PA Public Benefits Project
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A project designed to assist low-income clients as they strive for economic self-sufficiency remained an important part of our program services in 2005. The Pennsylvania Public Benefits Project, initiated in 2004, was an effort to increase the number of public benefits specialists across the state, train them in areas of the law pertinent to public benefits, coordinate their work, and integrate them within the current advocacy network of specialists in regional programs and specialty projects.
The project continues to provide funding to enable a full-time advocate (paralegal) at NWLS to work on behalf of low-income clients throughout our 10-county region. In addition to direct representation and counsel for clients, the public benefits specialist is also the “point person” for extensive community outreach and legal education activities that form an important part of the project.
The overall goals of the initiative are threefold: to make Pennsylvania’s welfare system among the most humanitarian in the nation; to enable clients to get all of the public benefits to which they are entitled; and to help clients move out of poverty and toward self-sufficiency.
Jeannine Lawton-Knepper, who joined NWLS in July 2004, continued last year as our public benefits specialist. Her responsibilities are an important part of our commitment to the low-income community we serve, and a way to assist individuals and families to improve the quality of their lives in northwestern Pennsylvania.
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