The county has a WIC caseload of around 12,000 people, most of them in Pittsburgh, said Robert Ferguson, chief policy officer of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation in that city, a nonprofit that supports health and education research for low-income people. Officials at Blueprints did not return calls requesting comment. The bureau also reduced the transition time between the Western Pennsylvania agencies from nine months to three, advocates said. to Temple, it’s also unclear why the bureau is stripping the WIC program from the Allegheny County Department of Health and giving it to Blueprints, a small agency in rural Washington County. Just as few in the WIC world appear to understand why the bureau is moving WIC from North Inc. and other agencies are appealing the reconfiguration. The original April announcement of a reconfiguration of agencies by the Bureau of Women, Infants and Children within the Pennsylvania Department of Health affects WIC offices throughout the state along with the Philadelphia office, North Inc., which has been providing WIC benefits for 42 years. We are confident that the 90-day transition period provides enough time for this transition without a lapse in service.” The spokesperson added: “The Wolf Administration’s primary concern is serving women, babies, and children in the WIC program without disruption. , it was determined a 90-day extension was appropriate to ensure the new vendors are ready to start providing services without disruption to recipients starting in January 2022.”Īdvocates said some agencies learned about the transition change only last week without discussion from the state. Regarding the compression of transition time from a year to three months, the spokesperson wrote that “after consultation with existing and new vendors.
![wic pa wic pa](https://www.wicoffice.net/files/foodlist/pennsylvania/pennsylvania_wic_approved_foods-08-min.jpg)
Pennsylvania state policy requires competition.”
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The spokesperson wrote that the state was following USDA guidelines “to consider a competitive procurement process,” which resulted in Temple being awarded the WIC program.īut in an email responding to Inquirer questions last month, a USDA spokesperson wrote: “There is no federal requirement that WIC state agencies competitively bid for local agencies. Tom Wolf jointly responded with a single email from a Wolf administration spokesperson late Wednesday afternoon. That is really all we are able to say at this point.”Ĭontacted separately, both the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the office of Gov. , Temple and the current contractor, are the specifics of the transition. It makes no sense.”Īsked about the transition, a spokesperson for Temple’s College of Health, which is slated to run WIC, said Wednesday: “It is still the plan to have a transition period. I know of no other situation like this in the country. “How will the changeover get done if the timeline isn’t what everyone was originally expecting? “I’m shocked they’re shortening the transition period,” said Geraldine Henchy, a national WIC expert and director of nutrition policy for the Food Research & Action Center (FRAC) in Washington, the largest anti-hunger lobby in America. It provides nutrition services, breastfeeding support, health care, and healthy foods to participants. WIC is shorthand for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. Department of Agriculture, which runs WIC, uses enrollment numbers to determine Pennsylvania’s funding allotment, the state would then lose money to help those who need it most, advocates say. As a result, advocates say, low-income women and children may bear the brunt of a speeded-up process by becoming confused about who’s in charge of their benefits and begin dropping off the WIC rolls, which have already been declining.īecause the U.S. They fear Temple might not be ready to take on the city’s more than 45,000 WIC clients without ever having run a WIC program before. After fostering controversy in the spring by taking the WIC program from a North Philadelphia agency that ran it for decades and awarding it to Temple University, the state has now ignited a firestorm by significantly cutting a planned period of transition to ease the changeover.Īdvocates and legislators say they can’t understand why a 12-month transition was cut to around three months last week.