AUSTIN - Sheila Badzioch's job serving Houston's poor is set to vanish next year as the state rolls out an unprecedented privatization plan to route more needy Texans through corporate-run call centers.

"I grew up in Appalachia. I am very passionate about helping people help themselves," said Badzioch, who fears her clients' needs will be neglected under the new system.

The federal government, in a letter sent to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission this week, stressed its own concerns for vulnerable Texans as it granted conditional approval to the project for the next three months.

Badzioch, along with 2,600 eligibility workers statewide and nearly 500 in Houston, will no longer determine whether the poor, hungry or ill are eligible for Medicaid health insurance, food stamps and cash welfare benefits.

Instead, the global outsourcing giant Accenture LLP will screen applicants under a five-year, $899 million call-center contract touted by backers as a modern model of efficiency and convenience for recipients of social welfare benefits.

"Change is difficult when it affects you very directly and very personally," said Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins. "It's not a goal to just provide state jobs. Our state jobs are established to serve the people in need."

But detractors — including Texas Democrats, the state employees union and advocates for the poor — complain that the state is rushing into a massive privatization plan that is untested, unprecedented and still lacking full approval.

"We're about to have a very bad precedent established (in Texas) that will spread across this country affecting the old, the poor, the hungry, the victims of Katrina and the victims who are left behind," Democratic U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas told fellow House members in a failed effort to block the plan.

He called the sweeping privatization of social services screening "an ideological experiment conducted on some of the most vulnerable people in our society."

Strings attached
Until this week, Texas officials were confidently moving forward with the private call-center plans with no federal approval, conditional or otherwise.

This month the state began shifting an existing call-center contract for the Children's Health Insurance Program to Accenture. In January, Accenture's new call center in Midland will begin processing applications for children's Medicaid.

The major impact of privatized screening will be felt between April and December next year, when officials close 100 eligibility offices, including Houston's Harwin office next summer.

Of the 211 eligibility offices that will remain open, only 167 will be open full time.

"Texas' project entails a major change in the configuration of service delivery that merits special oversight," William Ludwig, regional administrator for the U.S. Agriculture Department, wrote to Hawkins in a letter dated Nov. 7.

Ludwig called for very close federal oversight in the next three months and extra care to make certain the elderly and disabled are not disadvantaged by call centers. If remaining issues can be resolved in the next 30 days, the USDA will approve $23 million in federal administrative dollars for the first three months.

Ludwig stressed, however, that any future federal dollars for administration will depend on "demonstrated success" of initial phases of the call-center project.

"It remains to be seen whether this is going to be a real pilot or whether the state is going to get more money in three months," said Celia Hagert, an analyst at the Center for Public Policy Priorities in Austin.

Special help
Badzioch, 57, said her family doesn't depend on her state income so she won't face financial hardship in losing her paycheck to privatization.

However, she said she often steers clients to local resources such as free clinics, help with utility bills, literacy training, housing for the homeless and women's shelters for victims of family violence. Although the state said a call to 211 can also make referrals, Badzioch remains skeptical.

"If you really want to get someone off welfare, you need a face-to-face interview. If I have a client come in for food stamps, and she has a black eye and such, it has nothing to do with food stamps," she said.

Officials at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission insist that clients will still have an opportunity to apply for benefits in person at the remaining eligibility offices.

Skepticism remains
They argue that the new system, which will depend on a computerized program to identify an individual's eligibility for various benefits at once, better serves clients by allowing them to apply by phone, fax, the Internet or in person.

Hawkins said in remote parts of the state, where a client would have to travel 30 miles to the nearest office, the state will send in 200 traveling social services workers who could make home visits.

Badzioch remains deeply skeptical.

"Most of us care about our clients and care that they're not going to be served. Yes, I like my job. I'm going to hang on till they kick me out the door," she said. "Most of us believe they want to make it so complicated that people won't apply and Texas won't have any poor people."