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PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
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Wednesday, June 7,
2000 |
Page: B03 |
Edition: C |
Zone: NEW JERSEY |
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Section: SOUTH JERSEY |
Graphics: PHOTO |
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N.J. LOOKS TO INSURE CHILDREN OF CAMDEN
THERE ARE 187,000 ELIGIBLE FOR KIDCARE
STATEWIDE. BUT SIGNING THEM UP ISN'T EASY.
By Aamer Madhani, INQUIRER SUBURBAN STAFF
Dateline: CAMDEN
Shane Heivly, 23, knelt over a portable Xerox machine that he had placed on Nilsa Jimenez's worn and recently vacuumed baby-blue carpet and proceeded to make copies of the Jimenez family's Social Security cards, birth certificates, and state identification cards.
Nearby, Jenny Archambault, 19, sat with Jimenez at her table and helped her fill out forms to enroll her 14-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter in New Jersey KidCare, the state's low-cost health-insurance program for children younger than 18.
"I think it is great what you are doing," Jimenez, 37, told Heivly and Archambault. "I really needed this help."
For five weeks, Heivly, Archambault, and eight other AmeriCorps workers from across the country have been canvassing the streets of Jimenez's Cramer Hill neighborhood in Camden, trying to get parents to sign up their children for New Jersey KidCare. While 67,000 children are enrolled in New Jersey KidCare, the state estimates that 187,000 eligible children have not been signed up.
Knocking on doors, handing out flyers printed in English and Spanish, meeting with community groups, and speaking at health fairs, the AmeriCorps volunteers, working on behalf of Healthy Futures for Camden Youth, are getting to be known around the neighborhood but have had mixed success, at best.
"We have had people think we're census takers," said Tracy Wagoner, 21.
Archambault, however, had no trouble selling Jimenez on the idea of signing up Edwin Jr. and Edwina. Jimenez had had her children enrolled in KidCare, but the coverage lapsed in April. And since she cares for her granddaughter, Alicia Torres, 3, during the day, she found it difficult to get to a photocopying machine during working hours to copy the necessary documents.
Archambault and Heivly were able to get all her papers in order and her documents copied in about 20 minutes Monday afternoon. The Jimenez children should have insurance by July 1.
Often, the AmeriCorps volunteers have learned, finding people who need the insurance and getting them to sign up prove to be acts of futility. Soon after Archambault and Heivly signed Jimenez, for example, Wagoner and Harrod Suarez, 20, met with little success as they walked door to door on 32d Street.
Their goal was to talk to as many people as possible and schedule home visits. At the least, they wanted to hand out the flyers and raise AmeriCorps' profile in the area. But of the 25 homes at which they stopped, only four people answered the door.
An older woman with no children wasn't interested in the flyer. A man took a flyer but said his children already had health insurance. Another woman said she wasn't interested but took a flyer to give to a friend who she thought might be. An elderly man used the opportunity to tell Suarez and Wagoner about his health problems and let them know that he thought they were doing good work.
Suarez acknowledged knowing that although plenty of uninsured families in Camden could use KidCare, getting to them could be difficult.
A New Jersey family of four with an annual income of up to $25,050 can receive free child-health insurance through the program. And subsidized insurance is available for those with annual incomes of nearly $60,000 - the most generous cap in the nation.
In Camden County, the state estimates, there were 7,386 uninsured KidCare-eligible children in March 1998. The most recent statistics show 4,719 county children enrolled in the program.
"Sometimes, there is a language barrier," Suarez said, noting that while Camden has a large Spanish-speaking population, not one of the AmeriCorps volunteers was fluent in Spanish.
Plus, he said, "some [residents] are getting paid under the table and are fearful of giving out financial information. And there is also a fear that it might affect immigration status."
Healthy Futures is the brainchild of Bob Atkins, a former Camden school nurse, and Daniel Hart, the associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-Camden and a youth soccer coach in the city.
Through their work with Camden children, Atkins and Hart learned that such health problems as decaying teeth, ringworm and poor eyesight often go untreated primarily because the children lack coverage.
"It's not that the parents don't care" to enroll them in KidCare, Atkins said. "They just have to jump through so many hoops to get the insurance."
Aamer Madhani's e-mail address is amadhani@phillynews.com
Caption: PHOTO
Jenny Archambault visits Nilsa Jimenez (right) at Jimenez's Camden home.
Archambault is one of 10 volunteers enrolling children in N.J. KidCare. (TOM
GRALISH / Inquirer Staff Photographer)
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