Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services' Procedures for Coordinating AFDC and SSI Benefits

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

The objective of our review was to determine whether the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) are coordinating information to ensure the accuracy of the Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) payments.

The HRS needs to improve its coordination of information with SSA to ensure AFDC payment accuracy. The Social Security Act provides that individuals receiving SSI cannot be included in an AFDC grant. We reviewed a sample of 200 cases where individuals in the State of Florida received both AFDC and SSI for at least 1 month during the period June 1991 through September 1993.

From our sample, we determined that:

* 57 individuals were overpaid $17,136 because HRS did not remove individuals from AFDC grants timely. Projecting these errors to the population, we estimate that 3,509 individuals were overpaid $1,054,806.

* 43 individuals were overpaid $13,250 because HRS did not receive and/or utilize Supplemental Security Income (SSI) information. Projecting these errors to the population, we estimate that 2,647 individuals were overpaid $815,604.

The HRS did not detect the payment errors identified in our sample in a timely manner because HRS had not properly used the SSI information provided by SSA. We are making several recommendations to correct the identified payment errors and to help ensure the integrity of AFDC payments through better coordination of information with SSA.

The HRS generally agreed with our findings and recommendation.