| Notes |
14 MR. LITTLE: Good evening again. My
15 name is Mitch Little. I'm the Executive
16 Director of the Office of Community Empowerment
17 and Opportunity, known as CEO. My office serves
18 as the community action agency for Philadelphia
19 who is responsible for administering the
20 Community Services Block Grant funding to help
21 meet the needs of improved life conditions for
22 thousands of Philadelphian residents living near
23 and below the poverty line.
24 Earlier on as we develop our approach
25 for addressing poverty in Philadelphia related
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1 to termination, that new programs and policies
2 were needed to ensure that every eligible
3 Philadelphian was able to easily apply for and
4 receive all the public benefits to which they
5 were entitled. By public benefit, we mean
6 familiar programs such as Supplemental Nutrition
7 Assistance Program, known as SNAP or food
8 stamps; cash assistance programs such as TANF,
9 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; LIHEAP,
10 Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program;
11 Medicaid and many others.
12 Why do some eligible households neglect
13 access available for public benefit programs and
14 resources? Well, we understand first and
15 foremost that there is a lack of awareness.
16 There are thousands of people in the City who
17 are eligible for certain public benefits who
18 don't even know that they are eligible. Seniors
19 or people with limited English proficiencies or
20 students, for example, are population who are
21 often unaware of the existing benefits that they
22 qualify for.
23 Secondly, the complexity of the
24 application process. There are also thousands
25 of people in Philadelphia who know about public
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1 benefits but face difficulty navigating complex
2 applications and recertification processes.
3 They wind up getting discouraged because of
4 their application which are rejected or have
5 their case closed simply because a form they
6 attempt to submit didn't go through and they
7 have to start the whole process over again from
8 the beginning, a phenomenon known as the
9 benefits turn.
10 Oftentimes, the question is asked, why
11 is improving access to public benefits so
12 important to addressing poverty? Well, when
13 families living in poverty don't have access to
14 public benefits that they are eligible for, they
15 miss out on much needed assistance that can make
16 the difference between having heat, food on
17 their tables, access to some needed medical
18 treatment or even keeping a roof over their
19 head.
20 Why did the office begin to investigate
21 the BenePhilly Program five years ago? Well,
22 BenePhilly, which is run by our partners Benefit
23 Data Trust, provides streamline application
24 assistance for 19 different publicly funded
25 benefits. They do that through a network of
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1 coordinated BenePhilly centers that's enable
2 residents to meet in person, with enrollment
3 specialist housed with entrusted neighborhood
4 organizations that provide direct one-on-one
5 assistance with the application.
6 Residents who prefer to start the
7 process by phone can access the hotline. We go
8 through a step-by-step intake process that will
9 identify all the programs that they qualify for
10 and get each application started.
11 Since the launch of BenePhilly, our
12 agency has provided assistance to more than
13 50,000 applicants, resulting in over 25,000 firm
14 enrollments and generating benefits valued at
15 approximately $52 million.
16 With all that success, though, there is
17 still much more that is needed to improve
18 benefits access for Philadelphians living below
19 or near the poverty line. We need more
20 coordinated access across agencies that serve
21 vulnerable populations to ensure that nobody
22 falls through the cracks. We also need to
23 identify systemic improvements that will make it
24 easier for applicants to confirm and document
25 their eligibility for existing programs and to
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1 help reduce paperwork required to further
2 streamline the process.
3 The recommendation of the safety -- let
4 me try it again. The Social Safety Net
5 Subcommittee that focuses on benefit access are
6 designed to deal with on the progress made
7 through BenePhilly and similar programs by
8 taking the next necessary steps to eliminate
9 barriers and better integrate enrollment
10 activities throughout our services network.
11 Thank you for taking the time to let me
12 share with you this evening about this very
13 important work and the great strides we are
14 making across the City, and the necessary need
15 to make even more.
16 With that, I will invite Pauline up to
17 talk a little bit more about the recommendations
18 to go with that.
19 (Applause.)
20 MS. ABERNATHY: Thank you, Mitch.
21 Pauline Abernathy with Benefit Data Trust. As
22 you just heard, thanks to the support of CEO,
23 the state, private funders such as PEW, the
24 United Way and many others, it's now possible
25 for people to go to organizations around the
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1 City, 25 different places, and get assistance,
2 being screened and applying for benefits all in
3 one place rather than having to fill out
4 multiple applications, or they can simply call
5 the hotline that Benefits Data Trust runs. It's
6 a free hotline that you can do the entire
7 screening and application over the phone,
8 whichever people prefer.
9 Our partners in this effort are Catholic
10 Social Services, Campaign for Working Families,
11 Esperanza, Impact Social Services Corporation,
12 HACE, Philadelphia FIGHT, Project HOME, UESF,
13 the United Community Southeast, Philadelphia and
14 others are places where you can go in person and
15 get seen and assistance applying.
