Food Stamp Application Process – Texas, Indiana

Food stamp workers work longer hours and get less training, By Corrie MacLaggan, October 29, 2009, Austin American-Statesman: “As Texas begins hiring hundreds of food stamp workers to help erase an application backlog that has left families waiting months for aid, no one expects the problems to disappear any time soon. The new state workers are entering a system in crisis. They’ll have far fewer experienced colleagues than they would have five years ago. Training is shorter. Mentoring has mostly fallen by the wayside. And employees are working an average of 13 hours of overtime per week – which, in some cases, is mandatory…”
Judge orders Indiana to improve Food Stamps processing, By Ken Kusmer (AP), October 28, 2009, Louisville Courier-Journal: “A federal judge has ordered Indiana’s partially privatized welfare intake system to speed up decisions on food stamp applications, but the state has a year to meet its first target. U.S. District Judge Robert Miller issued a preliminary injunction last week in a class-action lawsuit covering every food stamp applicant in Indiana over the past 19 months. The order represents the latest setback to one of nation’s most ambitious welfare privatization efforts and came just days after Gov. Mitch Daniels fired vendor IBM Corp. from its $1.34 billion contract to lead the project…”