Data Migration

27 January 2010

I took the Broad Street Line to work today. In 2008 the Coalition was awarded a grant to create a new database. Last year, I helped them analyze their database and made suggestions for the structure of their new database. They worked with NPower, a software group to create an online database called Sales Force. The official launch is the 15th of February. A lot of the data that was migrated had duplicates, and did not connect properly to some associations. For the entire day I edited duplicated organizations, fixed organization hierarchies, and added specific contacts to the mailing list to which they were supposed to be attached.

Derek's Food Pantry

26 January 2010

I drove over to Derek’s cupboard at 42nd and Parrish at 7:30 this morning. Derek Felton works at the coalition creating Hunger Fighter Network. He has his own food pantry in the basement of a church in West Philadelphia. Derek’s wife, Marlene, and Ana, who is a VISTA at the coalition, were working too. On the third Tuesday of every month he has a group of about thirty to forty elderly citizens come for a free breakfast and a lecture on resources for themselves and their community. None of the elderly were homeless, but they all did not look well taken care of. I helped set up the pastries. I served juice. There were blueberry pancakes, fried eggs, grits, bagels, scones, pastries, juice, tea, and coffee. Derek raffles off bags off four bags of groceries and three casseroles for the seniors just for attending. Everyone gets a ticket when they arrive. Every month a new speaker comes to educate the seniors about a specific topic. There were ten lectures last year. A few were: how to get along with frustrating people, how to grow your own vegetables, AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, health care coverage, and how to save energy. The attendants really loved being there. They were incredibly polite and sweet. One of the men asked me if I was from Philadelphia. He did not think I was because, “We don’t make girls as pretty as you in Philadelphia.”

There was no speaker at this meeting. Derek asked them what speakers they wanted for the upcoming year. One of the women there asked Derek to leave the room. She asked everyone if they could contribute something to Derek because he pays for all of this almost by himself. Most people have a quarter or a dollar. They were so appreciative. The whole experience was truly heartwarming. Derek said he had never accepted money from a client before, but that he would accept this as seed money because he was going to let it grow and give it back to them. He cried a little bit. When everyone left, we cleaned up. Derek’s wife was very interesting. She invited us to her church and told us about being a jazz singer in the shore towns of Maryland. I did a lot of dishes, swept, mopped, and cleared away all the chairs.

Ana and I drove back to the Coalition. At 3:00 I had a meeting with Rachel, Tanya, and Ana to discuss what I would be doing for the next few weeks. I am helping Ana out with the Food Pantry and Soup Kitchen Survey. They need 70 more surveys completed in the next 2 weeks. Ana gave me a list of FPs and SKs in South and Center Philadelphia to call. As I surveyed them, I would also set up days to go volunteer, interview the workers, and take my pictures. I would also be helping with the data migration for the launch of Sales Force. I finished up my follow-up cases till I went home.

More Follow-Up

21 January 2010

Biked to work. I worked on more follow-up for Margaret. I worked at Emily’s desk because she was still away. Her computer is connected to the server. This allows me to write in the notes section as I’m working on a case. This was a rough day from the start. I had one woman call right as I got into the office who had no income since December 4^th. Her boss forgot to send in her temporary disability paperwork on time. She had back surgery on December 26^th. There is no food in her house, and she cannot leave the house because her back was healing. She doesn’t have any friends or family. There is no money in the bank. She was sobbing on the phone. I told her I would try to get her food stamps as soon as possible. She qualified for emergency food stamps. This is one of the cases where I want to run out of the office and bring people food right away. She told me that I gave her the best news she had in weeks. Doing this work, people say, “god bless you” or “let the lord’s glory shine down on you” to me very often. I’m not sure how I feel about the religious side of things, but I like to think that I now have a few blessing stored up. There are very thankful people out there, it has always confirmed my belief that people who do not have as much are more appreciative of what they have. People who are spoiled and complain about their life truly anger me. I understand that everything is relative and that people cannot comprehend what they have never experienced. I grew up with a lot of spoiled kids. One kid crashed a new Mercedes for fun. I just hope that they one day understand how lucky they are and that they do something with their privilege.

Follow-up work is mostly calling people, leaving messages, and waiting for people to call you back. A typical follow-up case entails some complication or another. Either the client calls us first or we call them to see how they are doing. After we speak to the client, we call the CHANGE center which is the County Assistance Office’s Customer Service line. You have to wait for about 10 minutes to speak with someone, but they are generally nice. There is no reason to get frustrated with them because they are just the middlemen. They tell you what notes are in the case or the status of the case. From what they tell us we either tell the client that they have to do something, like they’re missing a document, or we call the caseworkers. I have done follow-up work for maybe ten months now. I have only gotten one caseworker who has answered the phone on the first try. She was pleasant and activated a case for me. Usually caseworkers do not call back. If this happens, we can issue a ticket. When we issue a ticket through the CHANGE center, the caseworker has to get back to us in 48 hours. If we do not hear from them, we can find out their supervisor’s number. The supervisor generally calls back. If they do not call us back, we call the ADA for that office. If we have to call the ADA, we usually red flag the case as an example of something very bad. Part of my work last year for the coalition was to come up with error code suggestions, so we can search cases that had one error code or another.

A lot of the time clients are confused. The system is complicated. We know how to navigate it to tell them what to do and when to get it done by. Here are some issues that came up today (Sorry if these are vague, but I cannot get any more specific. I also have to be gender neutral, not sure whether I should use they or just work around it by not using possessives. Let me know what you prefer.):

• One client moved to a different area of Philadelphia. The client had an ongoing medical assistance case from the client’s previous CAO. The new CAO would not process her case and provided a vague explanation: “failure to provide documents from previous case.” This meant that the client had not transferred the MA to the new CAO. The client had to bring the verification documents to the old CAO to receive the food stamps. I told the client this. I checked back to see if the client had brought the documents to the old CAO. This client was especially hilarious, laughing about how the Welfare people were making her run around the city.
• Another client’s food stamps were in suspension because the client did not use them in August. I called the caseworker to get them back on today. The caseworker called me back to activate them. The client was very happy to have the food stamps back.
• One client had a child who was on disability. One of the parent’s of the child received child support when this parent did not provide care for the child. The parent that I was speaking to could not stop paying the other parent because they were arguing. The parent I was talking to had been living with the child for the past year, paying for all of the child’s needs. The client did not have proof of the child’s Social Security. The client needed to get a social security card for the child. The client was very afraid that the child’s disability would be cut off if they received food stamps. I assured the client that this would not happen.
• I worked on eleven cases continuously, keeping track of what was going on by pulling up the client’s case history in the follow-up database. After I do anything on the case I have to write it in the history. It is hard to remember what is going on with all the different cases.
• My last client of the day was elderly. The client did not speak English very well. It is very difficult to talk on the phone with the elderly because they do not often hear you and usually do not understand what you are asking them. The client wanted a paper application to fill out with their child. The client applied twice before, but had missed the application deadlines.