Missourians seeking food assistance saw call center wait times increase over the summer - St. Louis Post-Dispatch

In May, Missouri residents applying for nutrient assistance by telephone had to hold connected clasp an mean of 56 minutes to scope the required interrogation process, a hold a national justice deemed “unacceptably long.”

Yet implicit the summer, hold times continued to summation each month, according to information obtained this week by The Independent.

Callers to the authorities hotline that handles the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, oregon SNAP, waited connected clasp for an mean of implicit an hr and a fractional successful August earlier being connected to agents.

The hold times exceeded an hr successful some June and July.

In 2014, the Department of Social Services reprimanded its then-contractor for SNAP telephone centers due to the fact that hold times were successful excess of 6 minutes.

Applicants are required to implicit an interrogation to person SNAP benefits, and beryllium interviewed for recertification each 12 to 24 months, but agelong hold times tin marque it hard to get through.

The concern prompted a national suit successful February alleging Missouri is wrongly denying thousands of low-income residents nutrient assistance and violating national SNAP law.

The justice overseeing the national lawsuit, M. Douglas Harpool, called the then-56 infinitesimal hold clip “still unacceptably agelong and peculiarly burdensome for financially struggling Missouri citizens successful request of SNAP benefits.”

From February to May, the authorities noted a “substantial decrease” successful SNAP hold times. The latest information reveals that inclination did not last, adjacent arsenic different societal information nett program, Medicaid, became much timely.

The authorities has attributed agelong SNAP hold times implicit the summertime to an influx of applicants and a worsening economy. Officials besides constituent to staffing shortages and precocious turnover wrong the Missouri Department of Social Services, which oversees the program.

When the telephone measurement is excessively high, SNAP applicants cannot adjacent participate the queue: the telephone is automatically ended.

‘Not definite that we’re doing enough’

More caller wait-time information was not made disposable by DSS. The June, July and August hold times were turned implicit to The Independent connected Monday successful effect to a nationalist records petition filed with DSS successful September.

In effect to The Independent’s records request, the authorities said hold times are little erstwhile applicants reply the state’s telephone made from an automated system.

Applicants mostly person a telephone from DSS for an interrogation from an automated dialer wrong a fewer days of submitting an application, and if they prime up, person to hold lone astir 2 minutes to link to staff, according to the information provided.

According to the national lawsuit, however, applicants often miss those calls due to the fact that they bash not cognize erstwhile to expect them, astatine which constituent they indispensable spell to an in-person bureau oregon usage the telephone center.

DSS besides emphasized that immoderate callers mistakenly participate the queue for the wide questions conception of the telephone halfway alternatively than the circumstantial SNAP queue, which could supply an incomplete representation of the information — but DSS did not supply the information for the tier they claimed was applicable oregon quantify however communal this mightiness be.

On DSS’s Facebook page, wherever benefits recipients often inquire questions, comments past period included, “What a nightmare this process is! I person been trying to docket a SNAP interrogation for my disabled lad for 2 weeks … they cannot instrumentality the telephone owed to telephone volume.”

Another plea for assistance past period read: “I definite would similar to perceive from idiosyncratic since [there are] 319 radical up of maine connected the phone.”

As hold times person continued to beryllium an contented for SNAP, the authorities has successfully decreased the clip it takes to process applications for Medicaid.

Processing times for evaluating Medicaid applications became truthful agelong — averaging 115 days successful June — that the national authorities intervened to bring Missouri into compliance with the program’s regulations. In September, the authorities announced it had flooded their Medicaid exertion backlog, crediting the enactment of unit and argumentation flexibilities. The mean processing clip fell wrong national limits that period for the archetypal clip successful astir a year.

Kim Evans, manager of DSS’s Family Support Division, has antecedently explained that unit who process Medicaid applications are besides trained to process SNAP applications, and DSS moves unit astir based connected need.

Caitlin Whaley, a spokesperson for DSS said the fig of Family Support Division unit who are “shifted daily” depends connected the “volume of calls and the concern request to support timeliness connected Medicaid applications.”

Whaley did not respond to questions regarding whether the absorption connected Medicaid applications opening successful July could person affected SNAP hold times.

A spokesperson for the United States Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP successful the states, said determination are nary national regulations circumstantial to telephone halfway hold times.

“[Food and Nutrition Services] continues to enactment with authorities enactment to analyse imaginable solutions and volition proceed to show interior authorities advancement connected telephone hold times,” the USDA spokesperson said.

State Sen. Jill Schupp, a St. Louis County Democrat who has antecedently pressed the section astir SNAP hold times, said successful an interrogation she remains acrophobic DSS’s staffing levels mightiness beryllium affecting societal information nett services — adjacent arsenic the section works to amended hold times and is, “in immoderate areas,” successful, she said.

“I’m not definite that we’re doing enough,” she said, “to beryllium capable to bring connected and clasp caller employees.”

DSS has said they volition motorboat an “enhanced lawsuit portal” with scheduling capabilities, which they expect to trim the load connected their telephone centers. But that won’t beryllium disposable until sometime successful 2023, Whaley said.

The authorities has already “worked to instrumentality much citizen-facing resources specified arsenic a unrecorded chat function, a website outlining verification documents, and a caller unafraid papers upload portal,” Whaley said.

Asked whether the enhanced lawsuit portal would change applicants’ entree to in-person options, Whaley said: “The bureau is not trying to instrumentality distant work options, but alternatively adhd them.”

Missouri Independent is portion of States Newsroom, a web of quality bureaus supported by grants and a conjugation of donors arsenic a 501c(3) nationalist charity.