In our special report Out of Reach this week, we described the gaps in San Diego County's social welfare safety net. We told you the county had the lowest food stamps participation rate in the country annually and detailed the struggles of two parents trying to apply for the program here.

San Diego County's low participation in the food stamps program stems from problems with the way the county operates, a study released today by the Supportive Parents Information Network concludes from more than 170 interviews with low-income residents.

Volunteers associated with SPIN, a non-profit support group for low-income people, interviewed those residents in early 2009 about their experiences living in poverty here. They specifically asked questions about hunger, access to food and food stamps.

Among the study's findings:

• It takes a long time to apply for food stamps:
  
  

  Completing the application requires up to five visits (the average number of visits was 4.35), with each visit taking several hours (the average wait time was 3.9 hours, with 36% waiting four or more hours).

• Before applying for aid, people who went to the county for help felt like they had to overcome a societal stigma:
  
  

  These feelings of shame and fear were so strong that 58% of the respondents reported that they had denied needing food even though they were hungry when asked by teachers, case workers, etc., whether they had enough. Of those respondents, almost half (48.6%) reported shame as the reason for denying their need for food.

• Once people decide to apply, they found a "culture of fear and degradation" at county centers:
  
  

  People are searched and/or scanned as they enter the Family Resource Centers (FRCs). They face long lines and are not given clear directions about the process. The first person they speak to is behind bulletproof glass.

  
  
  Two county programs that are touted as fixes to the county's low participation rate are actually making the problems worse. A computer system sends confusing and contradictory notices to recipients. The reorganization of county workers to a model where recipients don't have an assigned caseworker turned the process "into a kind of assembly line with no particular person responsible for any individual caseload," according to the study.

The study recommends, among other things, that the county:

• Reduce wait times at county centers to an hour or less.
• End the its anti-fraud home visitation program for welfare recipients, a program that launched a national debate about constitutional privacy rights. (An applicant for only food stamps and not cash aid is not subject to the home visit unless there are discrepancies on the application.)
• Lobby the state of California to end fingerprinting as a requirement for getting food stamps.

The interviews were conducted before the county approved a new plan for its Health and Human Services Agency to increase food stamps enrollment and outreach last April. The plan's focus on outreach has some advocates cheering the change.

But the study's authors say the thrust of the plan doesn't address the issues they found.

In addition to outreach, the new plan also seeks to bar the purchase of non-nutritious foods from the food stamp program and requires participants to undergo nutrition education.

These elements directly conflict with findings from the SPIN study which shows that [the food stamp program] is widely known among low-income families, but the problems of access lie within HHSA. ... Finally, the study indicates that starting in the third week of each month, the least nutritious and cheapest foods are consumed as a last resort. If these foods were barred from purchase, low-income families would go hungry.

-- KELLY BENNETT and DAGNY SALAS

In our special report Out of Reach this week, we've been detailing the wide gaps in San Diego County's safety net for the poor. If we interviewed you or you're involved in this system and you'd like to flesh out some issue or root cause or nuance associated with the gaps in San Diego County's safety net, we're inviting you to submit a blog post. (No more than 500 words, please.)

Our first commentary comes from John Lucero Criswell, executive director of the San Diego Hunger Coalition.

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I commend the Voice of San Diego for some darn impressive and needed reporting.

While I am confident we will see the eligible participation rate in the food stamp program increase this year, this report only reinforces that the effort must be "all hands on deck," because the need is acute and the stakes are high.

There are community-based organizations working hard throughout the county to help people enroll in food stamps. And yes, the county's Health and Human Services Agency, is engaged on that front too. With less staff than one year ago, it is managing a caseload with roughly 37 percent more food stamp program participants and is working to reengineer is systems to be more user-friendly.

Therefore, given the benefits of this powerful nutrition program, I want to encourage those who may be eligible for the program to apply for it. While the application process can be cumbersome, there are community-based organizations that can help. By calling 2-1-1, you can get a referral to one of these organizations or see if you may qualify for the program.

