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Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Check this blogger out!
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Media
Media attention is up again, so you must have your voices HEARD!
Does anyone out there have a contact AT ALL at FNS?
Isn't it true that FNS has forbidden Hawkins, Co from "rolling out" TIERS? Then why are there rumors that TIERS is about to expand and start handling CHIP cases? We all know what that means.
How many of you "non-pilot" offices have lost a worker(s) to help Pilot area or ART?
Who's helping you?
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Read this, go there, and get in on the action in the comments section! BE HEARD!!!!!!
Privatization failure is taxpayers' burden
Because of an effort five years ago to run part of state government more like a business, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission is struggling to provide food and medical services to some of the state's poorest people. It's a disaster that ought to be remembered every time a legislator or lobbyist starts babbling that "privatization" of this or that state service will boost efficiency, lower costs to taxpayers and cure all fraud and waste.
As the American-Statesman's Corrie MacLaggan outlined in a Sunday story, the commission's staff of about 6,500 workers — down from about 10,400 in 1998 despite the state's population growth — who determine the eligibility of applicants for aid is heavily overworked and increasingly inexperienced. Since September, the commission has hired 1,010 workers, even as 733, including veterans who know the system, quit.
These employees process applications for food stamps and Medicaid for about 3.7 million people. To do so, they must master both the rules for qualifying and the computer systems to track applicants. Because of the staff's workload and inexperience, many applicants are having to wait too long for help.
Those tempted to shrug off the departures as "good-bye, good riddance" should understand that such turnover hits taxpayers in the pocketbook. It costs $7,500 to train an eligibility worker, so when one leaves, the investment in training is not only lost, more must be spent for the next worker.
Not surprisingly, part of the problem is pay. Starting workers make $26,000. The agency is trying to attract and keep more eligibility workers with raises averaging 5 percent and faster promotions, which also bring raises. And to reduce the workload, the agency is adding 600 employees.
The agency, though, really is engaged in damage control. The damage was inflicted by the Legislature, which for years slashed away at the ranks of the eligibility workers and, in 2003, ordered the commission to consider farming out its work to a private company. The theory was that a profit-seeking company would do a better of job wringing out inefficiencies than any state bureaucracy. And Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins decided to try.
An $899 million contract was signed with a business alliance led by a major consulting company, Accenture. Hundreds of state eligibility workers were told to prepare to lose their jobs; some did and others began leaving rather than wait. To make a long story short, the experiment failed. In fact, it failed so badly that the state and Accenture agreed to end the contract last spring, and the Legislature later made provisions to try to salvage the state's eligibility work force.
You can argue that the privatization theory is correct but, in this case, was badly carried out; or that the theory is wrong and no amount of competence could have saved it; or that the theory is wrong and it was incompetently carried out.
What's not debatable is that this attempt to run state government more like a business failed. And the price for that failure is being paid by taxpayers, the state workers and poor people who truly need the help.
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Monday, March 24, 2008
Austin American Statesman Article
Texas struggles to retain caseworkers
Pay raises, faster promotions aim to combat rapid turnover.
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Sunday, March 23, 2008
First thing Thursday morning, a dozen new state caseworkers arrived at a North Austin office building for a training class on enrolling Texans in the food stamp and Medicaid programs. Just a couple of months into their jobs, one after another said they're excited about helping people and confident they can handle the work. But if history is any guide, eight of them will be gone by fall.
Employees overwhelmed by their workload are leaving the Health and Human Services Commission in droves. With fewer experienced workers on staff, applications are piling up, and the state is failing to handle them as quickly as required by the federal government. Since September, Texas has hired 1,010 employees known as eligibility workers; 733 resigned in the same period.
 Bret Gerbe/FOR AMERICAN-STATESMAN Krystle Carr of Austin trains on the computer system known as TIERS. Complications with that system have been blamed for part of the state Health and Human Services Department's backlog of food stamp and Medicaid applications. |
"Right now, there's a very vicious cycle," said Mike Gross, vice president of the Texas State Employees Union. "New hires barely replace the people who are leaving, they're trained thinly, they're thrown into the work, the work is demoralizing because the workloads are so high ... and they leave."
The problems have plagued the agency for years and can be traced in large part to 2003 state budget cuts and a decision to hire a private contractor to enroll Texans in public benefits, a partnership that didn't work out.
In recent months, the problems have spiraled, and last month, Texas was forced by the federal agency that oversees food stamps to come up with a plan to correct poor performance. The state announced it will raise entry-level salaries (which now average $26,000), give current workers raises and promote workers more quickly.
Texas officials hope to attract more workers — and retain current employees — with the plan. Most of the raises are 5 percent, but the new promotion schedule means workers could see a larger raise than that within months.
Texas' 6,500 eligibility workers are especially struggling to quickly handle the 12 percent of cases that are in a controversial new computer system known as TIERS. This month, federal officials warned Texas that TIERS use should not be expanded as the state had planned.
