Keep the Poor Poor Pt 2; Waste My Day!

pstrongThe Insiders' Instruction Manual/strong/p pPart two in a series of satirical policy explanations for government and private social service providers. /p p/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/348/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Donna L. Anderson/PNN Texas Correspondent/p piThe prevalence of hypocritical practices in social services leads PNN Texas correspondent Donna Anderson to conclude that there must be an interagency conspiracy to keep the poor poor. The scenarios and statements presented here are based on her actual experiences during 12 years in social services./i /ppPolicy Statement: Keep the Poor Poor/p pStrategy No.2 "Go Ahead, Waste my Day!"/p pThe second strategy in our domestic policy to keep the poor poor, though almost cliché, continues to be highly effective. It is even fun (in a sadistic sort of way) for the many state, local government and non-profit providers who assist in implementing this strategy. What's is it?....................................Keep them waiting. /p pThis strategy is completely unobjectionable, even with the general populous, as everyone knows that poor people have a great deal of time on their hands. Some poor people don't work and those who do have no money to do anything in their spare time. This abundance of spare time cannot be allowed to fester creativity, inspiration, initiative, education and especially not organization among the poor. /p pIn order to keep fertile spare time at a minimum in the life of the poor, we must employ practices that ensure they will always be in the process of managing their poverty. Here are three common practices that most any organization can begin to use with minimal staff training and reorganization. /p p1. Block scheduling. This is a technique used in many Medicaid-frequented healthcare providers, non-profits and state TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, formerly Welfare) agencies. Rather than assign specific times to each patient/client, the agency selects two times daily, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and schedules everyone to be seen at those times. Patients/clients arrive, sign in and are seen in order of their arrival. The first to arrive will be seen promptly, but most will have to wait to be seen, even up to several hours. The whole morning or afternoon can be consumed with one appointment in this manner. Exasperating waits tend to produce more apathetic patients/clients. Once they finally are called to be seen, they are so brow-beaten by hours of waiting with a sick child or several screaming and hungry children, that they are unlikely to ask thorough questions or demand anything they are entitled to that might require more time or effort./p p2. The Max. Instead of promptly assessing and acting on each client's needs, like a corporation that depends on its clients' repeat business might do, agencies working with the poor can set maximum time limits for assessment and determination. The state of Texas has a 30-day determination period for new TANF, Medicaid and Food Stamps applications. This means that an application for benefits must either be approved or denied within 30 days. However, it also means the case manager can take up to 30 days to make the determination. Even if the case manager can eyeball the application and determine that the applicant would not be eligible for services, she does not have to inform the applicant for a full 30 days. For example, many states have asset limits for Medicaid, Food Stamps and TANF applicants. An applicant may clearly state that she owns an automobile worth $4,000 ($2,000 over the asset limits). Though the case manager could inform the applicant that she will probably be turned down for benefits because her assets exceed the limit, the case manager can just hold off and let the applicant find this out via formal notification sent after the 30-day determination period. The case manager will have avoided a possible confrontation with a disgruntled applicant and will have succeeded in wasting the applicant's time with additional appointments and the ever-popular paper chase (see number 3 below). /ppThough time limits guarantee the agency some stall time, open-ended time lines can also work if crafted well. Take for instance the case of a TANF applicant in Georgia. In the first week after application she is required to attend a job readiness course. This course will repeat much the same information she has received in other futile "life skills" classes (the topic of an upcoming strategy). After a week of boring classes, she will have one more week to job search. If she does not find a job in that time, she must sit idle, waiting for her case manager to find her an appropriate work activity. With the literally hundreds of cases each case manager handles, the case manager is fully justified in neglecting the case indefinitely. This method deserves honorable mention for creating a win-win time waster. The client will likely begin to receive benefits, which will pacify her, and yet she makes no progress through the system. This is not a very effective way to keep welfare roles down, which tends to upset some of the more extreme (Nazi) legislators. But for the purposes of implementing the "Waste My Day" strategy, it is superb./p p3. The Paper Chase. Quite arbitrarily, agencies can require forms from clients to stall the delivery of services or the determination of benefits. Some popular forms that can be difficult to obtain include birth certificates and shot records for the client and all dependent children under 18, 3 months of bank statements, IRA statements, leases, credit card statements, past check stubs, old tax returns, social security cards, photo ID's and references from past employers, landlords, neighbors, elementary school teachers or anyone, really. The point is not to gather information. Many state systems have databases that can pull up most of this information in a matter of minutes. The point is to buy the system time: time the client spends. /p pOne initiative that is threatening the viability of the paper chase is the push for a "single point of entry," a centralized location with database that state and local government and even non-profits could tap into to access client records. This would make it unnecessary for the client to provide fresh documentation for each benefit or service she seeks and could substantially cut down on the time wasted in applying for services. However, social workers are not renowned for their technical abilities (it is rumored that many actually produced their college term papers with typewriters!). Though a great deal has been spent on consultants to introduce this technology, it is not an immediate threat./p p4. Ya'll come back now. No matter what the business, always schedule frequent appointments for clients. Get them into the office as often as possible. Make note of their days off and working schedules, so meetings can be scheduled at the least convenient times. Be inflexible if they press for a more convenient time. And it goes without saying that appointments should be made during typical working hours. This will keep the poor from using their spare daylight hours to get skills training or look for a better job./p pWith these four techniques in conjunction with poor transit systems of many cities, inflexible day care policies, the difficulty of flex scheduling in hourly wage jobs and countless other inconveniences, we can ensure that obtaining necessary benefits, accessing essential community services and staying healthy will be problematic at least and at best, damn near impossible. /p pAn added benefit to the "Waste My Day" strategy is that it empowers the employees who implement it. It can be used to team-build among employees. Everyone has experienced the frustration of picking the longest line at the grocery store, waiting at doctors' offices and even sitting in traffic. These delays create tension that employees can channel into making the poor wait. There is no greater sense of satisfaction and retribution than being able to inflict personal suffering on to others. Employees can regain control they lose at the grocery store, the doctor's office and in traffic by manipulating the schedules of those who seek their help. /p pEmployees should be trained in some basic skills such as keeping an expressionless face while repeating the phrase, "Please be seated and someone will be with you in a few minutes," as many times as is necessary to make the insolent poor person go away. It is also important, however much glee it might give an employee to make someone wait unnecessarily, that they turn away from the poor person before beginning to smirk, as a matter of good customer service. This strategy is one the entire office can bond around. Use it to not only keep the poor poor, but to boost agency morale as well. /p pStay tuned for the next strategy, "Kiss My Assets!"br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p