LA's LEADER
Taming the Monster

December 2002
by Richard Bermack

What can eligibility workers expect the CalWIN system to be like? To answer the question, the Local 535 Eligibility and Employment Services Committee invited Los Angeles eligibility supervisors Ruby Dye and Melinda Harrison, members of SEIU Local 660, to describe the experience their workers have had with the LEADER system. The Los Angeles Eligibility Automated Determination, Evaluation and Reporting system was developed by the same companies that are developing CalWIN. The following is based on presentations at the EESC retreat and a follow-up interview with Harrison.

After working with the system for three years Harrison feels her workers have finally “tamed the monster.” She remembers the first few days after the system went live: “Everyone was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. We had a support team of 20 experts, and workers would wave a flag when they had a problem,” she recalls. “They originally told us we would not have to know eligibility. It was as if all you had to do was just throw in the eggs, shells and all, throw in some flour, milk and sugar, and out comes your cake. You just give LEADER the information and it will do all the determination on a case. Well that is not the case. You can’t trust it. You have to know what the outcome should be to make sure it comes out right. And not just the money, but the eligibility [program qualification] as well,” Harrison states. Workers often have to do hand calculations to check the program’s results. “None of the regulations have changed for determining eligibility,” she continues. “But you need to learn how to put in the information. You need to know how LEADER wants it. You need to answer the questions a certain way. It wants what it wants and it is sometimes hard to give it the correct information,” she explains.

What are some of the things that cause errors, and how do you get around them? Harrison gave some examples. Birth documentation is one of the problems. LEADER will only accept birth certificates, whereas workers can accept baptism certificates or social security verification. “If we put in baptism it will take the input but then when you get to the end it will pend the case for further verification. So what do we do?” Harrison states the LEADER workers’ mantra: “You override LEADER. We change baptism to birth certificate.”

Makes Up Its Own Rules

School verification information is another area where LEADER is very sensitive. School attendance is mandatory for children under welfare reform. LEADER looks for the number of absences. If a child is absent more than six days LEADER will not accept the school verification as valid. So the workers will call the school and if they say the student is enrolled, they have to go back into the program and change the absences from six to four.

Phantom Letters

Case rejection is not the worst problem. Workers can fix that on the spot. LEADER’s most dreaded demons are the “phantom letters.” LEADER may decide that a participant’s grant should be increased from $300 to $500 and begin to generate letters. First it will send a letter saying the grant was increased to $500. Then it will send another saying that it was decreased back to $300, and then repeat the process. “We’ve had recipients receive four letters in one day. And each letter generates a phone call to an eligibility worker. They will call up and ask, ‘Where’s my money?’ And then we have to spend some time with them asking them to please, please ignore the letters, and not to call again.

“Another common problem are the pop-up windows that seem to come up in the middle of a case stating that a recipient was overpaid a month ago. Then you must override the system. You may have to fight the system for months with continual pop-ups,” she states.

“We’ve learned to tame it until it bites again. Now, when we see some of the monsters coming out of the system we say, ‘We know what you are. Go back and do right!’”

One of the criticisms of the system is also one of its strengths. The system forces workers to go through each screen nearly line by line. This is a very cumbersome process, but in the end it assures the worker hasn’t missed anything. The system relieves them of a certain amount of responsibility; there is no question about whether the worker forgot to ask something. The interview can also have a more co-operative feel. The workspace can be set up so that the client can look at the computer screen and see what is going on. They can catch any errors or misunderstood answers. There is a feeling of camaraderie and the clients are less likely to blame the worker for the results.

So what is Harrison’s final verdict on the program? “I would gave it a six out of ten,” she reported. “When it works right it’s great. At this point almost everyone gets their benefits, but when it is wrong, it is very wrong.” She estimates that it makes mistakes in about 15% of cases. “If they could just get it to work a little better, simplify the screens, and make it easier to correct errors, they would have something. But at this point, if the other 18 counties get a system that is no better than this one, I would be concerned that we are not really serving the public.”