Workforce and Education Partners 2025 TA Sessions

2025 TA Sessions







March 11, 2025 Recording	IDHS Announcements: CJC trainings are coming up. Go to the CJC website to sign up. These are for all new staff as well as any staff who need a refresher. Referral and enrollment email issues should be resolved. If you have any further issues please submit a Help Request so we can be notified if these need more work: Issue 1: Pending referral emails may include referrals that have already been processed. Issue 2: Enrollment reminder emails have included all customers for all Providers and not just your customers. Valenicia announced that it is important to inform your Provider Manager about any changes you make after you have submitted your staffing reports. We do have a known issue where the lock after the staffing is completed is allowing some providers to make changes they shouldn’t be able to (that should be fixed on 3/20/25. In the meantime, please refrain from making changes after a staffing is completed unless you notify your Provider Manager and the change is approved. Dee announced a known technical issue related to referral amounts not transferring properly, and suggests entering benefit amounts without dollar amounts in notes. We are working on getting that fixed by 3/20/25. Dee mentioned the need to remove duplicate employments due to the previous issue where some employment wasn’t saved and some employment was saved multiple times. Please submit help desk tickets for such issues if you need assistance resolving them. Q&A Referrals: LaDonna suggested changing the assessment question language in ISETS, noting that asking if a customer speaks different languages may be redundant. New Providers: Tracy Pugh raised a question about new providers populating in ISETS and the need to update their program information. Providers should ensure their program information is up to date in order to be matched with customers for referrals. Military Status: Kenyatta suggested simplifying the military status assessment in ISETS to a multiple-choice on the paper form due to the FCRCs only having a blank line and the answers don’t often align with ISETS choice options. Printable referral form: 445179-202405.pdf NOFOs and Information Sessions We are working on getting final approval on all NOFOs and they will be published within 1-2 weeks. Attend the information session to have your questions answered or email if you need technical support. Dee holds office hours every Wednesday from 10-11am Call Link: https://zoom.us/j/8449601274
February 27, 2025 recording	We are still having issues with referral and enrollment emails. We apologize for any confusion of frustration this has caused. There is a fix that will go out for both of these on 3/6/25 and we hope that will fix those issues: Issue 1: Pending referral emails may include referrals that have already been processed. Issue 2: Enrollment reminder emails have included all customers for all Providers and not just your customers. We have some issues with latency / lag. SIU is working on a couple of different fixes for the performance of the site. If you are having a lag more than 10 seconds, please submit a help Request. We are putting timers to see if there are certain pages slower than others. CJC trainings are coming up. Go to the CJC website to sign up. If you are having trouble with Snap E & T and need additional help, please contact your Provider Manager and set up a meeting with Andi. Q&A Provider Locations: Some Providers have several different locations. Each program in ISETS is associated with a location. In the referrals, some locations do not have the correct milage from the customer. This will be fixed on 3/6/25. TANF Ineligibility: Sometimes, a customer is determined ineligible for SNAP because they are receiving TANF. Rarely it occurs that a customer’s TANF eligibility is determined after a Provider has already provided SNAP E&T services and is retroactively determined as ineligible. If this scenario occurs, please contact your Provider Manager and IDHS will determine reimbursements on a case by case basis.
February 11, 2025 TA recording	IDHS Announcements: Andi was out of the office last week so our usual release notes video was not produced. We will review and include in the notes the technial updates from the recent release on February 6 (see notes below). The release video update will be recorded soon and posted. CJC training is coming up. Go to the CJC website to sign up. If you are having trouble with Snap E & T and need additional help, please contact your Provider Manager and set up a meeting with Andi. We are currently working on NOFO (Notices of Funding Opportunities) and they should be posted towards the end of February or the beginning of March. Some NOFOS will have informational/TA sessions. The SNAP, SNAP Intermediary, and TANF will all have informational sessions. If you have any questions about NOFOS, you can contact Charles Hopkins at Charles.hopkins@illinois.gov. Technical updates from the recent release on February 6th: Referrals that were rejected; the customers were still displaying in the provider’s list of customers. That was fixed. The partners who did not properly enroll their customers lost access when they were exited by another agency. That was fixed. There were some customers that had their SSN changed during the initial assessment. That should not be available to Providers. The SSN comes from IES and you should not be able to change it. Some Providers were seeing they could change it and were making changes. Please do not make changes to SSN. If you do see that field available to you, please put in a Help Request ticket. A SOC code look-up on the Credentials module was not working properly. This was fixed. We made a bunch of changes to the Dashboard so that the Job Retention extension for 365 days shows up. There was an information session recording for this, that can be found on the partner page. If you are unsure, reach out to your provider manager. Employment verification uploads to support issuance of Support Services are now added to the uploads in the Post 90 day retention uploads section. We also had some referrals that should have been rejected but were not rejected. If for some reason you sent in a reverse referral and it is not registering correctly, please put in a Help Request. If you have additional expenses for previous months that you are