Holyoke latest site for ‘listening session’ about programs offered by state Department of Transitional Assistance

By Mike Plaisance

 

on March 13, 2013 at 9:40 PM

 

Springfield Republican (MassLive.com)

 

HOLYOKE – The benefits that used to be called welfare and are now termed transitional assistance are by whatever name not a gravy train, officials and advocates said at a forum Wednesday.

 

“It’s a safety net. People transition on and off the program. People are trying to feed their families,” said Mary Loughlin of the Western Massachusetts Food Bank.

 

Loughlin was among the 50 people who attended the latest “listening session” held by the state Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA), at Holyoke High School, 500 Beech St.

 

Such events — with one set for Springfield April 8 at 6 p.m. at the Central Library — are part of the review of the assistance programs that interim Commissioner Stacey Monahan said Gov. Deval L. Patrick has ordered of her.

 

“Part of what I’m here to do is to learn and to listen,” Monahan said.

 

She will file a report on the listening sessions with the governor and Legislature, she saId.

 

One in eight people in Massachusetts, or about 825,000 of a population of 6.6 million, is served by the DTA, according to a six-minute video shown at the event.

 

The average monthly SNAP, or supplemental nutrition assistance program, or food stamps, benefit in Massachusetts is $239, according to the video.

 

The average monthly cash benefit for someone in Massachusetts getting DTA help is $456, according to the video.

 

Maria Luisa Arroyo, family access and engagement coordinator at the Peck Full Service Community School here, suggested DAT incorporate paid internships into the volunteer requirements of those people who get assistance. Twenty of the 25 parent volunteers at Peck are on DTA and already doing tasks such as classroom aides and office work, she said.

 

Wendy Kane, a paralegal with Community Legal Aid, of Northampton, read a story about a client of hers she said struggled but got off assistance and into a job. She faced “suspicion and veiled hostility” while reporting to her DTA-assigned volunteer work at a local hospital, Kane said.

 

An upshot of her experience, she said, was a desire that people understand the difficulty of poverty and that the poor, like all people, deserve to be treated with dignity.

 

Loughlin, SNAP coordinator for the Hatfield-based Food Bank, said Massachusetts is ahead of other states in making it easier for people to learn about assistance while maintaining compliance regulations.

 

“It doesn’t mean that fraud goes up just because you’re making the access easier,” Loughlin said. ▪