CHARLOTTE AMALIE — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has given the Virgin Islands Human Services Department a “performance bonus” for significantly improving its distribution and enforcement of benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 2017.
The USDA award for the Virgin Islands government was $190,000 in 2016 — $20,000 more than the current total.
DHS was awarded $170,730 for having the most improved case and procedural error rate, or CAPERs, in the country.
The CAPER measures whether the territory properly denied, suspended or terminated SNAP benefits to certain households and properly notified those households of its decision, according to the Agriculture Department.
The DHS Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) will receive more than $170,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS).
Human Services Commissioner Felecia Blyden received notification of this from the SNAP, USDA FNS Mid-Atlantic Region director regarding the performance bonus recently.
According to the letter, FNS conducted SNAP Quality Control (QC) integrity reviews nationwide for a year and a half. FNS found practices that intentionally or unintentionally influenced the results of the QC system in many states.
Therefore, it was unable to release a national performance measure for Fiscal Year 2016. However, FNS found no bias during its review of the U.S. Virgin Islands’ Quality Control system; thus, allowing FNS to validate the Virgin Islands’ reports.
