INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — State officials say the rollout of the state’s new privatized welfare system is going well enough to expand it to a large swath of southern and western Indiana.

Some advocates for the needy warn, beware.

Next week, the Family and Social Services Administration and its private partners are expected to introduce call center services and other automation to welfare delivery in 27 counties arcing from the Ohio River to nearly Lafayette.

The expansion will mark a major milestone in the welfare overhaul that aides to Gov. Mitch Daniels began planning more than three years ago. It will mean — at least in FSSA’s eyes — that a pilot under way for five months in 12 northern counties has worked out most of its bugs.

“I don’t think anybody — nobody — thought we would have near the number of phone calls into that call center that we have gotten,” FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob said.

Critics, however, say the new system is so flawed in the 12 counties that they called last week for Gov. Mitch Daniels and the General Assembly to investigate and to halt the rollout in its tracks if necessary.

“It’s a dam ready to explode,” said John Cardwell, chairman of the Indiana Home Care Task Force, a senior advocacy group.

The call center, a Web site and document faxing are aimed at giving welfare recipients more ways to apply or reapply for food stamps, Medicaid and other benefits received by about 1.1 million Indiana residents, or about one of every six. Another goal is to bring uniformity to welfare record keeping from county to county.

Roob and his top aide on the welfare changes, Director Zach Main of FSSA’s Division of Family Resources, have said repeatedly they’re not bound by timetables and will expand the rollout only when it’s ready.

For example, the expansion set for next week originally was due to occur in an area twice as large in January, but was scaled down and pushed back.

“There are a variety of reasons why it’s taking longer, but we have always said, we’re going to get this right and we’re not going to do it fast,” Roob said in an interview last week. “We are changing a system that while brittle, is essential. We have to do it with great care.”

Client calls to an 800 number have grown steadily to as many 31,723 during the week of March 9 and have totaled more than 400,000 in the 20 weeks of the pilot so far.

A coalition of vendors led by IBM Corp. and Affiliated Computer Services Inc. operates the project’s service center in Marion. Call response times once as high as 9 1/2 minutes have fallen to two to four minutes since the phone staff was doubled to about 80 in mid-January, Main said.

A glitch in the Web program stymied online applications until it was fixed earlier this month. Online applications then shot up 67 percent to 712 from 426 the week before, Main said.

The Marion service center, which also will serve other regions of the state, receives an average of 40,000 faxes and 40,000 documents in the mail each week from the 12-county pilot region, paperwork previously handled at county offices. A second service center is planned for Lake County.

Helping the clients and the vendors is a volunteer network of 218 agencies in the pilot region that includes faith-based groups, food pantries, homeless shelters, attorneys and others who work with needy people. Main said FSSA has enlisted 169 more so far in the 27-county region coming on next.

The volunteer agencies, in some cases, have pointed out problems with the new system, including cases where clients have been denied benefits they deserve, Roob said.

Despite the improvements Roob and Main point to, advocates for welfare recipients say many people have lost their benefits because of rejected paperwork, long wait times on telephone calls, a shortage of case workers remaining in county offices, and mounting appeals over denied benefits.

An open letter from Lois Rockhill, executive director of the Second Harvest Food Bank of East Central Indiana, that was distributed at the Statehouse last week spoke of needy men and women losing their food stamps because the new application processes were too complex and challenging.

“Interruption of benefits due to a cumbersome system, inadequate staffing or other reasons outside of the control of these clients is unconscionable,” said Rockhill, whose food bank serves six of the 12 counties in the pilot region.

Heidi Mench, who manages a domestic violence shelter for Alternatives Inc. in Anderson, said one of its clients, a mother still in high school with two daughters under age 2, lost her food stamps, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and child care aid because a record of her recertification telephone call was lost.

“The thing is, you can’t get anybody to talk to you, and you can’t get anybody to call you back,” Mench said. “We don’t know what else to do.”

State Sen. Vaneta Becker, a key member of the Senate Health and Provider Services Committee, said Gov. Mitch Daniels should investigate problems and that Roob needs to work out all of the bugs.

“It’s an extremely Herculean task,” Becker said.

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On the Net:

FSSA: www.state.in.us/fssa/

Posted 3/17/2008