INDIANA NEWS

Myanmar refugees resettling in Fort Wayne are waiting months to receive Medicaid, food stamps and other welfare benefits that used to take an average of just two weeks, a newspaper report said.

Some advocates and agency officials blamed the delays on changes to the state's welfare eligibility system that arrived in the Fort Wayne area in mid-May, The News-Sentinel said.

The delays have prompted Mayor Tom Henry to question whether Fort Wayne can continue to resettle large numbers of refugees from overseas, spokeswoman Rebecca Karcher said.

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend now is trying to line up emergency cash assistance for some of the hundreds of Myanmar refugees arriving in the city, said the agency's executive director, Debbie Schmidt.

Secretary Mitch Roob on the Family and Social Services Administration said the real reason for the delay in benefits was the sudden, large influx of refugees, many of whom do not speak English, rather than the welfare changes.

A coalition of companies led by IBM Corp. and Affiliated Computer Services Inc. has a 10-year, $1.16 billion contract to take over eligibility services for Medicaid, food stamps and other benefits received by about one in six Indiana residents.

The refugees arrive in the U.S. under the sponsorship of the State Department, are resettled by local agencies including Catholic Charities, and receive up to eight months of government benefits including Medicaid coverage, food stamps and cash assistance.

Health Commissioner Dr. Deborah McMahan said the Fort Wayne-Allen County Department of Health has been seeing refugees without Medicaid cards for extended periods.

"They were having these appointments weeks in the future to even discuss (getting the cards)," McMahan said. "That's not acceptable. When we invite people here, it's not acceptable when people are hungry, when they need to see a doctor."

Austin Moe, a Burmese refugee who resettled in Fort Wayne last year, now volunteers as a translator for newly arriving refugees.

"I had my (Medicaid) card and food stamps in two weeks," Moe told The News-Sentinel. "Now they wait many weeks."

Fort Wayne is home to one of the largest communities of refugees from Myanmar, the Southeast Asian nation formerly known as Burma. It also is home to large communities of refugees from other countries and continents including Bosnia, Vietnam and Africa.

"In Fort Wayne, we have been pleased to help and resettle some of the most mistreated people in the world," Karcher said, reading a statement from Henry. The current situation "has given us reason to rethink our capacity to resettle large numbers of refugees."

Roob said Tuesday he expected to receive a report from Henry on the benefit delays by the end of this week.

"We're going to follow his lead," Roob said.

The FSSA secretary said his agency's network of county welfare offices was not designed to handle large numbers of non-English speaking refugees applying for benefits all at once.

"We're not prepared to deal with busloads filled with refugees," Roob said.

FSSA can better bring case workers to satellite locations where they can enroll large numbers of refugees at one time, Roob said. FSSA has used that model after disastrous June flooding in southern Indiana and when large numbers of workers lose they jobs all at once because of layoffs. Benefits can start arriving in 72 hours in such cases, he said.

Catholic Charities in Fort Wayne is expected to resettle about 800 Myanmar refugees during the federal fiscal year ending Sept. 30. A similar number of Myanmar refugees are expected by resettlement agencies in Indianapolis.

Roob said there have been no problems with refugees obtaining benefits in Indianapolis.

FSSA has rolled out the welfare privatization so far to 59 of the state's 92 counties, but the Indianapolis area isn't among them. The changes have come under close scrutiny and in some cases criticism by advocates, Indiana lawmakers and federal officials who oversee the benefits.

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Information from: The News-Sentinel, http://www.news-sentinel.com/ns