having problems adding or changing for the past months, please submit a Help Request. We had an issue where we didn’t receive the full data set from the IES team. This was causing a bunch of customers to be flagged as needing verification for eligibility. We have received a correction, but those customers that needed verification were not reset when the new data file was put in. We are working on resetting these. In the meantime, please continue verifying them as needed during staffing. We have been working on performance issues. We have been updating the ISETS system in various ways to improve performance. If you are experiencing significant delays that are more than 30 seconds, please take a screen shot of the page that is running slow and submit a Help Request. Please put a stopwatch on it so we know the exact length of time. There are a couple of small things that we are working on getting a hot fix out for: There is a Hotfix for the Career Plan items that won’t open. There is a Hotfix going out tonight for not being able to edit an activity. Q&A For the Needs Verification, we are still seeing these. Please reach out to the Provider Managers to verify. We want to make sure we aren’t serving people that are ineligible. Following up with Referrals If you get a notification that you have received a referral from IDHS, you can find these on the Customer search page or the Dashboard In the Customer Search: type in the name of the customer. The email also has a number for the Illinois workNet field. You can copy and paste that into the IwN search field. In the Dashboard you can view all pending referrals. When you go down to the Referrals and Redetermination section, you can view the pending ones. If you have any that are pending, they will show up in the top section of the Dashboard. When you go to the customer record, on the Overview tab, open the Referral section. You will see a Referral that says pending in the response column. Click on the green plus sign and click the referral. If it says pending, then there will be a link to accept or reject the referral. The ISETS system is up 24 hours. It can always be accessed. Dee holds office hours are every Wednesday from 10-11am
January 30, 2025 Recording	Email sent from Andi Grabemeyer on 1/30/25 IDHS Announcements: • IDHS sent out a notice that we are having issues with referrals, there is a fix that went out so those should all be fixed. If you experience issues, please report them by submitting an Help Request ticket. • We have some issues with latency / lag. SIU is working on a couple of different fixes for the performance of the site. If you are having a lag more than 10 seconds, please submit a help Request. We are putting timers to see if there are certain pages slower than others. • Last TA session, we did have an info session on the new Job Retention extension to 365 days. Please review that recording for more information. o We have some changes coming out next Thursday, Feb. 6th.. Until them we will be manually extending the Job Retention. This means if you have someone enrolled in Job Retention as of January 1. They can stay in Job Retention. Keep doing that manually and if you have any questions, put in a Help Request, talk to your Provider Manager and cc Michelle Kraus. • CJC training is coming up. Go to the CJC website to sign up. • If you are having trouble with Snap E & T and need additional help, please contact your Provider Manager and set up a meeting with Andi. • Q&A • Email Notifications: You should be getting email notifications about referrals reaching 90 days. We have those notifications going out to all Providers and your Provider Manager is being CC. We had several referrals that were expiring, and we wanted to make sure they were getting processed. Please check your referrals and process them timely. • Needs Verification status: If the Snap Eligibility status says “Needs Verification” and the status box on the customer overview is red, that is an indication that the person may have lost their snap benefits. We get that information from IES. Contact your Provider Manager to confirm their eligibility. The other thing that can flip that to red is if a Work Dev goes through a staffing and marks them as ineligible it will highlight that customer record to red and mark them an ineligible. Also if a customer misses a Rede date they may be flagged as needing verification. If the redetermination date has passed, then the checkbox will be red. They may lose eligibility if they don’t make the redetermination. Workforce Development and your Provider Manager can look in IES. You costs provided to customers who are not eligible are not reimbursable so you need to check their eligibility otherwise you risk providing services that you cannot be reimbursed for SNAP E & T. o Andi sent out a message that the last import we got from IES was only a third of the normal file from IES. They have sent us an updated import (Jan 28th) and that issue should be fixed. During that time you likely saw more of these “Needs Verification” status than you typically see. That should be resolved now. o There are two different ways to find them: • Go to the Customer list and search for Snap eligibility status needs verification in the Advanced Search section. • Go to the Dashboard and in the Referrals and Redetermination section on the Dashboard you can go to the list, Customer with SNAP Eligibility status of needs verification unduplicated customer count. You should be able to click the number on the list to view the customers. • IES Data: We get a file from IES 4 times a month on the 6, 14, 21, 28. Each time we get a new file it will update all customer status, case, and contact information. The data should not be any older than 2 weeks. The data that we received on the 20th was incorrect, but then they sent us a new file and the one we got on the 28th was corrected. • Reverse Referrals going to other providers: There is a known issue where some providers are receiving Referrals from other Providers that should be Reverse Referrals for IDHS. If a referral registers as a Provider to Provider referral in error, it would show up in the Referrals and Redetermination section on the Dashboard. You will want to keep an eye on them until we get them fixed (ETA Feb 20 if not sooner). o If you sent a Reverse Referral and haven’t received anything back in 48 hours, reach out to your Provider Manager because