The food stamp program is there for people in times of need -- such as our country is facing now -- so that they may meet their nutrition needs. People are not "milking" the food stamp program. In fact, fraud has all but been ferreted out of the system -- nationally, fraud is well below 2 percent. It is time we turn our obsession from that ghost to the hard fact that this program is what it should be -- an emergency nutrition program that helps people not go hungry.

"These people" (who are in the program) are not those of the images we may carry in our imaginations, they are the working poor, children (60 percent of food stamp participants in San Diego County are kids!), seniors and even military personnel. It is time that we change our perceptions to fit the reality, realize the value of this important program and get all hands on deck, so those eligible may access it.

-- John Lucero Criswell

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If you'd like to add your voice, ask a question, or share your experiences, please send an e-mail to kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org.

-- KELLY BENNETT

In our special report Out of Reach this week, we've been detailing the wide gaps in San Diego County's safety net for the poor.

We included research findings from our partners at The Rose Institute that showed San Diego enrolls among the lowest proportion of eligible persons for Medi-Cal, Food Stamps, and CalWORKs among the state's largest counties.

We asked Ilan Wurman, lead researcher, to share some additional questions sparked by the research:

These data raise important policy implications for San Diego County. The state's Welfare and Institutions Code declares that the administration of public social services -- including Medi-Cal, CalWORKs, Food Stamps, relief to indigents, and other programs -- is a county function. Is San Diego County fulfilling its obligation as the steward of these programs?

The data offer several interpretations. The county may be turning away deserving people. Figures 3.16 and 3.17 in the Rose Institute analysis reveal that in fiscal year 2008, San Diego denied the highest percentage of applicants to both the CalWORKs and the food stamps programs. And Figure 3.24 shows that 30 percent of CalWORKs denials were based on a "failure to comply with procedural requirements," rather than on a failure to meet the income, deprivation, or children requirements.

But there is another interpretation: the other populous counties -- which tend to be more liberal than San Diego (Figure 1.9 in the report) -- may simply be more lenient on the eligibility requirements. San Diego may be saving taxpayer money at a time when the state is experiencing enormous fiscal difficulties. By covering fewer individuals, San Diego may be covering the most needy while at the same time exercising fiscal responsibility.

The data may also be an indication of priorities. San Diego has some of the lowest individual caseloads in its public protection departments. Among the counties for which data are available, San Diego has the second smallest caseload for adult probationers per adult probation field officers; the second smallest caseload of indigent defendants both per public defender and per investigator; and it has the smallest number of submitted cases per district attorney. These suggest a possible emphasis on public protection over public assistance programs.

Whatever the interpretation, the Rose Institute analysis reveals interesting differences between San Diego and the state's other populous counties.

Beyond these questions, Wurman filled in some behind-the-scenes details about the way the research went.

How did the Rose Institute estimate the number of county residents eligible for these programs?

The requirements for qualifying for the state's many welfare programs are complicated. Rose used enrollment data from the state and population data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey.

So how'd they do their analysis? Warning: This next bit gets pretty technical. But some of you have been asking for specifics on the research. So buckle your seatbelts!

Here's Wurman:

Food stamps (currently known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), is the most straightforward program. The federal guidelines instruct that individuals making a net income within 100 percent of the federal poverty line (FPL), or a gross income within 130 percent of FPL, are eligible. Gross income is calculated before any taxes or deductions are taken into account.

The ACS uses gross income. The Rose Institute therefore used the number of individuals living under 125 percent of the federal poverty level -- the closest breakdown to 130 percent in the ACS -- to estimate the eligibility pool in the counties. Figure 3.10 in the Rose Institute's report shows that San Diego and Orange Counties enroll the smallest proportion of residents estimated to be eligible for food stamps compared to the other ten populous counties.

