Latest news with #DepartmentofTransitionalAssistance
Boston Globe
24-04-2025
- Boston Globe
With SNAP theft rising, parents struggle to feed their families
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Hines, 46, was going through a severe depression that left her unable to continue working full-time as a personal care attendant when she received her first round of SNAP benefits in January. With only 57 cents left on her card after she discovered the funds were gone, and a month to go until the next deposit, Hines went to food pantries for noodles, bread, cheese, and soup to feed herself and two sons. Advertisement 'I was so happy to have that money and for it to be gone in … a blink of an eye, I felt like somebody stabbed me in the heart,' she said. 'To me it felt like a million dollars — $600, I can feed my kids.' Advertisement Roughly 7,800 Massachusetts families have had more than $3.6 million stolen from their accounts since mid-December, according to the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, an advocacy group for low-income families. The rate of thefts is on the rise, currently draining about $1 million a month from residents' accounts, MLRI said; all told, roughly $18 million in SNAP funds have been stolen from state residents over the past three years. Criminals have been skimming data from electronic benefits transfer cards loaded with SNAP benefits since at least 2021, The funds can then be deposited into an account or transferred to a cloned card to make bulk purchases of items that can easily be resold. In fiscal years 2023 and 2024, more than $220 million in SNAP funds were stolen nationwide, 'It's our understanding that they are part of an organized crime ring,' said Birabwa Kajubi, associate commissioner for quality management at the state Department of Transitional Assistance, which administers SNAP benefits and works with the Skimming has become a major issue for consumers of all types. Last summer, Advertisement In November, the Springfield Police Department issued But credit and debit card holders have largely been shielded from fraud by federal protections, and most of those cards have been equipped with chips for a decade. These protections don't apply to EBT cards, however. Equipping EBT cards with chips, which generate a unique transaction code for each purchase and make it much more difficult to steal information, is the 'most promising systemic solution,' Kajubi said. In January, California became the first state to issue chip EBT cards, and Governor Maura Healey recently allocated In late November, DTA rolled out a tool that allows SNAP recipients to lock their accounts using an app or online portal. But as Hines's experience shows, funds can be drained quickly — sometimes minutes after they're deposited in recipients' accounts. Adding pressure to the situation is the fact that the SNAP program is facing cuts of up to Advocates are pushing the state, which previously dedicated around $3 million to supplement federal replacement funds, to allocate Advertisement 'While we see more and more devastating cuts coming from the Trump administration and Congress, it's clear we cannot rely on the federal government to support our residents as they previously did to replace stolen SNAP benefits,' said Kennedy, a Democrat. Until chip cards are in place, families whose benefits are stolen need help to feed their families, said Victoria Negus, senior economic justice advocate at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. Parents have told about skipping meals to feed their children and counting out change to buy a gallon of milk. 'I learned my SNAP was stolen when trying to purchase a full cart of groceries at Market Basket,' one said. 'We are hungry. We have no food. We did not eat yesterday.' The government finger-pointing has been 'infuriating,' Negus said: 'State government pointing at federal government, federal government pointing at state, and nobody has systemically taken the steps that families need to put them on equal footing in the checkout line.' Hines, who has been careful to lock her card since her account was drained, is still worried about feeding her family, especially with the economy in turmoil and tariffs threatening to raise prices even higher. 'Things are very expensive now,' she said. 'You spend $100 and you're getting a bag of groceries and it's not feeding you for a week. … If things go any higher, I don't even know what we are going to do.' Advertisement This story was produced by the Globe's team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter . Katie Johnston can be reached at
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Massachusetts SNAP recipients to face temporary EBT outage
