Early Intervention Team

About the Program

Category: Human Services (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

The Department of Child Support Services’ Bureau of Public Assistance Investigations Early Intervention Team (EIT) works to detect and mitigate public assistance fraud. The purpose of the EIT is to keep families who receive public assistance thriving and out of the criminal justice system. The unit does this by identifying fraudulent activities close to the onset in an effort to mitigate large public assistance overpayments and potential prosecution which may lead to future hurdles to self-sufficiency. Since implementation of the EIT in November 2016, the percentage of closed cases with reductions in benefits increased from 9.29 to 14.11. Of those cases investigated by the EIT, 40.31 percent of the cases saw reductions in benefits. This large increase confirms that EIT is effectively identifying discrepancies close to their onset, to ensure families receive the correct level of benefits. In addition, the mitigation of large overpayments by the EIT led to a 12 percent decrease in the number of cases referred to prosecution by the Bureau of Public Assistance Investigation in 2017.