2023-07-11 01:38:22
Hundreds of thousands of California families whose children were eligible for free food money under a federal pandemic program, including tens of thousands in San Diego County, ended up not using it, in some cases because they never received it. benefit cards.
Now, local activists are urging families across the state to claim the money before they lose their chance.
Two years ago, 5 million children across the state were mailed $6.1 billion in electronic benefits transfer (EBT) funds to use to buy food. The EBT cards, which carried an average of $1,200 in benefits each, were part of a federal program called Pandemic EBT 2.0 aimed at compensating low-income children for on-campus meals they missed while their schools were closed during the pandemic. .
But as of this week, $921 million of the pandemic EBT money issued statewide remained unspent, according to data requested from the state Department of Social Services by the San Diego Union-Tribune.
More than 651,000 eligible California children never activated their EBT cards, which means they didn’t use any of their benefits.
This includes about 69,000 San Diego County children who qualify, according to a November 2022 state report — nearly one in five children who qualify.
Families who were eligible but never activated a Pandemic EBT 2.0 card can call a state hotline at 1-800-887-8230 to have one reissued. The deadline to call is August 1.
“The summer hunger precipice is real, food prices remain high, and there is an average of $1,200 for eligible students,” said Amanda Mascia, director of programs for the San Diego Coalition Against Hunger. .
What happened to the cards?
Many pandemic EBT cards were never activated, not because families didn’t need them, but because they never received them, Mascia said.
The Coalition Against Hunger conducted audits at two local schools where all children qualified for pandemic EBT to investigate why families did not use the cards.
“They really and truly didn’t know these cards existed for them,” Mascia said.
The main problem, the coalition found, was that many cards were being sent to outdated addresses.
To send the cards, California used student addresses on file at its centers at the start of the 2020 academic year, Mascia explained. But many students had moved amid the instability of the pandemic or were experiencing homelessness, so their addresses may have changed when benefits were sent out during the second semester of 2021.
It is also possible that some families received the cards but never opened the envelopes they came in because they did not know what they were. The cards came in plain white envelopes that confused some families, who mistook them for junk mail.
And some families told the Coalition Against Hunger they didn’t use the cards for fear of using public benefits, fearing it might affect their immigration status, Mascia said.
“One hundred percent of the families that we were able to reach through the school that did not activate their cards, when informed, were absolutely interested in receiving and using these benefits,” he said.
Other families may have received the cards but never activated them because they didn’t need the money or didn’t think they qualified for EBT benefits.
The cards were sent not only to low-income families, but also to higher-income families whose children attended schools where all students had access to free meals, regardless of income.
The state Department of Social Services said it made several efforts to get families to use their pandemic EBT funds, including creating a site specific web and a helpline that families could call to activate cards, request replacements, or report lost cards.
The department also told federal officials that it distributed toolkits to school districts with educational materials for families and sent reminder postcards to families with children under age 6 who had not yet activated their cards.
The Coalition Against Hunger took its findings to State Assemblyman Chris Ward (D-San Diego). Together they won the support of elected officials for the department of social services to ask the federal government to allow families to apply for new cards if the original ones had never been activated.
That request was granted in December. California was the only state to request and receive federal approval for such reissues, said Jesús Mendoza, regional administrator for the federal Food and Nutrition Service.
How to get your benefits reinstated
If you think your child was eligible for pandemic EBT but you didn’t receive or activate the card, you can call the state’s hotline at 1-800-887-8230 to request a new one. The hotline is open Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Families only have until August 1 to call and apply.
Children were eligible for Pandemic EBT 2.0 if they were eligible for free or reduced-price meals and their school was closed for any time between October 2020 and August 2021.
That includes children whose families have filled out an application for free or reduced price meals or are enrolled in CalFresh.
However, families not considered low-income also qualified for benefits if their children attended schools that offered universal free meals through a federal program called the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP).
The Pandemic EBT 2.0 program applied not only to school-age children, but also to those under the age of 6 who were currently receiving CalFresh.
When calling the hotline, families should have the following information on hand, according to the Coalition Against Hunger:
First and last name of each eligible child Child’s date of birth At least a partial address of where the child lived at the start of the 2020-2021 school year
The Coalition Against Hunger also encourages families to have a 2019-2020 school year address handy.
The Coalition Against Hunger advises families to use EBT benefits safely, without affecting their immigration status and without having to pay them back.
If a family is in a homeless situation and has no fixed address, they can request that the reissued card be sent to their child’s school, Mascia said.
Families can apply to have the card reissued even if they now live out of state, according to the department of social services.
Benefits can be used to buy food at most grocery stores, farmers markets, and online stores like Amazon.
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