it might have been one of those that went to the wrong place. • Provider Locations: Some Providers have several different locations. Each program in ISETS is associated with a location. If you want the program to be primarily associated with one location that is not administrative, the Provider can update that on the Provider Info tab. The location won’t stop the referral going to the Provider even if they are for the wrong location. • Revoke Consent button on referrals: As a Provider, you can see the “Revoke Consent” button (orange). Every once in a while we have a customer that says they want to participate with a provider but then come back and say they don’t want to. When they are signing the referral, they are giving consent to provide their information. If they don’t want to participate in Snap E & T anymore and they don’t want you to have access to their information, you can click “Revoke Consent” on the referral to remove them from your caseload. If you have already begun providing services, please end all of their activities and exit the customer. You will use it very rarely. • Sending multiple referrals: If you have a referral in the Referral section and the status still says “pending”, reach out to your Provider Manager to make sure it has been received by Workforce Development instead of sending another referral. If you think there is a problem with it, you can also put in a Help Request. Please do not send multiple referrals without talking to an IDHS staff person. • Referrals to outside services: When adding a service for, “Referral to Drug/Alcohol Rehabilitation”, please add the referral to a service then mark the customer as inactive. That way when looking at the Career Plan, you can see that the customer is taking a short break (30-60 days). If the customer gets out of treatment, and they do not want to come back. Go back to their Case Management activities and close all their activities as of the last day the customer attended and then exit the customer. You can also close the referral to the drug/alcohol rehabilitation and mark the customer as active. Dee holds office hours are every Wednesday from 10-11am o Call Link: https://zoom.us/j/8449601274
January 14, 2025 Recording	email sent from Andi Grabemeyer on January 15 Job Retention 365 Extension Pilot Program Details: Details: Effective January 1, 2025. Extends job retention support beyond 90 days to a maximum of 365 days. First 90 days remain the same (contact every 30 days required and employment verification within the first 90 day period) and everyone shows on the 4333. After 90 days, please continue to offer case management and support services as needed. Contact every 30 days is nice but is not required. Customers will only show on the 4333 if support services are issued. When support services are entered, we are also requiring employment verification be uploaded within the following timeframe: 30 days before to 30 days after the SS issuance. Key Benefits: · Additional support for customers navigating employment stability and financial independence. · Enhanced flexibility to accommodate employment gaps under 30 days without disqualifying participants. Expected Outcomes: · Improved customer retention in employment programs. · Better long-term outcomes for individuals transitioning off public assistance. Q&A Customers enrolled in JR as of Jan 1, 2025 are eligible to participate. Please email Michelle Kraus or submit a help request for help correcting any customers who may have already been exited. Those of you still using the PPTT, your PPTT should always match what is in ISETS, so include JR customers within the first 90 days and in months when you issue supportive services after the initial 90 day JR. Customers in JR are no longer subject to the eligibility criteria of receiving SNAP benefits to be eligible for SNAP E&T services. So anyone who looses their SNAP benefits while in JR is still eligible for these services. Breaks in employment: Customers who lose employment and are again eligible for regular SNAP E&T services should be taken out of JR and can participate in other SNAP activities. Customers who lose employment and gain another job within 30 days may simply continue in JR without any changes to the activity or enrollment; simply add the end date of job 1 and enter job 2 in ISETS. Customers who have a break of employment for more than 30 days are no longer eligible for JR services and should be exited from the program. All reporting for this pilot program will go to FNS and we will handle that. Just input your data as it happens and we will handle the rest. Please email Michelle Kraus with any policy clarifications and make sure to CC your Provider Manager. IDHS will continue monitoring pilot program implementation and gather participant feedback for future iterations. ISETS Q&A Report Changes: the 4333 now includes whether this customer has had documents or case notes added within the last 2 weeks. The Employment report also includes whether an Employment Verification document has been uploaded. More information about this is included in Monday’s release notes video. System speed: We know the system has some lag issues and are addressing it as a whole system. Referrals: Referrals already have some options selected and reverse referrals are showing up in the overdue in in the Dashboard. Also FCRC referrals are populating on the reverse referrals section of the dashboard. SIU will look at all referrals and set up individual sessions to research why referrals and reverse referrals are having some issues. Employment question: If a customer has more than 1 job that together add up to more than 20 hours, add each job separately, then manually remove the Employment activity and add the Job Retention activity. Assessment questions: TCA is getting an error when trying to start the initial assessment on a customer. SIU programmers will look at it to correct the error. The Needs Assessment (part 2) needs to be completed within 30 days of enrollment for every customer. System updates: Everyone should go to the release notes video for a walk-through of all updates to the ISETs System every two weeks. A link and reminder of this is sent to your email every time we record a new video so check your email for these as well. We also have a known issues list on the Help Request page. Office Hours are every Wednesday from 10-11am Call Link: https://zoom.us/j/8449601274