LANSING (AP) -- State social workers struggling with mounting welfare, food stamp and Medicaid caseloads said Wednesday they fear for their lives after being assaulted or threatened by recipients frustrated with long lines and delays in aid.
Employees of the Michigan Department of Human Services said at a legislative hearing that they are overwhelmed with bulging caseloads and people seeking help are taking out their frustration on innocent workers. The employees said local DHS offices are packed because of a faulty computer system and not enough workers to deal with the influx of cases in a state with the country's highest unemployment rate.
"It's becoming more and more, every day, a risk that we take," said Jackson County caseworker Amy Harrison, who said a client tried to hit her Oct. 12. "We are in a desperate situation in the Department of Human Services -- lack of staff, lack of security and astronomical caseloads in a system that does not function."
Harrison, who said she is routinely cursed at and threatened, was one of seven caseworkers to testify before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Human Services about her experiences.
State officials responded that the department has a zero-tolerance policy against clients who assault employees.
Police reports are filed and individual offices each have safety plans, though the caseworkers complained about a lack of security.
"Our employees' safety is of the utmost importance," DHS spokesman Edward Woods III said. "We do not tolerate any irate, agitated, perceived violent behavior in our offices."
About 2.2 million people, or two in 10 Michigan residents, get some type of government assistance -- 400,000 more than a year ago. While the state was forced to hire more child welfare caseworkers because of a federal lawsuit, it would require 700 more staffers to handle rising caseloads, said DHS field operations director Terry Salacina.
But adding more employees will be tough because of Michigan's multibillion-dollar budget deficits.
Wayne County eligibility specialist Colette Gilewicz said she has more than 800 cases and handles 100 phone calls a day. A line forms outside her office in northeast Detroit at 7 a.m., an hour before the building opens.
Gilewicz said a client frustrated by a long wait threw a chunk of concrete through a window. The office has been broken into three times. The computer server was stolen for scrap metal.
Gilewicz said she is seeing an increasingly large number of former middle-class workers who have been laid off from auto factories and smaller auto suppliers.
"Now at age 55 or 60, they're entering the system for the first time," she said. "They simply don't know what to do and where to turn."
At the DHS office in northeast Detroit, those waiting for help on Wednesday said lengthy wait times and unfriendly workers make a difficult situation even worse.
LaToya Moore, 24, an unemployed mother with a 5-year-old girl, said she had been waiting more than 3 1/2 hours to see someone about restoring her cash assistance and food stamps. They apparently were cut off after a dispute with her caseworker.
Without the food stamps, she said, "we've been having to eat fast food."
About two dozen people were waiting in the lobby.
"When you go up there, they take their sweet little time, slow as hell, and then they act like you're the problem," Moore said.
Caseworkers said they work hard and care about their clients, but they do not blame them for their frustration.
Jan Brown monitors Berrien County welfare recipients who are supposed to get training or try to find work. She said her caseload once was 150 and now is 360 and "going higher" because people cannot find jobs.
Unemployment benefits are not enough for recipients to make $800 house payments and $300 car payments, Brown said.
"We've got a crisis here," said Brown, who has been assaulted by a client. "It's not the people that are coming into us, it's not their fault."
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