After years of enduring interruptions of benefits, people in Maryland with disabilities may get relief following an agreement between the federal government and Maryland’s Department of Human Services to make public benefits more accessible.
The settlement agreement, which was made public on Oct. 10, requires the DHS to take steps to ensure that people in Maryland with disabilities receive fair access to services that get funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, including the state’s temporary cash assistance program.
“It is hard for people with disabilities to get benefits at [DHS],” Kenyaree Slater, a parent who filed a complaint against the state in 2017, said in a release. “They always second-guess what we say, and we have to go to so many doctor appointments to prove to the department that we need an accommodation.”
Slater said she was happy that DHS will make accommodations now for people with disabilities but that it feels like “something they should have done long ago.”
Slater’s complaint was one among many filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights since 2011, alleging issues like inadequate assessments, failure to provide necessary accommodations and benefit interruptions with programs like TCA, the state’s version of federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Maryland’s TCA provides money to families with dependent children who experience financial hardship. Baltimore City has the highest percentage of families who receive TCA, followed by Baltimore County, according to data analysis by the University of Maryland School of Social Work. Nearly 28,000 families receive TCA in Maryland, including about 14% of the state’s children in 2023.
The Homeless Persons Representation Project, a Baltimore nonprofit that offers free legal services for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, has represented dozens of families in and around Baltimore in disability discrimination complaints against the DHS, uncovering what they said were systemic practices that violate federal civil rights laws.
In many cases the DHS failed to screen individuals for disability-related services and provide accommodations, according to Michelle Salomon Madaio, HPRP’s director of economic justice. The agency lacked the necessary policies and procedures to assess if a disability-related accommodation should be provided before reducing or ending a participant’s TCA benefit, she said.
“People have been waiting for over a decade for this news,” Salomon Madaio said. “To have the TCA program designed to end poverty, but then you can’t access it because you have a disability, and the department is not providing benefits and services in a way that they’re required to, it’s very personal, and it’s had a really negative impact on a lot of people.”
The voluntary resolution agreement says the MDHS will revise its TCA program by implementing a uniform assessment tool to identify participants with disabilities or other barriers, while testing for potential biases. Annual reviews and self-evaluations will also be conducted to monitor compliance and ensure that these policy changes lead to improved outcomes for individuals with disabilities.
Another critical update involves modifications to the DHS’s automated systems. The system will now include alerts to flag when customers with disabilities may require reasonable accommodations and prompt workers to ensure these accommodations are met before reducing or terminating benefits.
Melanie Fontes Rainer, director of the Office for Civil Rights, said they will continue to monitor the DHS so that people with disabilities have equal opportunities to access critical public benefits.
“OCR will continue to enforce the pivotal civil rights laws to ensure equity and fairness in access to human services,” Rainer said in a statement. “We look forward to every state taking proactive steps to comply with federal civil rights laws to ensure access to public benefits and social services for residents.”
A MDHS spokesperson said it is the agency’s priority to increase access for Marylanders, and they are proud to work with HHS and OCR on the agreement.
“We are working diligently to implement improvements for our customers, including upgrades to our electronic system to improve access to benefits,” the statement said.
“We are providing annual staff training and ensuring we have staff that specialize in compliance ... We are committed to serving Marylanders, and we want to know of any individual experiencing disability-based discrimination so we can immediately look into it and address it.”
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