Per Boston.com:
In a stern letter sent Monday, Legal Aid says the state Department for Children and Families must comply with a previous federal court ruling and process applications within 30 days with an error rate of no more than 3 percent.
Department figures show that as of the week of Nov. 8, 35 percent of applications in the 3SquaresVT program — formerly known as food stamps — were taking longer than 30 days to process.
Now, let’s be clear about this: DCF head honcho Steve Dale claims that these problems result from an increase in caseload with more benefits being requested. But I thought our new technologies and improved, streamlined systems were going to fix all this? What happened to the “change” we were “challenged” to enact? There’s a whole online application form and everything. Wasn’t technology supposed to solve all our problems?
Where is Tom Evslin when we need him?
All forms and documentation submitted via fax or dropped off at your caseworker’s office is immediately diverted into a bin which is shipped directly to Waterbury where in a few days it gets scanned into the statewide computer system. In another several days your caseworker calls up your files and your stuff is there.
All calls to the DCF go to a data-entry person who has no clue how to help you, and really can only type things into your casefile. You will NEVER get to speak to your caseworker if you call in. The best it gets is leaving a message in your file and hoping to hear back from someone someday.
Any caseworker anywhere in the state can work on your file. No one caseworker might ever work the same file twice, making sure that no caseworker really gets to know their subjects. But it’s not how the state seems to be doing things. You actually do get assigned a semi-permanent caseworker. You are never notified as to who that person is, which regional office they work out of, or how to contact that person when you need help.
Someday you caseworker actually calls you. They do try to call when you say you’ll be home. But woe to you if you step out to get a jug of milk!
Your caseworker mails a letter, or says in a phone call to you, “I need this documentation right away!”, you can not get them that data for about one week!
Don’t EVER fax documents to any regional office – ONLY fax directly to the main office in Waterbury. If you fax to your regional office where your caseworker happens to be sitting at that very moment, looking at your file, they will not be allowed to see your documents, or even know they are in the building. All documents that come by fax to the regional offices are sent without review to Waterbury for scanning!
They’ve made it so efficient it almost doesn’t work at all!
“I am more of a starting things guy. You get to this point in the administration and, properly, you are not starting a lot of things.” Tom Evslin to the Times Argus upon leaving the Douglas administration after about one year and a half starting jobs.
Evslin seems to have had form of institutional attention deficit disorder.
He was for a time head VT Recovery Officer where he handled ARRA money, then briefly as CTO he managed broadband funding applications and then even more briefly he was “point-man” for Douglas on Challenges for Change issue.While on the CofC beat his holding closed door meetings caused controversy.
He was recently sighted on vttiger railing against earmarks, perhaps just burnishing his conservative credentials after handling all that ARRA money.