One in three Idahoans received help from the state Division of Welfare in 2010, from food stamps to Medicaid to Aid to the Aged, Blind and Disabled. Russ Barron, division administrator, told members of  JFAC and the Senate and House health and welfare committees this morning that more and more people are coming to the division who've never sought public assistance before, due to unemployment. With the sharp increases in the programs, "The workload for our staff continues to increase," Barron said.  Caseloads have jumped. "We have improved productivity by more than six times," he said. In 2010, however, the division's personnel budget was cut by $1 million in state general funds, $2 million in total funds.  "We are faced with an ever-increasing demand for services, and we've had to make difficult decisions about how to trim budgets."

Among them: The division has eliminated services and programs that weren't required by the federal government. That means people who apply for food stamps no longer are forced to comply with child support services as a condition of receiving food stamps. Aggressive efforts to locate non-paying parents for child support also have been dropped. Job assistance for food-stamp recipients aged 18-50 who don't have children and aren't disabled has been cut off. And 1,400 recipients have been booted off the Aid to the Aged, Blind and Disabled program, while another 600 had their benefits reduced. "We realize that some participants were impacted more than others," Barron said. "The main impact was to those living in certified family homes, and the majority of these participants live in homes operated by their relative caretakers."