Human Services cutting back to 42 full-time offices in Iowa

DES MOINES – Matching available resources with reality has forced state Department of Human Services' officials to tighten the agency's statewide service belt from 99 notches to 42.

That's how many counties will still have full-time DHS offices serving clients as the new fiscal year arrives July 1.

The other 57 counties have offices that are open fewer hours in the week and Iowans needing services increasingly will have to make appointments or go online to get their questions answered or problems resolved now that 23 more county offices have been converted to part-time status. Originally, 34 DHS county offices were shifted to “less-than-full-time” status in 2002.

DHS Director Charles Krogmeier also streamlined operations by closing regional offices in Ames, Dubuque and Sioux City and consolidating them into offices in Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines and Waterloo being supervised with fewer employees. He also consolidated eight separate child-abuse intake units into one center in Des Moines to improve consistency in the agency's response while reducing by 10 the number of employees involved in evaluating allegations of child or dependent adult abuse that will still be investigated locally.

“The main reason we must make these changes is that we must operate our field offices with fewer and fewer people,” noted Krogmeier, as state government undergoes a major reorganization ordered by Gov. Chet Culver and state lawmakers. “There will be some rough edges as we move ahead in this transition, but I'm confident that our performance will improve in the long run.”

The new DHS organization – the first major restructuring for the agency of 5,470 employees that administers federal and state programs approaching $4.5 billion – has been designed to preserve essential services in a more efficient manner, Krogmeier said. With more than 600 DHS workers taking early retirement in June and about half of the vacant positions being refilled over the next year, the revamped format is designed to protect front-line workers who administer the state's main benefits system – such as food assistance, Medicaid, child-welfare and foster-care services.

“The biggest impact will be on our own people,” said DHS spokesman Roger Munns.

The early retirements, staff shifts and 15 layoffs that have taken place likely will mean there will be at least 200 fewer DHS field workers over the next 18 months – a change that has forced the agency to group employees into clusters based upon geography, client traffic and population to operate more efficiently.

“This system and this structure let us manage with the resources that we have and try to maintain the quality,” he said. “Hopefully, what people should notice, they may not have an office in that county every day but they will have access to a worker every day.”

Victor Elias of the Child & Family Policy Center, who lobbies lawmakers on human-needs issues, said the new system likely will mean more inconvenience and possibly slower response times for people needing DHS services who likely will have to travel greater distances, especially in smaller-population counties. That inconvenience is mitigated somewhat by more online-based information and services but oftentimes people in most need of state assistance don't have access to a computer or much expertise in finding help electronically.

“It's just going to make it more difficult to access services of the DHS,” Elias said. The changes also will mean job losses in some county-seat towns where fewer employees will be needed to operate reduced hours and meet with clients on an appointment-only basis.

Munns said the transition plan is progressing and most pieces will be fully implemented this week or early in July. He said the focus for front-line workers facing larger case loads in areas like income maintenance programs is to prioritize their work, while administrators are functioning under a new configuration that consolidated nine central office functions into six restructured divisions.

The goal is to maintain response times for child abuse or neglect complaints and for determining eligibility for the services the department provides, although their may be a delay in delivering some services due to the heavy caseloads, he added.

State Rep. Renee Schulte, R-Cedar Rapids, an ex-officio member of the Iowa Council on Human Services, applauded the effort to improve efficiencies, reduce administrative costs and provide more consistent delivery of critical services by the state's largest executive-branch agency. Overall, she called the changes “a good thing” but said state officials will have to closely monitor challenges that may arise – particularly in rural or lower population counties – for a department undergoing a significant transition with new and fewer workers in different and more-demanding roles.

While DHS client applications and information verification processes generally can be handled online or remotely, Krogmeier said people who feel the need to meet face to face with an agency employee can still do so and such visits are not restricted to the resident's home county office.

“We are not closing any office and we are not ending any service or making any of them more difficult to obtain,” he said. “There will still be a door in every county that says Iowa DHS. The telephone numbers remain the same and you'll always find a human on the other end.”