Slightly fewer than half of Texas food stamp applications processed in December using TIERS were completed within the 30 days required by the federal government.
"It's been hard to get ahead," said Stephanie Goodman, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Commission.
Such delays mean that some of the 3.7 million Texans on public assistance are struggling to make ends meet and straining resources of nonprofit organizations, according to local groups.
Austinite Doug Bell, who started as an eligibility worker in January, got a sense of the work ahead of him when, between training sessions, he was assigned to answer the phone at a South Austin office on Eberhart Lane.
"People were calling who had applied in November or December, saying, 'We still haven't gotten our benefits,' " said Bell, who attended a Medicaid training class Thursday. "Some of these people really needed it bad. They had medical issues; they needed food."
The stress of having applications piling up drove El Pasoan Sandra Blanco to quit her job this month. The 15-year veteran took another state job, saying the new raises weren't enough to keep her in a position where there were not enough hours in the day to do her work.
"It's just been horrible," Blanco said during one of her final days on the job. "I felt I was being forced out the door because I just couldn't handle the work anymore."
Blanco said she had never had problems completing cases on time, but as she was assigned more work, she recently slipped to the lowest rate of on-time application processing of her career.
Meanwhile, the state is replacing workers who leave and adding 600 more employees, spending $7,500 per worker to train them, Goodman said. That cost includes the worker's salary and the trainer's salary but not travel costs for employees who go to other towns for training.
At the Eberhart Lane office, about two-thirds of the 60 workers arrived in the past year, said program manager Susan Lozano.
So with three years' experience, caseworker Jennifer DeLuna is considered a veteran. Like her colleagues, she stays late many evenings, but she said she thrives on helping people and the workload doesn't get to her.
"Some people are overwhelmed here," said DeLuna, who meets with a different client about every 30 minutes in person or by phone. "I guess I'm good at multitasking."
But her colleague Mohammed Ali, an aspiring politician who said he likes having a job that's considered admirable, said he's thought of quitting many times. He said he's seen his workload triple in his year and a half on the job. Colleagues regularly call in sick because they can't handle the stress, he said, leaving more cases for those who show up.
Like many eligibility workers, he often works overtime, putting in an extra 12 to 15 hours a week, he said. Nearly 400 eligibility workers took home at least $10,000 last year in overtime pay — and some earned much more — according to records from the commission. The state spent $18.2 million on overtime last year for eligibility workers, who make up 68 percent of the commission's employees but 99 percent of its overtime spending, Goodman said.
Part of the problem, said Judy Lugo, a supervisor in Blanco's former office in El Paso, is that the state is pulling hundreds of employees to work on cases in TIERS, which stands for Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System, leaving the rest of the workers to handle the majority of cases still in the old system.
Employees "are on the verge of a nervous breakdown," said Lugo, who is also president of the employee union. "I find them in their offices in tears."
Goodman acknowledged that transferring workers to TIERS cases "is a bit of robbing Peter to pay Paul."
"No one thinks this is a perfect solution," she said, "but TIERS cases are growing faster" than those in the old system.
That growth is mostly because the state has added a women's health program to TIERS, Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins told William Ludwig of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in a letter. And, though there is no set timeline, Texas does plan to roll out TIERS to the entire state.
But Ludwig, whose agency oversees the food stamp program, cautioned Hawkins: "We are not convinced that a continued roll-out of TIERS is warranted unless accompanied by strong measures to improve timeliness and ensure customer service."
Some of the agency's staffing problems date to fall 2005, when Hawkins informed 2,900 eligibility workers that they would not have a job after the start of a privatization plan. The agency hired Accenture LLP to run call centers to enroll Texans in benefits. After a troubled pilot program in Central Texas in 2006, the state parted ways with Accenture and canceled layoff plans. But hundreds of state employees had already left.
Texas is in the early stages of selecting another private company to run call centers, though the new plan leaves more decision-making in the hands of state workers. Delays in food stamps have strained the resources of organizations such as Caritas, which provides rent, utilities and food in times of crisis, said Jo Kathryn Quinn, director of self sufficiency services.
"These families are utilizing our food pantry as a primary food source, and it's certainly not intended to be that way," she said.
After Bell, one of the new eligibility workers, spent time talking to such families by phone and watching others file in and out of caseworkers' offices, he said the chaotic situation didn't seem fair to clients or workers. "I don't know how they cope with it," he said of employees.
But when asked whether he'll be able to do it, Bell — who said he's "been very blessed" and wants to help make life easier for people in need — responded confidently: "I think so."
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Tuesday, March 11, 2008
TIERS mentioned in another BLOG
Off the Kuff talks some about TIERS......AMEN!
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Monday, March 10, 2008
All Staff Meetings
Have any of you been to the "All Staff Meeting" that are being done around the state with Anne and company?
Feedback?
Was it a waste of time? Did you learn anything new? Anything to share?
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