West Virginia offers several assistance programs

By Jessica Legge
Times West Virginian

FAIRMONT November 02, 2008 01:13 am

— West Virginia offers several programs to help low-income families move toward economic security.
West Virginia’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program is called WV WORKS. It is offered by the Bureau for Children and Families under the Department of Health and Human Resource.
This state program provides cash assistance to needy families with children in the home. To achieve WV Works assistance, the parent must be engaged in a training or work program.
WV Works is an effort “to try to help them meet some of their crucial living needs, just like we all have,” said Dan Hartwell, program manager with DHHR.
He said persons can receive other benefits from the Bureau for Children and Families, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which was formerly the Food Stamp Program. The office also provides Medicaid benefits to low-income families.
“WV Works is kind of basically a combination of programs, but the basic thing is to help people become self-sufficient under federal rules and guidelines,” Hartwell said.
He said welfare was reformed in 1996, and the state began operating WV Works the following year. In addition to helping families become self-sufficient, WV Works also strives to keep children in the home, improve family relations, and prevent unwanted pregnancies. Programs are offered statewide with funding from a federal block grant and additional state monies.
WV Works is for adult parents with children in the home or minor parents living in structured homes. Adults can only be in the program for 60 months. However, there are cases where a child is in the custody of another relative who is not the parent, and the bureau helps these families until the child reaches maturity age, Hartwell said.
West Virginia currently has about 10,100 WV Works cases statewide, which is down from the 38,000 in 1997, he said. Approximately half of the cases today are child-only cases where the parent isn’t in the home. The remaining cases have an adult in the home who is required to participate in work or training to receive assistance.
“Basically, we want them to be involved in either a training that leads directly to employment or in some cases they need additional education,” Hartwell said.
He said a single parent with a child over 6 years old is required to be engaged in activities up to 30 hours per week. Parents with kids younger than 6 must have 20 hours per week.
DHHR has 54 district offices in the state with case managers at each site. These case managers work directly with the families to make sure they maintain enough hours for the assistance. They also work with participants on a plan to get them off the program and help them meet their goals, Hartwell said.
“It’s basically a safety net,” Hartwell said of WV Works. “Our goal is to try to keep families together, but also try to prepare them to at least help them take care of their families without needing outside assistance or public assistance. It’s just to make families healthy from an economic standpoint. Our goal is to help them help themselves and make sure the children are taken care of.”
Unemployment compensation is a federal program administered by various states to pay unemployment benefits to people who lose their job due to no fault of their own, said Mike Moore, director of the WORKFORCE West Virginia Unemployment Compensation Division.
This assistance, in effect since 1936, was originally created under the Social Security Administration during the Depression, he said.
To obtain unemployment compensation in West Virginia, persons must have worked and earned wages in their base period and no longer have employment because of layoff or some type of termination that was out of their control. They have to be available and seeking work, he said.
Moore said persons can draw benefits for up to 26 weeks. After that period of time, an individual may qualify for emergency unemployment compensation for an additional 13 weeks. These funds were set aside by Congress as sort of an economic stimulus package.
An estimated 11,000 persons are presently receiving unemployment compensation in the state, but that number goes up and down constantly, he said.
The program serves “to help them through the period economically while they’re looking for another job,” Moore said. “It has the benefit of keeping the economy somewhat stabilized.”
WORKFORCE West Virginia offers various services to help people get off unemployment compensation and moving toward economic stability, he said. WORKFORCE’s One-Stop Centers offer employment services and various trainings and classes.
The West Virginia Children’s Health Insurance Program (WVCHIP), created in 1998, offers insurance benefits for children up to age 18.
Funded by the federal and state governments, this public insurance program provides medical, dental, vision and prescription drug coverage. The program is run on a budget of $45 million, according to information from WVCHIP.
Family size and income are factors for eligibility. WVCHIP is designated for families with incomes 100 percent to 220 percent of the federal poverty level. Children can be enrolled one year at a time, and there is continuous open enrollment every month.
Families can also participate in WVCHIP Premium, a plan with limited dental coverage and no vision coverage.
As of Oct. 31 of this year, 24,328 children were enrolled in the public insurance program, WVCHIP reported.
At the request of Gov. Joe Manchin, WVCHIP is looking into increasing health coverage for uninsured children by expanding eligibility for families with gross income at or under 250 percent of the federal poverty level. This measure would provide insurance benefits for more children in the state.
The WVCHIP Board will hold an emergency meeting, tentatively in May, to vote on the issue. Approval is also required from Medicaid and Medicare.
Persons can call 1-877-982-2447 toll free, visit their local DHHR office, or go to www.wvinroads.org to apply for WVCHIP.
To apply for WV Works, people can also stop by their local DHHR office or visit www.wvdhhr.org. For more information on unemployment compensation, go to WORKFORCE West Virginia’s Web site at www.wvbep.org.
E-mail Jessica Legge at jlegge@timeswv.com.