Progress at Sullivan Family Services

Posted 8/21/12

MONTICELLO, NY — Joseph Todora, the acting commissioner of the Sullivan County Department of Family Services (DFS), said, “We had over 800 applications that were pending for more than 30 days …

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Progress at Sullivan Family Services

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MONTICELLO, NY — Joseph Todora, the acting commissioner of the Sullivan County Department of Family Services (DFS), said, “We had over 800 applications that were pending for more than 30 days when we walked into the job, today we have none. I would like to put into place a process that says, we’ll get your application done today.”

He was talking about applications for Temporary Assistance (TA) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps). The backlog in those programs, as well as Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP), led to the ouster of former commissioner Randy Parker in March. The county legislature subsequently hired the Bonadio Group to bring reforms to DFS. On June 18, Bonadio’s Timothy Ball updated the legislature on some of the progress made.

Todora said members of the staff believe it’s possible to get to a point where applications could be completed in a single visit. He said, “If we’re successful at doing that, all of the phone calls to legislators will stop, we won’t have to take people off of the task at hand to answer these phone calls or emails saying ‘Where’s my stuff?’ because they’ll already have, they’ll already know where their stuff is.”

In explaining one of the changes, Todora said employees could not easily keep track of the progress of the cases they had. He said software available from the state allows them to track by name all of the cases, so they can easily determine which cases have been in the works 10, or 15, or getting close to 30 days. An application that goes more than 30 days is a violation of state and federal regulations.

Ball said some of the system, used to make payments to vendors, such as foster parents, had been changed to speed up the process, which has been the cause of vendor complaints. He said the changes in the department were extensive. More will be coming, and Bonadio will monitor DFS for the next six months. He said, “We’ve changed a big system around; we flipped it upside down, changed the intake and under-care model, we’ve put workers in different places, we absolutely have to monitor” to ensure everything keeps working properly.

The reaction from state officials has been extremely positive, according to Todora and Ball, but the cost of this success may not be cheap. Todora read through a list of eight new employees that he will be requesting from the legislature next month. He said about 65% of the cost of those employees would be covered by state or federal funding.

He said the employees are needed. For example, “We have 85 people in the foster care system, and the ratio of caseworker to children is completely out of line with state requirements.”

He said he would bring the requests to the July meeting of the Health and Family Services Committee.

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