Five Questions for New York’s Social Service Agencies

As Washington has tightened its grip on social services, New York officials have said little about how they plan to adapt the state’s safety net amid a growing affordability crisis.

That may change during Thursday’s budget hearing in Albany, which will provide a rare opportunity for officials at the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and the Office of Children and Family Services to lay out a vision for addressing historic federal cuts while also supporting the state’s most vulnerable New Yorkers.

Counties are bracing for a host of policy changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that are expected to overwhelm understaffed social services departments and take a bite out of local budgets. At the same time, child care providers are wondering whether the state’s universal child care plan will leave them behind.

Here are five questions we’d pose to the state’s human services leaders.

How will the state support county agencies as they take on expanded federal requirements for food assistance?

Starting this spring, new monthly work requirements will go into effect for SNAP recipients as a result of President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill.” The shift could result in hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers losing their monthly food benefits, and is expected to bury chronically understaffed social service departments in additional, time-consuming paperwork.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is back on track for now, but even more changes could be on the way.

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Last week, the state also notified counties that they will be responsible for covering a higher share of costs associated with administering SNAP benefits such as replacing lost or stolen cards, starting in October. For some counties, that could cost up to several million dollars annually; some local governments will likely raise property taxes or reduce services to keep up.

Phil Church, president of the New York State Association of Counties and Oswego County administrator, said that he is looking for the state to share the burden instead of simply passing cuts down. “We really want to be able to protect our local taxpayers from costs they really should not have to bear,” he said.

How does the state plan to address low pay among child care providers to ensure the workforce is able to support the proposed expansion?

Hochul’s $4.5 billion plan to fund free child care for two-year-olds in New York City, strengthen universal pre-K statewide, expand child care vouchers, and pilot universal child care in three counties. But it doesn’t include wage increases for the child care providers who will be powering those programs — and who are among the state’s lowest-paid workers, with an average annual salary of $38,000 in 2023. Low wages have fueled significant staffing shortages in the sector, especially upstate.

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The state has previously set up one-time workforce stabilization grants and bonuses for child care workers, but advocates are pushing for the establishment of a permanent compensation fund to help providers achieve wage parity with public school employees. The question now is whether the legislature will heed those calls.

What is the state’s timeline for transitioning chip-enabled benefit cards, and how will the state pay for it?

After years of waffling, Governor Hochul came out in favor of an overdue tech upgrade last month that could help New Yorkers keep their benefits. The state’s outdated electronic benefits cards — also known as EBT cards — have been a target for a form of theft called skimming, leaving households unable to recoup their SNAP benefits and forcing the state to continually replace stolen cash assistance.

Advocates have been urging New York to transition to more secure chip-enabled cards since 2022. Last year, Legal Services NYC sued the state for failing to be proactive about protecting public benefit recipients from harm.

During last year’s budget hearing, Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance Commissioner Barbara Guinn told legislators that the upgrade was the “best path forward” but that the state simply didn’t have the cash. Other states like California, Oklahoma, and soon, New Jersey, have adopted chip cards to curb skimming.

Photo collage of a transparent yellow SNAP card over the black and white produce section of a grocery store.

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It’s unclear how soon New Yorkers could see chip cards arrive in the mail. The state has yet to say how long the transition will take and where the money for it will come from. Implementation costs could also be far costlier as Washington pulls back federal support for programs like SNAP.

Will the state address the longstanding staffing crisis in New York’s human services sector?

Crippling turnover and persistent vacancies have become the norm for the state’s nonprofit human services workforce, which has long dealt with delayed or missing payments and a protracted contracting process. As a result, the state has often grappled with an exodus of housing providers and struggled to deliver on an ambitious mental health care agenda.

Under Governor Kathy Hochul, the sector has received modest relief in the form of annual cost-of-living raises. But the minor increases — last year’s budget delivered a 2.1 percent bump, far below the legislature’s 7.8 percent ask — have done little to reverse what nonprofit leaders say is becoming an entrenched workforce crisis.

In December, Hochul vetoed a bill that would have streamlined the state’s procurement process by requiring the state to make some payments in advance or pay interest on late payments. It’s unclear where she stands on other efforts underway in the legislature, such as a bill that would eliminate a controversial licensing exam for social workers.

What is the state doing to improve conditions and staffing levels at its youth prisons?

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By all accounts, New York state’s youth prisons are a disaster. Run by the state Office of Children and Family Services, the facilities are supposed to focus on rehabilitation and treatment — but staff have locked kids in small, bathroomless cells for upwards of 23 hours a day, as New York Focus has reported this year.

Workers say a main cause of the dysfunction is understaffing. The number of full-time staff at the facilities declined 13 percent from 2019 through 2022, the most recent data available, while the incarcerated population rose 65 percent, and continued increasing. Many of the facilities have operated with a fraction of the workers they need to supervise the incarcerated youth.

What has OCFS Commissioner DaMia Harris-Madden been doing to alleviate the crisis? How is the agency recruiting qualified staff, and what is it doing to ensure that existing staff don’t burn out and make the crisis worse?