I emptied the pockets of my main winter coat, preparing it for the cleaners. In it I found a forgotten Gift Card for a popular bread company. Not knowing how much remained on the $25 card, I pulled up the company’s website: “Temporarily Unavailable” the screen said, asking me to try again later. I did, then dutifully typed-in the 19 digit card number. The website asked for the card’s PIN. No PIN. Scrolling down, the site said if the card lacked a PIN to call the company’s toll-free number. I dialed, hit option 9 for Gift Cards – then got a recording saying if a card didn’t have a PIN I had to take it to a “participating location.”
The next day I stopped at the location closest my home (hoping it participated), then, when requested, slid the card through the POS reader – only to see the word DECLINED in the middle of the screen.
A long time ago – like, 2014 – every county in Missouri had a county office for the Family Support Division of the Department of Social Services. Yes, Worth County with 2,000 people had an office as did St. Charles County with 300,000 people. Citizens could walk-in and apply for food stamps, Temporary Assistance, Medicaid and other things. The waiting rooms could be crowded but everyone in the door by 2:00 p.m. or so got to sit-down that day with an Income Maintenance Worker.
Yes, frequently folks had to come back a second time with required documents. Still, the clock started that first day they sat across from a state worker, a human being charged with helping them.
Good workers did more than help fill in the boxes on the computer screen. Mandated reporters, they looked for signs of child abuse. They asked extra questions if they sensed a critical issue, such as domestic abuse or a lack of cognitive abilities. Frequently they referred families to food pantries or other immediate resources. Most always they could offer a sprig of empathy to someone facing deep struggles.
County offices are gone, replaced by “resource centers” which can be a counter in a former county office, a room in a food pantry, or, a corner in a state vendor’s office. Go to any center and their first response is to point towards the My DSS website [ https://mydss.mo.gov/ ] and the state’s toll free Call Center numbers to apply for help.
Now, if your past includes a Masters Degree in Social Work, proficiency with computerized forms and a pack-rat’s ability to carry around every possible personal document for everyone in your household you might be able to apply for food stamps on-line in an hour and a half. (Too bad many libraries restrict computer use to 20 minutes at a sitting.)
If you dial-up the Call Centers, well, have a comfortable chair. In December the average wait time was 24 minutes. Referral to the right ‘tier’ of worker to handle a new application means a bit more wait, followed by a long series of questions. After all that, you still need to forward a lot of paperwork.
With luck, food stamps may be yours as quickly as 75 days after that first contact.
The original goal of modernization? Help more people with at least one-third less staff. Process benefit applications with as little human interaction as possible, shifting the work – and responsibility – to automated systems.
Already computers spit-out form letters without any state worker reviewing the individual case. (Lawyers get final say on the letters’ content, so, yes they confuse more than they inform.)
The ultimate goal of modernization? Process most applications with no human contact. Paper people handled by computers.
True, handling benefits for 750,000 on food stamps, a million on MO HealthNet (Missouri Medicaid’s official name) and tens of thousands more in other programs means processing a lot of data. Computers do that well. And, perhaps soon computers will be programmed with empathy for those who depend on them.
That hasn’t happened yet. Time and again I hear of desperate people shut-out from help by systems and forces they don’t understand – with no person there to answer or soothe them. In Missouri we call that progress.
The cashier at the bread company worked magic on her screen and managed to find out how much was left on my Gift Card: 15¢. Yes, I should have seen that coming.
Submitted by Glenn Koenen, WCD Member