Needs Statement. 1. Identify challenges in financial assistance that are prohibiting you from properly serving MFIP/DWP families in your community? The unprecedented effects that came along with the COVID‐19 pandemic impacted all of us, and not surprisingly, it has had disparate negative impacts on our customers. Families in need of public assistance already faced a multiplicity of obstacles, and the pandemic created a host of challenges in rising to meet their needs. Rapidly changing program rules and finding new ways to engage while we began working remotely caused an already marginalized segment of our population additional worry, uncertainty, and frustration. While Washington County has adapted, adjusted, and maintained an excellent safety‐net for our customers, there is still not a clear picture of how many ways the pandemic may have contributed to the challenge of serving MFIP/DWP families in our community. The pandemic has also exacerbated pre‐existing challenges as described in previous agreements. Capacity has been a growing challenge for our Economic Support programs in Washington County. The Economic Assistance Supervisors overseeing public assistance programs (five) manage 65 staff, five different units and over two dozen programs. Supervisors provide management to up to as many as 15 staff each, in four separate locations, in several complicated programs. The high number of staff, locations and programs per supervisor is currently a challenge while maintaining daily contact with other divisions/units including, Child Support, Social Services, Community Corrections, Sheriff’s Office, County Attorney’s Office, Workforce Development and Department of Human Services. During the pandemic, we have still been experiencing significant staff turn‐over and several extended staff leaves which added increasing challenges such as large caseloads. While this is obviously an administrative concern, it is also a concern regarding the quality of service we are able to offer our customers. Lastly, we have spent the entire pandemic managing the ever‐changing landscape of emergency assistance programs. Washington County has been a leader in leveraging federal assistance funding to address the emergency shelter, housing, and other crisis needs of our customers. We anticipate we will continue to be able to process requests effectively and efficiently and utilize a maximum amount of our allocations supporting the needs of our residents.
Needs Statement. 1. Identify challenges in financial assistance services that are prohibiting you from properly serving MFIP/DWP families in your community.
Needs Statement. 1. Besides funding, what is the single biggest challenge you are facing in financial assistance services? The availability of resources to meet the demands for services and the complexity of the programs we administer. 7887 characters remaining
Needs Statement. 1. What is the single biggest challenge you are facing in financial assistance services besides funding? Hiring and maintaining a full complement of staff. During this past biennium, we have experienced considerable staff turnover due to resignations, retirements and medical leave requests. Coupled with major policy changes in healthcare services and an increase in caseload sizes, maintaining consistency and meeting required timelines has been difficult.
Needs Statement. 1. Besides funding, what is the single biggest challenge you are facing in financial assistance services? On going case management of MnSure requiring a lot of time spent on meetings and trainings. ABAWD eligibility determinations and case ^ management. Our County is experiencing an increasing diversity population which requires additional staff time and resources. * 7739 characters remaining
Needs Statement talk about the needs of the community you’re serving (this is NOT about your organization)
Needs Statement. 1. Besides funding, what is the single biggest challenge you are facing in financial assistance services? The single most challenging issue facing FAS is system modernization, specifically dealing with system interoperability between METS and MAXIS, and the lack of MAXIS to respond timely to legislative changes. Legislative changes, program migration, and modernization has outpaced the ability of MAXIS to be updated or patched to meet requirements. This has resulted in delays in benefit issuance and reduced availability of workers to respond to client requests for assistance. Recent legislative changes surrounding the MFIP Housing Assistance Grants, and the migration of Medical Assistance cases to METS have brought the limitations of MAXIS into sharp focus. Legislative updates regarding program administration and qualifications for Housing Assistance Grants resulted in on going manual issuance of benefits for an extended period, and necessitated the manual issuance of retroactive benefits by both county and state employees. This manual process drew already limited employee hours away from providing customer service and ongoing benefits issues. Additionally, lack of intersystem operability between MAXIS and METS has resulted in the duplication of work between METS and MAXIS program requirement, as well as the creation of new processes and communication methods to ensure documents and information provided to a METS worker is shared with the corresponding MAXIS worker and vice versa. Given recent experiences, it is our concern that these issues will continue to surface, creating additional work flow disruptions, and new demands on the work force to take action to ensure client received accurate and timely benefits.
Needs Statement. 1. Identify challenges in financial assistance services that are prohibiting you from properly serving MFIP/DWP families in your community? During the pandemic, Xxxxxx County saw an increase of about 20% in MFIP caseloads. With the federal and DHS waivers that were previously in place for waiving certain program requirements, this increase was manageable. Now as program waivers are being lifted, the higher caseloads coupled with staff turnover will be a challenge that the Financial Assistance Services Department (FASD) faces. The Financial Worker position continues to be an entry point to other positions within the County. Many staff who leave this entry level position are leaving for outside opportunities or promoting to other permanent full-time positions within the Department and/or County. The FASD continues to work with Workforce Solutions and Human Resources to find qualified candidates who can step into these entry level positions when available. In addition, the lack of updated technology also continues to be a challenge serving MFIP/ DWP families. Since the pandemic, FASD has transitioned most staff to an ad hoc full-time work from home model. With minimal in-office presence, the lack of available technology for residents to get a hold of their worker or submit documents in a virtual environment has been difficult. In addition, FASD systems and software lacks the updates and functionality required to perform optimal services in a virtual environment. FASD continues to work with Information Services to better meet Department needs.
Needs Statement. The extent to which the applicant identifies specific needs related to the purposes of the program. (20 Points)
Needs Statement. 1. Besides funding, what is the single biggest challenge you are facing in financial assistance services? Capacity is a growing challenge for our Economic Support programs in Washington County. The Economic Assistance Supervisors overseeing public assistance programs (five) manage 65 staff, five different units and over two dozen programs. Supervisors provide management to up to as many as 15 staff Each, in four separate offices, in several complicated programs. The high number of staff, locations and programs per supervisor is currently a challenge while maintaining daily contact with other divisions/units including, Child Support, Social Services, Community Corrections, Sheriff’s Office, County Attorney’s Office, Workforce Development and Department of Human Services. In addition an increasing challenge is the very large caseloads we carry in some of our units. EA Supervisors were able to gather data from 26 different counties, including all of the metro counties. In comparing our Adults unit we found that among metro counties (Anoka, Dakota, Hennepin, Xxxxxx, and Xxxxx) the average caseload size is 302 per worker, and out of all 26 surveyed, we’re the 3rd highest averaging 380 cases per worker. On top of our internal capacity concerns, external forces are adding additional stressors to our work. This fall we rolled out the required implementation of an Asset Verification System (AVS) for Medical Assistance applicants and enrollees whose eligibility includes an asset test. Financial workers and supervisors require additional training and we have concerns regarding the implementation of AVS on top of already overly burdened staff. We have concerns that the implementation of AVS in itself will have adverse effects related to the time and number of “touches” a financial worker must have to process the cases. This new normal creates a baseline where multiple touches will be required and creates increased potential delay for customers. Moreover, the new process increases the need for more communication and collaboration with social services in processing certain cases. While this is obviously an administrative concern, it is also a concern regarding the quality of service we are able to offer our customers. Lastly, we have spent the past six months refining, aligning, and improving our Emergency Assistance program as well as our Emergency General Assistance program. We anticipate we will be able to process requests more effectively and efficiently, and utiliz...
