on 02-04-2009 01:23

By RUSS OLIVO

PAWTUCKET - The state Department of Health has dropped a key social service agency from the WIC supplemental nutrition program, saying it no longer provides the service in a manner that is sufficiently cost-effective.

Households representing some 5,400 clients of WIC (Women, Infants and Children) were informed by letter that WIC vouchers are no longer available at the Blackstone Valley Community Health Center, effective Jan. 31, said health spokeswoman Annemarie Beardsworth. The agency ran two distribution sites at 42 Park Place in Pawtucket and 9 Chestnut St. in Central Falls.
BVCHC's clients have been instructed to pick up their WIC vouchers at the headquarters of the Rhode Island Parent Information Network, located at 175 Main St.
"There is no termination of service to clients," she said. "We are in the process of establishing a new permanent site for clients in Pawtucket and Central Falls."
But BVCHC's ouster from the state's WIC distribution network has left some hard feelings behind at the agency, which had handled about 20 percent of the state's entire WIC caseload. Executive Director Raymond Lavoie said DOH's decision will not only have an adverse impact on area WIC clients, it forced him to lay off 11 people who were in charge of administering the WIC program.
DOH says it can no longer justify allowing his agency to administer WIC because of unacceptably high overhead costs, but Lavoie said he is skeptical of the claim that the costs are impermissible under the terms of the federal grant supporting the program. He said he intends to file a Freedom of Information Act request to see whether DOH is actually living up to the guidelines of the federal WIC grant or merely denying the
agency legitimate administrative overhead in an arbitrary fashion.
Lavoie said he suspects that DOH is simply unwilling to pay what BVCHC needs to run the WIC program and has funneled the money elsewhere.
"I want to know where that money ended up," said Lavoie. "I suspect they're using it to prop up their own budget."
Beardsworth said BVCHC was the only agency in the state affected after DOH asked its provider network to submit new proposals for running the program. The WIC program contains three components - nutrition, education and administration - and providers were instructed to meet new standards for how much of their total allotments could could be spent on each one.
Lavoie said it is unrealistic for BVCHC to live by the same standards as some of the other service providers because it has perhaps the highest caseload of any WIC agency in the state. By its own accounting, DOH says that in the last approved round of funding, the WIC allocation for BVCHC represented nearly 22 percent of the $3 million statewide budget for the program, or about $657,000.
Moreover, said Lavoie, it is disingenuous to suggest that shifting the service to another site will leave clients unaffected. BVCHC also provides primary health and dental care to "poor and medically underserved" residents of Pawtucket, Central Falls and other nearby communities. Eliminating the WIC program from the agency merely robs those clients of access to an integrated spectrum of health care and nutrition services.
"A service entails much more than just passing out checks," said Lavoie.  "It is simply unconscionable that RIDOH would withhold funding from a safety net provider for services that are provided, in many other state, directly by the states themselves. The challenges faced by community health centers like BVCHC in these economic times are already formidable. It is simply impossible for us to subsidize a federal program like WIC at the expense of our already strained health and dental programs."
Including the newly designated Parent information Network, there are 11 agencies in the state that administer the program, allowing poor women with children to obtain cash-like vouchers for certain foods, including milk, juice and cereal.
The only other sites where WIC vouchers are available in the Blackstone Valley are the Burrillville WIC Program and the Thundermist Health Center in Woonsocket.