Medi-Cal and CalWORKs have more complicated guidelines. There are over one hundred categories of Medi-Cal recipients with varying requirements. To make its analysis meaningful, the Rose Institute studied the largest category, the 1931(b) program. This program has the same eligibility requirements as CalWORKs: the family's income must be within 100 percent of FPL, it must have children, and the principal wage-earner must be "underemployed" (working no more than 100 hours a month). There are also typically property requirements.

To estimate eligibility, the Institute took ACS data on families with children within 130 percent of poverty. The analysis ignored the underemployment requirement and any property requirements. Assuming that poverty is in general closely proportional to underemployment, neglecting these factors should have minimal impact on the relative position of each county in the analysis. Figure 3.6 in the Rose Institute report shows that based on this methodology, San Diego County enrolls the lowest proportion of eligible residents on Medi-Cal.

Even though CalWORKs has the same basic requirements, it is more complicated to determine eligibility because of time limits on the program. In general, far fewer people are enrolled in CalWORKs than in 1931(b) Medi-Cal. The Rose Institute therefore decided to include unemployment (not underemployment, which the ACS does not survey) in its eligibility estimate for the program.

Figure 3.21 reveals that San Diego ranks third of the twelve counties in the analysis using this measure. Unemployment undercounts the number of eligible persons (because they really can be employed for up to 100 hours a month), so one will notice that some counties enroll over 100% based on this methodology.

Have questions for Wurman or about the way any of our special report has been going? I'd love to hear from you and could pass your questions along. Drop me a line at kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org.

-- KELLY BENNETT

As part of our special report this week, we've been talking a lot about the way San Diego stacks up next to other large counties in the state.

Here's a look at some numbers that show the spiking demand for food here in San Diego as the economy has worsened.

We know the economy continued to struggle and poverty reached a 50-year high in San Diego County. Leaders in community organizations say they've seen demand increase for food services and others.

• For the first six months in 2009, the San Diego Food Bank gave out almost 650,000 more meals than it did in that period in 2008.
• Between July 2008 and June 2009, about 437,500 county residents received food from Feeding America San Diego, according a study the organization released Tuesday. 
• In that study, interviews with 286 people seeking help with food between February and June 2009 revealed 62 percent of households had at least one adult employed. 

Gary McDonald, president and CEO of Feeding America San Diego, echoed a sentiment that appeared in our first story: "It's harder to be poor here than anywhere in the U.S."

Last April, the Board of Supervisors passed a plan to combat the low participation in food stamps that we talked about in Tuesday's story.

That plan aims to add 50,000 more children and seniors to the program by June 2012. Between May 2009 and the end of the year, the county had signed up about 15,500 more children and seniors for food stamps, according to recent county data.

The county has long been criticized for its lack of food stamps outreach so we talked to several critics to see what they thought of the shift.

They had some interesting reactions.

• "I definitely feel that the tide has changed there in San Diego," said Jessica Bartholow, the former director of programs for the California Association of Food Banks and now a legislative advocate at the Western Center on Law and Poverty.
• "What began to turn this around was the decision by the board, with a huge nudge -- call that a big push -- from the economy. They were saying, 'Wait a minute, maybe there was this money they were missing out on,'" said Dennis Stewart, western regional director for the federal agency overseeing food stamps, the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service.
• "I think they've changed their attitudes and decided they must be more aggressive. But other counties have taken the safety net responsibility to new levels," said Mitch Mitchell, regional vice president for San Diego Gas & Electric and chairman of the San Diego Food Bank.

Another part of the county's plan is to network much more directly with nonprofits. Jennifer Tracy, outreach coordinator for the San Diego Hunger Coalition, trains groups to pre-screen people for food stamps, brainstorms ways to simplify the application process and listens to desperate applicants on the phone.

"We're the key nexus -- our relationship with the community organizations," Tracy said. "It kind of helps to corral the cats."

-- KELLY BENNETT and DAGNY SALAS