State officials are negotiating a contract to run job-training services for low-income Montanans with a Virginia-based company. Local nonprofits who currently provide those services are worried they will have to close their doors.
Low-income Montanans who receive financial assistance, like the SNAP program, are required to enter job-training programs. For decades, those programs have been administered by a cooperative of more than a dozen local nonprofits around the state.
Dakota Stormo sits on the board of Career Futures in Butte, which offers that job-training. Before working with the nonprofit, he was 20-years-old, without a job and with a six-month-old child to take care of.
“Begrudgingly I accepted the fact that I needed help, and sought the assistance of the Department of Health and Human Services. Any individual who's had the need to be on state assistance can say that it’s not an easy task,” Stormo said.
Stormo said the job training he received was essential to him finding stable employment and moving off state assistance.
“The training and guidance I received at Career Futures taught me skills that I still use to this day. Everything from keeping a budget, how to interview properly, workplace etiquette, time management and professionalism,” Stormo said.
Stormo joined a group of Democratic state lawmakers this week at a press conference criticizing the state’s decision to change how the job training program is administered.
Last fall, Montana’s Department of Public Health and Human Services (DPHHS) announced it was looking to “collapse and consolidate” the program under one provider who could create a hybrid, virtual and physical program across the state.
In January, the department announced its intent to give the new contract to Maximus, a for-profit government services contractor based in Virginia.
State health department Director Charlie Brereton said the goal for the new contract is to re-invigorate the services offered by creating a performance-based model which pays bonuses to Maximus when clients reach certain milestones, like obtaining a GED.
But critics said the old model works fine and they worry the new performance model focused on outcomes will lessen care and force local providers, particularly in rural communities, to shut their doors.
State Rep. Mary Caferro, a Democrat from Helena, was also a client for job-training when she was a single mother of four fleeing an unsafe situation with an ex-husband. She’s skeptical of offering these services virtually.
“A computer system simply does not cut it. With people like me, we need someone across the table talking to us face-to-face,” Caferro said.
DPHHS said its new program is intended to improve efficiency and meet clients where they are, but didn’t say how virtual services would be accessed by low-income Montanas without home internet or cell phone access.
The department said the project proposal requires Maximus to sub-contract with existing local providers ‘as needed.’ Providers in Butte, Helena and Missoula said they’re unclear what that means.
If a subcontract offer doesn’t arrive, many providers say they'll be forced to close.
DPHHS said negotiations were ongoing and that Maximus would work with local providers on a transition plan before taking over services on July 1. Maximus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
