Hassling The System to Revise the Food Stamps

Aspect of Need addressed: Financial

My son and I returned to the Mercer County Board of Social Services this afternoon. We went back to return a paper required to establish his unemployment status. His case worker, Mr. Holloway, needed it to complete his documentation for adjusting my son's food stamps.

Because in December he had to stop his part-time job to receive further medical attention, my son hasn't been working. He has been without his part-time pay for nearly eight weeks. During this time his government financial support has been paying him at a lower level, taking into account his part-time income. Since for now he cannot work, he needs to get his his government financial supports adjusted.

The first step to adjustment was at the Social Security Administration. At the SSA's Trenton Office two weeks ago, he applied to have his SSI adjusted back to its maximum permissible amount. With that adjustment, he could proceed to the second step of getting his food stamps adjusted upwards as well. These, too, had been decreased when he was making his part-time wage. But Step Two required the intercession of another agency, the local county board of social services which administers food stamps.

SSDI, SSI and Food Stamps

Because of his psychiatric disability, the Social Security Administration determined nearly three years ago that my son as a disabled American citizen was eligible to receive financial assistance from the Federal government. This assistance comes in cash from two sources: Social Security Disability Income ("SSDI") and Supplemental Support Income ("SSI"). SSDI is a disability insurance system paid from a fund into which we all pay from our paychecks. SSI is an income support system paid from general Federal government funds to empoverished citizens earning below a certain threshold. Many citizens with mental disabilities are deemed disabled by virtue of their illness. Because their illnesses eclipse them from steady work, many also become poor. SSDI and SSI are unfortunately critical supports for the mentally disabled.

This assistance also comes in a kind of restricted cash, i.e., Food Stamps. (Actually, the program is now called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. It is funded not by the Social Security Administration, but by the Department of Agriculture.) Each month my son's Food Stamp account is creditted with a certain amount, which he can access at a supermarket check-out counter by using a kind of restricted debit card, issued in his case by his local county board of social services. Food Stamps is a Federal program that is funded to state governments. In New Jersey, the State reallocates the funds to the county level, where each of New Jersey's 21 counties administer Food Stamp payments to citizens of their particular counties.

Not So Fast...

On our visit to the County Board last week, we expected that the adjustment would be a simple matter of reporting. That was not the case. Instead, Mr. Holloway needed more information about my son's employment status. "But my son hasn't been working for about two months," I pointed out. "He's been in a partial hospitalization program."

"Did he get laid off from his job?" Mr. Holloway asked.

"Well, no," I said. "He has taken time off to tend to a medical matter.

"You mean he quit the job?" Mr. Holloway responded.

"No, he has left it for medical reasons," I explained.

"He'll have to go to the Labor Department first to file for unemployment compensation," Mr. Holloway instructed. "Before we can increase his Food Stamps, we have to know if he has any unemployment compensation coming."

"Oh boy," I sighed. "And what will that entail?"

Filing for Unemployment, Just To Get Denied

Before he could determine what to do about my son's Food Stamps, Mr. Holloway said that he needed to know if my son would not be receiving unemployment compensation. To determine that, he needed what he called a "denial letter" from the Labor Department (meaning the Division of Unemployment Insurance of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development). My son could get that by filing for unemployment compensation and being officially being denied it. To make the filing, Mr. Holloway directed us across town at a local career center.

The next day my son and I returned to Trenton to visit the Mercer County One Stop Career Center. We took a ticket and waited our turn. After a while my son was called to the counter. The clerk asked him some questions, determined that he would not qualify, handed him some badly copied instructions, and sent him across the room to a phone bank. The clerk told him to pick up the phone and speak to whomever would answer.

The phone was linked directly to the Division of Unemployment Insurance's regional call center in Freehold, NJ, about 30 miles away. We waited on hold for about 20 minutes until a voice named Mr. Levy answered. When discussion became technical, my son handed me the phone, and Mr. Levy and I spoke for about ten minutes. He described my son's need to participate in two telephone interviews within the next two weeks. The first would be with a "monetary agent" to determine my son's eligibility for compensation. If eligibility was confirmed, the second interview would be with a "claims examiner" to decide upon the amount of compensation. When Mr. Levy then went to schedule the meetings, limited agent availability (partly caused by State government furloughs) necessitated that the meetings be held in reverse order. So he set phone appointments with my son on February 18 (in eight days time) at 11:20 am for the Claims Examiner and on February 25 at 1:40 pm for the Monetary Agent. (Are you getting all this?...)

Mr. Levy then stipulated a third appointment. On February 17, he said mysteriously, "your son must call a number". Mr. Levy described the requirement for confirming a claim by phone. "Your son will claim benefits for the weeks ending February 6 and February 13. The System [Ah ha! --Ed.] will ask him seven questions from a form that he will first get in the mail. After his answers, your son will be creditted [What?]. Another form will be sent to him..." I wasn't comprehending. I was losing his train of thought to the recesses of bureaucratic oblivion. My focus returned in time to hear him tell me how my son should represent the reason for unemployment. "Since he was not laid off, he will have to get a note from his doctor establishing the cause of his leaving work. [Yikes! Yet another hoop to jump through...] He should fax that note to the Claim Examiner..." But Mr. Levy didn't have the Claim Examiner's fax number!

Well, after all that, my son would receive something: either a confirmation of eligibility and entitled amount, or a letter of denial. We left the Career Center contemplating a possible lag of up to two weeks before my son would receive his determination. Only after that would my son presumably be able to return to Mr. Holloway with the denial letter by which to get his Food Stamps adjusted. Or so was the clear impression Mr. Levy left with us.

Funny thing about the Government, however. It doesn't always work as expected. Just two days later, mail from the Labor Department arrived at home for my son. It was one of those apersonal government missives with the perforated edges to tear first and the overly affixed folded statement that haphazardly ripped when forced open. We had received what Mr. Holloway needed: the denial letter!

So now my son's Food Stamps will apparently be adjusted. We don't yet know by how much. That we will find out when he next uses his Food Stamps card when shopping at the grocery store.