United Ways Help South Carolina in a Million Ways

If you ever wanted proof that South Carolinians have a lot of basic, unmet needs, just look at what the state’s United Ways are doing.
This year, the United Way Association of South Carolina and two affiliates that run the free statewide 2-1-1 helpline are expected to handle a million calls from people. Yep. A million calls for help.
Through the calls, United Ways link people to help with health care needs, food, clothing and shelter — areas that directly meet the organization’s mission, said UWASC director Tim Ervolina of Columbia.
The state association has built a powerful statewide help database that includes 17,000 services offered by more than 4,000 public, private and non-profit organizations. Through three call centers — one in Columbia that handles 2-1-1 calls from 40 counties, one in Aiken (three counties) and one in Charleston (three counties) — more than 80 paid staff members and volunteers field calls from people who need everything from a warm bed for the night to a meal to help with rent.
It’s a daunting task, Ervolina said, but one that allows the United Way to focus on individuals while breaking down silos of help typical at many agencies and organizations. Furthermore, the association applies private-sector entrepreneurial lessons to manage three basic kinds of help calls:
Medicaid. The state Department of Health and Human Services has contracted with UWASC to field calls related to people seeking Medicaid services, including those trying to get federal health. The contract pays for a staff of about 50 people to start eligibility applications and deal with specific problems related to benefits or service providers. The group handles about 30,000 calls per month. Some 94 percent of callers wait less than a minute before they speak to someone.
Food stamps. The state Department of Social Services also contracts with the United Ways to consolidate its calls for food assistance, including applications for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The SNAP team handles about 50,000 calls a month. Almost 900,000 people in the Palmetto State get food stamps, but that doesn’t mean people are not still hungry, Ervolina said. “The fact that all of these people are calling us tells us that we do still have hunger.”
Other problems. Another smaller team takes all of the other calls — about 10,000 a month — ranging from homeless people needing a place to bed down for the night to a young mother dealing with domestic abuse to a parent trying to pay a power bill.
Petra Lilly of Blythewood, a licensed master social worker who handles some of the more difficult cases, remembers one call in particular. A woman with obsessive-compulsive disorder hardly ever left her home. She called to say she was going to end her life by eating all of her pills. It was quickly clear she was very lonely, Lilly said.
She recalled how she told the woman that she wanted to provide assistance, but wouldn’t do so until the woman got her pills out of the room. The woman, who didn’t identify herself so that Lilly could send help from authorities, put away the pills and talked for 20 minutes. She promised she would call again if she felt suicidal.
“I didn’t know if she would keep her promise,” Lilly said. “When she called back, I felt really relieved,” adding that the woman called two or three times a week to deal with her loneliness.
“Active listening is a skill that we all need to have here.”
As a state, we’re lucky our United Ways provide much-needed support to so many people who have nowhere else to go. After spending time at a call center, it’s clear more work is needed to increase capacity by state government and nonprofits to meet the basic needs of South Carolinians.
“We have more need than availability of services,” Ervolina said.
Our high-poverty state prides itself on being charitable. But what’s so frustrating — and challenging — is how much more work we all have to do.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report. He can be reached at brack@statehousereport.com.