histpov/hstpov21.html)—the findings in Accessing the Safety Net highlight the need to take action in order to protect continued access to public benefits. The report recommends three action steps:

• Improve administrative infrastructure in order to enable caseworkers to do a better job of managing bureaucratic case-processing functions.
• Improve internal monitoring and feedback in order to advance accountability for protecting access to benefits.
• Use external monitors, advocates, and citizens as agency watchdogs in order to safeguard access to public benefits and help improve administrative accountability.

Accessing the Safety Net contributes to efforts to improve Illinois’s public benefits system. Through its findings and recommendations, it focuses attention upon the need for systemic reform in order to ensure that public benefits made available by law are available in practice.

If you or someone you know lives in Cook County and needs help obtaining or retaining public benefits, contact the Public Benefits Hotline Hotline at 1.888.893.5327. To download Accessing the Safety Net: Administrative Barriers to Public Benefits in Metropolitan Chicago’s research brief or full report, go to www.povertylaw.org. For more information, contact Wendy Pollack , chair of the Public Benefits Hotline Steering Committee, at the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law at 312.263.3830 ext. 238.