About 4,300 fewer Maine children are receiving food assistance benefits since the federal government began making cuts last year, according to state statistics.

Most children were not among those directly impacted by changes made to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in last year’s federal budget bill, but they are falling off the rolls anyway.  

Ian Yaffe, director of the Maine Office for Family Independence, which operates the state’s SNAP program, said the state has seen a “sustained decrease” in SNAP enrollment since the law started going into effect in August. As of April, the number of Mainers receiving SNAP benefits had dropped by about 13,000 since August, according to state statistics.

The law cuts some or all benefits for certain groups by removing exemptions to the 80-hour-a-month work requirement for able-bodied adults. It also ended exemptions to the work requirements for some other adults, including older people up to age 65 and parents of children age 14 and older.

However, even when a parent no longer qualifies because of the new work requirements, their children still do.

While some of Maine’s declining enrollment can be attributed to tightened eligibility, the “bulk of people losing access to SNAP” is because households are not completing their renewal forms, Yaffe said. He said Maine is hiring 40 staffers this summer to bolster the SNAP program, and part of their duties will be trying to ensure children who are eligible are receiving benefits.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive national think tank, estimated 730,000 children are no longer receiving SNAP benefits since the changes started going into effect. That only includes data for 12 states, including Maine, that separately report SNAP caseload data for children.

Across the country, about 40 million people receive SNAP benefits, including an estimated 158,000 in Maine.

Luis Nuñez, a research analyst on the food assistance team at the CBPP, said it is possible for households to lose SNAP benefits because their wages have gone up and they no longer qualify. But for the most part that’s not what’s happening, he said. Instead, procedural hurdles — including states lacking sufficient resources to handle the changes, and increased documentation required for families to maintain SNAP— are causing children to also lose benefits.

“On paper, these households are still qualifying for SNAP, but they can’t make it through the barriers, the slower process to obtain the benefits, or the increased documentation that’s needed,” Nuñez said.

Yaffe said there has been a lot of confusion regarding the new law, and many may not realize their children still qualify for SNAP. He said families unsure about whether they qualify can visit mymaineconnection.gov.

“I would encourage people to fill out a renewal form anyway, even if you think you no longer qualify,” Yaffe said.

Anna Korsen, co-executive director at Full Plates Full Potential, a food advocacy organization in Brunswick, said she’s increasingly worried that children who lose SNAP are being pulled out of the SUN summer nutrition program as a result. SUN Bucks provides $120 debit cards for school-aged children to buy groceries, and SUN Meals offers summer meals to help replace meals available to kids during the school year.

SUN Bucks participants are automatically enrolled based, in part, on their SNAP status. Korsen said losing SNAP can cause a ripple effect that can cascade across a child’s safety net.

Korsen said federal nutrition dollars flow to communities in part based on how many children are enrolled in programs like SUN Meals. If SNAP losses lower SUN enrollment, it can appear to federal agencies that need is declining.

“Numbers-wise it looks like the need is shrinking, when it’s really not,” Korsen said.

State officials have said the 40 new staffers will also be working to reduce Maine’s payment error rate.

The federal budget bill also shifted some administrative costs to the states and required them to reduce their payment error rate to below 6% or pay a higher share of administrative costs. Maine’s current payment error rate is 10.6%.The payment error rate measures whether the state is providing benefits in the correct amount that households qualify for. A high error rate could cost Maine up to $53 million per year, according to a state estimate released last year.