BOSTON (WPRI) — A temporary Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) outage is scheduled across Massachusetts this weekend due to system maintenance. From 11 p.m. Saturday, April 26, to midday Sunday, April 27, Massachusetts residents receiving SNAP benefits will be unable to use their EBT cards for food or cash purchases, or for cash withdrawals. The state's Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) has signed a contract with Fidelity Information Services (FIS) to become Massachusetts' new EBT vendor, ending a partnership with Current that lasted more than a decade. The outage will occur during the official system switchover. Once it's complete, EBT cards will work as normal and no action is required from recipients. The DTA said it's confident the new vendor will 'deliver increased service reliability and an enhanced experience for our clients.' Real-time updates will be shared online and through the DTA's social media when the system goes offline and again once it's back up and running. Download the and apps to get breaking news and weather alerts. Watch or with the new . Follow us on social media: Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
EBT outage this weekend due to vendor change
BOSTON (WWLP) – The Department of Transitional Assistance (DTA) will be conducting maintenance on the EBT system, impacting about 1.1 million people receiving SNAP benefits statewide. According to DTA, , there will be a full EBT outage from 11:00 p.m. Saturday, April 26, until midday Sunday, April 27. During this time, Massachusetts EBT cardholders will not be able to use their EBT cards for food and cash purchases or cash withdrawals. Western Massachusetts towns to collect prescription drugs this Saturday People using EBT should plan by making purchases and cash withdrawals before 11:00 p.m. on Saturday. The state has contracted with Fidelity Information Services (FIS) to be the new EBT vendor. DTA will share real-time updates when the system goes offline and when clients can use their EBT cards again on its webpages, and and social media pages. DTA said it has contacted recipients with mailed notices, texts, and email to help them prepare. After the outage, clients' EBT cards will work normally and clients do not need to do anything. Clients will also still be able to use DTA Connect to view or update their case. The phone number on the back of the EBT card (used to call for information and questions about EBT cards) will remain the same. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
SNAP benefit system will be down Saturday night, Sunday morning
The state is warning there will be a full EBT outage from 11 p.m. Saturday, April 26, until midday Sunday, April 27, so the computer system can undergo maintenance. During this time, Massachusetts EBT cardholders will not be able to use their EBT cards for food and cash purchases or for cash withdrawals. The Department of Transitional Assistance serves 1 in 6 Massachusetts residents. That's about 1.1 million people receiving SNAP benefits, the agency said this week in a news release. The department entered an agreement with a new vendor, Fidelity Information Services, and the outage is needed to transition the system. Nearly every client accesses their benefits via an EBT card. Cards will work normally after the transition, the state said. The state will post notices over the weekend on its website and its social media pages when the EBT system stops working and resumes operation. Longmeadow man pleads guilty in $19M loan scheme MGM Springfield releases March gambling take WMass veterans complain of disappearing doctors, threatened services
Boston Globe
15-04-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
With need soaring, child-care vouchers remain frozen for more than a year and counting
Advertisement Some families, including those involved with the Department of Children and Families or the Department of Transitional Assistance, are still receiving aid, as required by state law. But for parents like Tower, the waitlist is daunting. 'I'm looking at, if I don't get that voucher, waiting until my son goes to school, which makes me broke for another couple years,' said Tower, who will have to continue relying on rental assistance, food banks, toy drives, and other social safety nets to get by until she can work. 'It's almost impossible to get out of this low-income hole.' The demand for subsidies is partly due to an unprecedented increase in DCF and DTA cases as the rising cost of living pushes more families to the brink of financial hardship — and because the system has expanded to provide care to more children than it used to. Advertisement The state more than doubled its investment over the past five years as lawmakers shored up early education following the pandemic, becoming the only state to fully maintain COVID-era relief funds after federal dollars ran out. This surge in funding, including increasing reimbursement rates for subsidized care, gave child-care providers the ability to open more classrooms and increase teachers' pay. These improvements helped add more than 17,000 more seats in the past two years, beyond pre-pandemic capacity, many in disadvantaged communities where struggling families qualify for financial assistance. When it became clear that the state had maxed out its subsidies for income-eligible families, it froze the waitlist in March 2024. Since then, the number of children in line for financial assistance has jumped by more than 50 percent. Last year, the Legislature approved expanding the eligibility requirements to allow more families to qualify for child-care subsidies, which would ease the burden on lower-middle-class households. But this proposed regulation change, which is currently in the The cost of child care in Massachusetts is among the highest in the country, with families paying an average of nearly $20,000 a year for a toddler, according to Advertisement Kim Dion has been connecting families with child-care providers for 37 years at Seven Hills Child Care Resources in Worcester, and she's never seen the need for assistance so high. 