We received a question as to how to treat disaster relief employment income received from a National Emergency Grant.
We have been asked whether to adopt for food stamp benefit purposes the $48.17 average cost for prescription drug purchases that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) calculated. The answer is yes, with some caveats. We have prepared two new Q&As to outline how this should work.
The categories of noncitizens eligible to participate in the Food Stamp Program under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 have been expanded to include the minor children, spouses and in some cases the parents and siblings of victims of severe trafficking.
The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 makes victims of a severe form of trafficking in persons eligible for federally funded or administered benefits and services to the same extent as refugees.
This memorandum is to reiterate and clarify current policy governing intentional program violations as set forth in the Food Stamp Program regulations.
The following memo represents our position on the question of whether the head of household may be held responsible for an IPV when the household member that committed the IPV cannot be determined.
The head of household may not be held "automatically" responsible for trafficking the household's benefits if there is no direct evidence identifying him/her as the guilty party. However, OGC was also supportive of holding the head of household responsible when there was sufficient circumstantial evidence to show his/her complicity in the violative act.