Virginia Legal Aid Society, the State Information Technology Consortium, and Kemps CaseWorks have partnered, with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to create a food stamp application module. In the space of five minutes, a legal aid intake worker can ask a new legal aid applicant if he/she would like to apply for food stamps, collect enough information in the new module for a state to begin acting on the application, and submit the information through a website to a state Department of Social Services for distribution to the local DSS office. The applicant agrees to designate the legal aid program as his/her authorized representative for application, so the clock begins running on the state's federal obligation to make and begin delivering food stamps within 30 days for most households and 7 days for those eligible for expedited service. The technology will begin operation in 2008 in Virginia and will be available free to any legal aid program across the country using Kemps Caseworks and wishing to implement it.
LSC:
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