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Program Letter 2000-3
 

President
John McKay

Board of Directors
Douglas S. Eakeley
Roseland, NJ
Chairman

John N. Erlenborn
Issue, MD
Vice Chairman

Hulett H. Askew
Atlanta, GA

LaVeeda M. Battle
Birmingham, AL

John T. Broderick, Jr.
Manchester, NH

Edna Fairbanks-Williams
Fairhaven, VT

F. Wm. McCalpin
St. Louis, MO

Maria Luisa Mercado
Galveston, TX

Nancy H. Rogers
Columbus, OH

Thomas F. Smegal, Jr.
San Francisco, CA

Ernestine P. Watlington
Harrisburg, PA
TO: All LSC Program Directors

FROM: John C. Meyer, Acting Director
Office of Information Management

DATE: June 15, 2000

RE: 2000 CSR Handbook

Through comments and questions regarding Program Letter 2000-3 three errors have been brought to our attention. These errors and their corrections are set out below and will also be corrected in the CSR Handbook – 1999 Edition Revised.

1)        In the second paragraph of Section 5.2, the phrase "and other federally-funded programs" should have been deleted from the second and third lines of the first sentence (see last paragraph of Page 4 of Program Letter 2000-3), so as to be consistent with the wording of Section 4.3(b) of the Revised 1999 Handbook. Thus the corrected sentence should read:

Except for cases funded through Titles III and IV of the Older Americans Act, Title XX of the Social Security Act, the Violence Against Women Act where financial eligibility determinations are not permitted, the documentation of eligibility shall include income and asset information as set forth in Sections 5.3 and 5.4.

2) In the first paragraph of Section 5.4, the parenthetical phrase is misplaced at the end of the first sentence when it should be place within that sentence after "categories of assets." Thus the sentence should read:

At a minimum, for each case reported to LSC, programs shall document the total value of assets--except for categories of assets (e.g., principal residence, work tools, or an auto needed for work) excluded from consideration pursuant to recipient Board guidelines adopted under 45 CFR §§1611.6(c) and (d) -- held by all members of the applicant’s family unit.7

3) In Section IX under the "Miscellaneous" category, "94 – Torts" was unintentionally omitted from the list of Problem Codes. It has already been restored to the CSR Handbook – 1999 Edition Revised.

___________________________

7. Many programs record more assets information than is required by Section 5.4. LSC strongly encourages this and recommends recording at least the following:

Liquid Assets: Bank Accounts (including checking and savings)

Other Liquid Assets (such as investments)

Non-Liquid Assets: Personal Property

Real Property

Whatever is actually recorded, programs’ intake procedures must include instructions to ask sufficient questions of the applicant to determine the total amount of household assets with reasonable accuracy and the program must be able to provide reasonable evidence that staff practice follows these procedures.

 



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Washington, DC 20002-4250
Phone 202.336.8800 Fax 202.336.8959
www.lsc.gov

 

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