LINCOLN — What happens when more and more Nebraskans seek public help while state officials are trying to cut caseworker numbers?

You wind up with people going to community agencies for emergency food supplies because they can’t get an application in for food stamps.
You have people assigned to caseworkers on the other side of Omaha — or the other end of the state.
“You call (caseworkers) and their inbox is full for days on end,” said Jessica Jones of Omaha’s Together Inc. “When you do leave a message, you don’t get a call back.”
You see a woman without a phone trekking repeatedly to her church to call her caseworker.
And you find state employees struggling with caseloads that, for some at least, have doubled in the past year.
“We keep them (new cases), and we just get another file cabinet and fill it up,” said a caseworker in western Nebraska.
Community groups and state employees say these are among the problems surfacing as the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services moves forward on ACCESSNebraska, a controversial change in how the state handles public assistance cases.
The goal of ACCESSNebraska is to modernize and streamline the way the state provides benefits. Officials say the system will save $5 million in state and federal funds annually when fully implemented in 2012.
Earlier projections were for $8.4 million in annual savings.
ACCESSNebraska involves setting up four call centers for cases from around the state. The centers, which will be in Lincoln, Fremont, Lexington and Scottsbluff, are expected to process the bulk of applications and case reviews, which now are done by workers in local offices.
Online applications and the electronic scanning and storage of documents are expected to help increase efficiency.
Advocacy groups have raised concerns about how well the new system will work for public assistance clients, including the elderly, people with disabilities and people with few resources.
But the collision of two trends during this transition already is creating problems, both for people trying to get help and for state workers.
On the one hand, the recession is driving up the numbers of people applying for food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits.
According to HHS, food stamp cases increased 26 percent between November 2008 and November 2009. Medicaid cases increased 10 percent, child care subsidies 9 percent and families on welfare 8 percent.
On the other hand, HHS officials aren’t filling caseworker vacancies, in preparation for full implementation of the new system. About 225 jobs are expected to be eliminated when the system is fully up and running in 2012.
As of December, the agency was nearly halfway toward that target. The number of HHS employees working with public assistance cases was down 12 percent — the equivalent of 109 full-time positions — compared with a year earlier.
Offices in the Omaha area have been especially hard hit, said Julie Dake Abel, executive director of the Nebraska Association of Public Employees, the largest state employees union.
As a result, she said, Omaha cases have been dispersed among workers across the state. The cases wind up being handled over the telephone or by mail.
Todd Reckling, HHS director of children and family services, acknowledged that caseloads have increased.
He said some of the changes under way should ease the burden on workers. Phone interviews save time compared to meeting with clients, he said.
Work groups are trying to even out caseloads around the state. And the number of online applications is growing, he said. In December, one in every four applications was submitted via the Internet, according to HHS.
“We’re actually hearing that people appreciate not having to drive down and stand in line to apply,” Reckling said.
The plan is that, even when the system is fully implemented, people still will have the option to apply by mail or in a face-to-face interview.
But Becky Gould, executive director for the Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest, said the current problems raise questions about how well the system will work in the future.
“Our concern is that caseloads are actually appropriate and people’s cases are being processed in an effective frame,” she said. “From our view, there’s been very little oversight of how this is happening.”
Contact the writer:
402-473-9583, martha.stoddard@owh.com