Tips for Welfare Benefits for Householders

Video Transcript

Hi everybody, my name is Angela Pugh. I'm the mother of two teenage daughters, for a while I was a single parent. So, today I'm here on behalf of Expert Village, and I'm here to teach you how to apply for welfare. Okay, in this application process they want to know the relationships of everyone that is applying. So, if your first daughter is the sister of your other daughter, you select that. If your first daughter is the daughter of the adult applicant, you select that. They also want to know if one sister or one brother is the sister or brother of the other. They want to know how everyone in the household relates to one another. When you finish with this segment, you simply press continue. The next page is for the absent parent information. They want to know if the parent is deceased, if the parent should be paying child support. They need to know the parent of each child. What you need to do is complete this information and hit continue. Now the Economic Self Sufficiency Access Florida application asks you to let them know about your assets. You need to click yes if anyone that you're applying for has the following assets, if you have any liquid assets such as cash in your checking or savings account, retirement account, prepaid funeral trust. Does anyone that you're applying for have life insurance? Does anyone that you're applying for own a vehicle or own a vehicle with another person? Once you answer each of those questions, hit continue. Asset information page two asks if you own any property. Do you have any business assets, any basic business equipment, inventory, or supplies? Have you sold, traded, or transferred any assets within the last three years? And is anyone that is currently on the application going to benefit from any cash settlement, any awards, or any prize money coming up in the future or within the last three months? Once you complete that information, you click continue and keep going. The next step in the application process is your household employment information. Is anyone working at a job or about to begin a job? Has anyone on the application stopped working in the past sixty days? Have you been offered a job and refused a job? Are you on strike? Are you self employed? Or, do you receive any payment for room and board? Once you complete this part of the application, you hit continue. They want to know if you are receiving any child support, estate trust fund monies, any disability money, union, military, veterans benefits. Have you applied for any of these benefits and just not been approved yet? You continue with this information that gives them all of your income information. Finally, they're going to want to ask, who has the income, the amount of the income, what type, and how often this is received. Once you complete that information, of course you click continue. Alright, next the Economic Self sufficiency application wants to know what your expense information looks like. Please tell us about the household expenses of the individuals that are applying, such as your shelter cost, your utility cost, your child or adult day care in order to go to work, your heating and cooling cost, and your health insurance cost. Does anyone that you're applying for pay child support? Anyone that you are applying for receive low income housing, energy assistance, LIHEAP, has anyone received that benefit in the last twelve months? Does anyone that you're applying for have any unpaid medical bills from the last three months? And is anyone that you're applying for currently homeless? Once you complete that part of the information, you hit continue. And then the application wants to know a little bit more about your shelter, household information. Who pays the expenses? How much? What type of shelter? And any comments up to five characters that you may want to add to your application can be added at this time. Okay, I'm starting. Alright the next step in applying for welfare is to add your utility expense information. They want to know who in the family pays the utility, what type of utility you have to pay. Either it be coal, electricity, fuel, gas, telephone, trash removal, water and sewage. Now they want to know the full amount. They want to know if this expense ended, you can check either yes or now. And does anyone else pay a part of this expense. When you complete that, click yes. It will ask you if you'd like to add another utility expense. Again it will ask you who pays it, it will ask you the amount. For this one you can click water or sewage. If the expense is scheduled to end, and does anyone else help you pay for that. Finally after you've added all your utility expenses, you want to take a moment to go back to take a look at everything that you've added so far, to be sure that you have not misspelled anything or added anything incorrectly. The Statement of Understanding is listed and provided by the Department of Children and Families to help you understand the information that you provided to them. You need to review the information and at the bottom of that application, it does allow you to create an electronic signature. The electronic signature would be a statement that says, I choose to apply for public assistance benefits for myself and for my family. I choose to apply over the internet and authorize processing my online application with my electronic signature. Here you would click sign now so that your electronic signature can be added to your application. Finally, you will receive a confirmation page. It says that your electronic application for assistance has been received. It gives you your application number and it allows you to print this page for your receipt. It also asks you if you'd like to receive an email confirmation. If you click yes, the email address that you provided prior will be added to this section. If you are completing this application between the hours of eight am and four pm and you are available to speak to a department representative, please add your phone number so that that representative may contact you. Finally, if you are at a local customer service center, you may have a brief interview with a member of the Department and Services family staff. To find the location of your nearest customer service center, again, you'll want to press 211 on a land line phone, not necessarily your cell phone, but on a land line phone, and you can ask where is the local customer service center for the Department of Children and Families? Once you've completed this part of the application, you do have the option to select print, and then exit. Finally, they do ask you if you're willing to complete a survey. It's in my opinion that whenever you are offered the opportunity to complete a survey, that you should complete the survey. A lot of times problems occur with the lack of customer service, and people will complain, but nothing can be done about it omplete the survey. So this is the Access Florida online unless you complete the survey. So this is the Access Florida online survey. Initially they thank you for agreeing to complete the survey. They tell you it will only take a couple of minutes and please give them your experience while on the application. The first question. Please rate your experience with our screens. The answers are easy, fair or difficult. Number 2: How long did it take you to complete the application? 1 to 30 minutes, 30 to 60 minutes or more than 1 hour. Number 3: Did you need help using the application. Either yes or No. Number 4: Where were you when you completed the application? In a Department of Children and Family's office or another location. How much computer experience do you have? Are you a first time user, do you use it occasionally or use it frequently? Would you use this application again? Either yes or No. They thank you for completing the survey. At the bottom, you click the word submit and you have completed your Access Florida Online Application to apply for Welfare presented by the Florida Department of Children and Family. If there ever comes a time where you have to stop in the middle of your application process, say the phone rings, you have to stop and go to work and you were not able to complete your application, the application online allows you to save what you have and go back in later on. You would come to the screen that says Access Online log on and you will have to enter your online number and password. Remember at the beginning of the application process where they told you to print out your access online number and your password and then they told you to print it, well once you print it this is the information you need to go back in to complete your application. Once you fill in your access online number and enter your password, you hit continue and the program will allow you to pick up where you left off. Before we finish this session on behalf of Expert Village on how to apply for Welfare, I just wanted to go over some of the other benefits that are offered by the State of Florida on the Access Florida website. Once you go to www.dcf.state.fl.us, you will come to the Florida Department of Children and Family Access Florida online where you can find out about and apply for more benefits. You can apply again, for food stamps, temporary cash assistance, Medicaid, Medicaid assistance for pregnant women, pre-screening to see if you may qualify for benefits, that was the first step in this series and Child Support Services and Child Support enforcement services are also found on this website. Child care assistance, medical coverage for children through the Florida Healthy Kids and Kid's Care Program. This website can also help you with locating employment to apply for a job. Job search is available here. We do have Medicare Part D, Earned Income Tax information, credit information, nutritional tips, how you can locate emergency food assistance in your area through Food Banks and also more services are also located here. I like to thank you for watching this segment on Expert Village on how to apply for benefits and my name is Angela Pugh. I hope this segment has been enjoyable and informative.

Watch these related videos

• 
  Tips for Welfare Benefits for Householders

  playlist Views: 964

• 
  How to Report Your Expenses to Welfare

  playlist Views: 553

• 
  Tips for Reporting your Assets to Welfare

  playlist Views: 515

• 
  Welfare Details on Household Members

  playlist Views: 558

• 
  How to Report Your Assets to Welfare

  playlist Views: 563

• 
  Welfare Rights & Responsibilities in Florida

  playlist Views: 661

Community Members who...

• Favorited this Video
• Rated This Video

Thumbs up or Thumbs down? Be the first to rate this video!

Top Tags