Who's in charge here? That's the question newly arrived Burmese refugees, their advocates and agencies are asking.
They're waiting months to receive state- and federally funded benefits that formerly took two weeks, on average, to get. Non-refugees applying for government assistance face the same problems, but people seeking political, social or religious asylum — like the estimated 800 from Burma coming to Fort Wayne this year — arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs.
“No milk. Only water,” Su Hlaing, 31 and a mother of five children ages 4 to 14, said of what was in the refrigerator in her two-bedroom apartment in Fort Wayne a few days ago. She spoke through interpreter Austin (Aung) Moe, a Burmese refugee who came here last year through the State Department's resettlement program.
Refugees are given up to eight months of Medicaid benefits, food stamps and cash assistance. Some have blamed the slowdown on the modernization of the state's welfare system, though a top state official professed to be unaware Fort Wayne was getting a large influx of refugees. Refugees must apply for benefits with the Division of Family Resources (DFR) within the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA).
For Hlaing, who arrived in Fort Wayne with her children June 26, the reason is secondary. Her children have little food, and they need clothes for school.
In Hlaing's refrigerator are a 1-pound package of beef, a dozen eggs and several plastic gallon jugs of water. A package in the freezer was “beef, and also the bones,” said Hlaing, whose husband died in a Thailand refugee camp while waiting to come to the United States.
When asked if she or the children needed medical care, she held her hand to her chest.
“Her breathing. She has a problem with her lungs,” Moe said. She is still waiting for her Medicaid card, which will cover a doctor's visit. Meanwhile, other refugees are sharing food with her, Moe said.
Health Commissioner Dr. Deborah McMahan confirmed the Fort Wayne-Allen County Department of Health is seeing Burmese refugees without Medicaid cards for extended periods.
“They were having these appointments weeks in the future to even discuss (getting the cards),” she 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.”
Bridging the gap
The delays have prompted Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend to line up emergency cash assistance, said Executive Director Debbie Schmidt. Catholic Charities, which is Indiana's largest State Department-approved refugee-resettlement organization, is given just 10 days' notice before refugees arrive. The agency has no say in how many will come, although U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-3rd District, has been working with federal officials to change that.
Catholic Charities, which was told to expect 200 refugees between October and December of last year and at least 800 more this year, receives $425 per refugee to pay for housing, utilities, food and furniture — “anything that we don't have donated,” Schmidt said. “We have a list of items we have to provide for them.”
Each family also receives about $60 per person from the federal government. In the past, the money tided refugees over until their welfare benefits were approved. Now the gap is too large.
“I had my (Medicaid) card and food stamps in two weeks,” Moe said. “Now they wait many weeks.”
FSSA caught unaware?
In October, the state outsourced its processing of welfare benefits for $1.16 billion in a 10-year contract with two private vendors, IBM Corp. and Affiliated Computer Services. In July, however, the system came to a temporary halt when the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service issued a cease order, citing slow delivery of benefits and a more than 11 percent drop in food stamps in the 12 counties in the rollout.
FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob deflected criticism that privatization was to blame for the delay in benefits.
“The people at Catholic Charities didn't alert me to the fact there (were) going to be this many (refugees). I'm not a clairvoyant,” he said. “Very honestly, we used to get a couple of dozen (refugees) and now we're getting hundreds.”
But in February, Souder staffer Kathy Green told local board of health members that FSSA's Office of Refugee Resettlement was hurriedly gathering information on how many refugees were coming to Indiana.
In June, McMahan announced that FSSA had given the health department a $164,000 grant to hire additional staff and cover other costs such as health screenings for refugees.
“We have worked with the state refugee coordinator at FSSA extensively over the past year,” McMahan said. That employee recently left FSSA.
Roob said he was made aware just last week of the problems and that meetings with refugees and caseworkers are being scheduled.
The staff at FSSA's Division of Family Resources includes “a couple” of members of Burmese descent, he said, noting that finding interpreters to handle dozens of people at a time is difficult. Roob also said he has enlisted the help of Mayor Tom Henry to address the needs of people such as Hlaing.
Mayor asked to help
Mayoral spokeswoman Rebecca Karcher said Roob requested a meeting with Henry in Fort Wayne for early September, but pointed out that FSSA is responsible for administering welfare benefits and the state's resettlement coordinator reports to Roob.
Reading a statement from Henry, she said, “In Fort Wayne, we have been pleased to help and resettle some of the most mistreated people in the world.” The current situation “has given us reason to rethink our capacity to resettle large numbers of refugees.”
Said Karcher, “The mayor is going to pull together stakeholders in the community to make sure we are getting the right resources to the right people in a coordinated fashion.”
Meanwhile, Moe, who holds a job and also runs a grass-roots community center for refugees in his apartment complex, is making plans to have food delivered from a food bank to Hlaing and others.
“The problem is they have no transportation,” he said. He worries about others like Hlaing, including a refugee woman who went into labor a few days ago.
The woman came to Fort Wayne when Hlaing did and still has no Medicaid card, Moe said. St. Joseph Hospital agreed to admit her, but he poses the question:
“What are they to do if they have no cash, no Medicaid, no food stamps?”
