Applying for government assistance can be hard, stressful and a long ordeal — not to mention embarrassing. Maryland is trying to make the process easier, and cut down some of the red tape.
“It is extremely stressful to sit here and have to go over and over and meet different people and have to sit there and tell everybody your story,” Aquitia “Nixa” Harley said. “It’s hard. You don’t want to keep telling people how messed up your life is, how much you’re struggling and the things that you need when you feel like, as a parent, you should be able to be there and provide for your kids.”
For the mother of four, it’s meant hauling strollers onto buses, traipsing through rain and snow and sitting around government offices waiting for her turn. Her two youngest children have special needs.
“Just waiting alone, hours sitting on the phone, could take 45 minutes to an hour, depending on wait time,” she said, regarding how long it often takes her to apply for certain benefits.
That’s why the state of Maryland is streamlining the process of applying for benefits, such as Medicaid, SNAP, TANF and WIC, not to mention energy and emergency assistance programs.
Rather than make those calls and visit different offices, there’s one online application that can be filled out on a computer or over the phone in much less time, state officials said.
“Oftentimes, if their situation merits them being qualified for one, generally, it means their situation merits them being qualified for others as well,” said Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who announced the unveiling of the Maryland Benefits One application during a visit to the United Communities Against Poverty in Capitol Heights.
“But here’s what society does. We ask them to keep on reminding us about your situation. We ask them to keep on reminding us about your financial distress, tell us about your poverty over and over and over again. Tell us. Remind us. Remind yourself,” he added.
Moore said there’s a double standard when it comes to the ways federal and state governments “bend over backward to support the wealthy,” versus how those who are living in poverty are being asked to “bend over backward.”
Harley fought back against critics of welfare programs, saying many recipients genuinely need help and aren’t “gaming the system.”
“People who really need them are not lazy, they’re not incompetent, they just need the help. And a lot of times, it’s difficult for people to get the services that they really need,” she told WTOP.
In the long-term, the state hopes to let assistance recipients handle more of the administrative steps needed to apply for and maintain assistance through that same portal. The Maryland Benefits platform used to be known as MD THINK.
The new application has been live for about two weeks and Moore said 22,000 residents have already filled it out. And he said the state has slashed the amount of time it takes to fill out those applications.
“We have cut down the average application time by nearly a full hour — from 80 minutes for SNAP alone to 28 minutes for all benefits, all at once,” Moore said.
Harley is one of those 22,000 people who applied through the new system, and found it much easier to use: “Oh, so much faster. I did it probably in less than a half hour.”
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