The state of Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) engaged RedMane to design, develop, test and provide Cúram integration services to modernize its disaster income assistance program. We created a web-based employee portal that lets state staff determine eligibility, issue benefit cards, load benefit amounts to integrated Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards, and communicate the result to the existing income assistance financial legacy system. This portal accelerated the application process and improved service levels during the time-critical disaster periods.

This resulted in a second assignment—implementing a new D-SNAP (Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). RedMane delivered full life cycle services, on-budget and in just six weeks. This solution also uses EBT cards to get benefits to clients. We also streamlined the application process from many screens to just one screen for a majority of case information, which helped workers gather information faster. For pre-registered applicants, the system reduced the time from application to an EBT card from 24 hours to about 20 minutes.

Setting a precedent, winning recognition

These projects became the country’s first year-round proactive disaster income assistance and D-SNAP pre-application programs. Additionally, the state received an Innovation Award for D-SNAP at APHSA/ISM for innovative service delivery.