'I have families in my region that have been on the waitlist since the summer of 2022,' she said. 'Those kids are going to be in public schools before I can get them a voucher.' Governor Maura Healey proposed $1.1 billion for child-care financial assistance in the fiscal year 2026 budget, a $192 million increase over the current fiscal year. But this would only subsidize new DCF and DTA cases and other families already being served by the system — not those on the income-eligible waitlist. 'We aren't anticipating at this funding level that we would be able to open up access to the income-eligible wait list,' said Amy Kershaw, commissioner of the Department of Early Education and Care, which administers subsidies, at a At a recent EEC board meeting, Kershaw, who served as DTA commissioner at the height of the pandemic and previously worked at DCF, said caseloads were in a time of 'pretty significant flux.' More slots have been added for priority populations, such as homeless families, and shifted to infants, where need has increased over the years — both of which cost more to provide. The system is so strained that the governor recently asked the Legislature for an additional $190 million to make it through the end of June. The Massachusetts Association of Early Education and Care and other advocates have also appealed to the Legislature to allocate more money in the next fiscal year to help waiting families. An additional $32 million could get 2,000 children off the waitlist, said William Eddy, executive director of the early education trade association. Advertisement 'We must find a way to serve children of low-income working families who are languishing on our waitlist,' he said at the legislative hearing. 'Thirty-thousand children should be unacceptable.' The state funding squeeze is unfolding, and at the same time, the Trump administration is making massive cuts, including closing the Boston Head Start office, which administers free care to families in need. At this point, there's no indication that federal grants that help fund state child-care subsidies will be added to the chopping block, said Some home-based providers — many of them women of color who rely heavily on low-income families — are struggling to maintain enrollment and their income, given the lack of vouchers. Providers that contract with the Guild of St. Agnes in Worcester are serving 10 percent fewer children than they were a year ago, largely due to the lack of vouchers and the lack of families who can afford to pay out of pocket, said president Sharon MacDonald Nurtury Early Education, which serves 1,100 children in the Boston area — almost all of them eligible for financial assistance — has a waitlist of home-based providers who want to join Nurtury's system but can't until more vouchers are issued. 'Small businesses are the backbone of child care,' said Nurtury president Laura Perille. 'They are one of the few growing sources of supply.' A number of centers are also struggling to get to full capacity because so many teachers, who make around $40,000 a year, qualify for vouchers for their own children but are stuck on the waitlist and can't work. Advertisement Torah Academy decided to invest in early education after the state expanded income eligibility, knowing the demand for vouchers would grow. The Jewish school converted a two-family home in Brighton into a child-care center, and is set to open this spring. But five of its seven teachers are marooned on the waitlist, and the school had to turn to private donors to fund their children's spots at Torah Academy, said Rabbi Binyomin Mermelstein, the school's executive director. 'This is very basic,' he said. 'If there's no teachers, there's no programs.' Daily and her son, Nathien, posed for a portrait together at their home in Westfield. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff Deborah Dailey worked at a child-care center in Springfield for almost four years before she went on maternity leave last year when her son, Nathien, was born. She applied for a voucher in February, but only found out about the freeze when she was getting ready to return to work in mid-April. 'I was in total shock,' said Dailey, 38. 'I really can't afford to take a leave.' Without a voucher, she said, returning to her low-paid, highly rewarding career teaching young children seems impossible. This story was produced by the Globe's team, which covers the racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. You can sign up for the newsletter . Katie Johnston can be reached at