16 Since BenePhilly first started in 2008,
17 over 110,000 Philadelphians have been enrolled
18 in benefits for over $330 million. But despite
19 those huge numbers, there is so much more. We
20 estimate, and there's a flyer in the back, that
21 Philadelphians are leaving on the table each
22 year $450 million in benefits for which they are
23 eligible that they are not receiving. Those are
24 all federal and state benefits that people are
25 eligible for including Medicaid; EITC, Earned
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1 Income Tax Credit; Quick; SNAP, food assistance.
2 And so, this committee's recommendations
3 is an opportunity to develop strategies to
4 ensure that more people are getting those
5 $450 million in benefits that families who
6 desperately need them. And so, we developed
7 three sets of tentative recommendations that we
8 would welcome your input on tonight as a way to
9 do that.
10 The first is to expand the number of
11 locations where people can get seen and
12 assistance for applying benefits in a
13 streamlined where, again, currently you can get
14 screened for up to 19 benefits at a time, and
15 your answers get -- go into the application so
16 you don't have to keep providing the same
17 information 19 times. It's just one set of
18 questions. And it fills them out automatically
19 and is submitted the applications for people in
20 the BenePhilly centers or on the hotline can
21 help you, provide documents if documents are
22 needed to support your application, which
23 sometimes is the case.
24 So, we have a tool called Community
25 Prism that we provide to organizations. And
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1 it's currently in the 25 locations including
2 health centers, community schools and
3 non-profits. Where people, volunteers or social
4 workers can actually help screen people. We
5 have a separate tool called Benefits Launch
6 where people can do a quick screen themselves in
7 less than ten minutes. One can just tell
8 whether you are likely eligible for up to 19
9 benefits.
10 And then it directs you to where you can
11 get assistance applying if you want assistance.
12 Either to the online application sites or to a
13 new person, location or to the hotline. And
14 then we can follow up with text messages to help
15 you along the way if people get tripped up in
16 the process. And also, just a reminder to
17 follow through on the next step.
18 So, our first recommendation is to
19 provide those tools to more locations. In
20 addition, it's to help support the financial
21 empowerment centers that you just heard Will
22 talk about, so that they are available free
23 one-on-one financial counseling is available in
24 more locations around the City.
25 Our second recommendation has to do with
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1 providing proactive targeted outreach. Many
2 people don't apply for benefits because they
3 either don't know they exist or they don't know
4 they are eligible. We at Benefits Data Trust
5 has been doing for years is been getting
6 different lists to identify who is eligible and
7 not participating. And we literally then mail
8 or text or call all of the different ways to
9 tell people using a trusted partner, either the
10 state or local non-profit to say we think you
11 are likely eligible for benefits. Call us or go
12 to this location and get assistance.
13 And so, our second recommendation is to
14 do much more of that whether it's done by BDT or
15 City agency or other non-profits, is to use the
16 data that people already have to identify who is
17 likely eligible and not receiving benefits and
18 then do an outreach. We know that just flyers
19 alone don't tend to have much impact. But a
20 personalized letter from a trusted entity that
21 has clear action of where to go, research has
22 been very clear as a huge measurable impact.
23 And then the other part of that
24 recommendation is to really focus on particular
25 populations like immigrant populations,
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1 students, returning citizens, others who we know
2 are missing out on benefits. And to also not
3 just help people enroll, but also help them to
4 recertification. So each year, often or
5 sometimes even more frequently than that, one
6 has to provide additional information to keep a
7 benefit.
8 In New York City, we contact every
9 participant in the SNAP Program to remind them
10 when it's time to renew the SNAP application.
11 Then we provide text assistance with each step
12 along the way. And so, something similar could
13 be done here either by us or by others to help
14 people in a low cost way, make sure that they
15 keep the benefits once they are on them.
16 And the third and final recommendation
17 is for the City funded benefits, of which there
18 are many to help people with home repairs,
19 property taxes, utility bills and other things.
20 Right now, those are all separate applications,
21 often a paper application. And to instead, move
22 to a single application for City benefits and
23 really move as much as we can towards automatic
24 enrollment. If you're one benefit, so that you
25 can get enrolled in other benefits by simply
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1 providing consent.
2 And so, that's a place where more work
3 needs to be done. But we are very interested
4 and the City is interested in having a
5 streamlined single application and portal. And
6 so, we need to identify what can be done
7 currently, what might require some legislative
8 change but a tremendous amount can be done
9 currently by having just a single application
10 for multiple benefits.
11 We look forward to getting your input.
12 (Applause.)
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