For 40 years, the Women, Infant and Children supplemental nutrition program, better known as WIC, has delivered food to the homes of Vermont participants — pregnant and breastfeeding women, babies and young children. Now, thanks to the federal WIC Modernization Act, all states are switching to a smart card that participants can use in grocery stores.
The change has rolled out county by county over the past two years. Addison County is the final district to come on board, and so the last WIC truck makes its final stop this week.
“Today is my last day of doing these stops,” said Brian Green, as he drove between stops on a recent route.
Green left his house in Whitingham at 4:30 in the morning, for one of his last routes through Bridport and Shoreham, before stopping at a house in Cornwall. The bed of his red Chevy truck was replaced with a box cooler full of crates of milk, boxes of cheese, cereal and juice.
He climbs into the back and checks with a clipboard before packing up a box with food. “Every stop I have a booklet that shows me what I’m supposed to give every person," he says. "The WIC office decides what they get, I just give them what the paper says.”
Green started out helping his brother with deliveries 24 years ago, and then started bidding on his own routes. He's covered territory from the Massachusetts border to Randolph, as well as Addison County and part of Burlington. His wife, Becky, has managed the office, fielding calls from WIC participants, ordering food from vendors. At one point they had 11 employees, mostly family members. As each county has switched to the smart card, he’s let them go.
At the next house he packs up a crate with gallons of milk, blocks of Cabot cheese, Vermont-made bread, rice and cans of beans, and then transfers it to a cooler that’s been left out for him.
“Lot of days it’s pretty nice, but in the winter it can be a miserable long day,” he says.
Green has also had three dog bites, and one time a turkey crashed through his windshield while driving and landed in his lap. Food has been lost in snowbanks or been eaten by dogs.
At the next house, in Salisbury, a woman comes out to say hello and to return some crates. But often no one is home.
“People don’t seem to be as friendly as they used to be years ago. A lot of times I see them in the house but they don’t answer their door,” Green says.
But as he nears his final route, Green says he’ll miss it. “I’m glad it lasted as long as it did. It’s been a good job for me.”
Vermont is the only state to jump directly from home delivery to electronic cards. Others have used different steps, like vouchers. Moira Cook, who directs the Middlebury district of the Health Department, says the state stuck with what was working for the 13,000 WIC participants.
"It just made sense for families who were going to the grocery store to buy the rest of their food anyway, to go to the store and redeem their WIC benefits." - Moira Cook, Vermont Department of Health
“We’ve had a great run with home delivery, but we’ve never provided all the foods that families need. Something like 70 percent of the households in the country have two parents working outside of their home,” she said. “It just made sense for families who were going to the grocery store to buy the rest of their food anyway, to go to the store and redeem their WIC benefits.”
Planning the switch to cards required lots of careful planning and coordination with groceries stores.
“For the last 40 years, stores didn’t sell that much baby food, for example. [We're] trying to educate stores. We’ve been delivering baby food to half of the babies in the state — you will now need to stock that much more,” Cook said.
Participants have had to adjust as well; some have come in for a learning session on the new card. Public Health nutritionist Gillian MacKinnon recently showed the card to Erin Jackman, who lives in Bristol with her two young kids.
“The most important thing with this card is to keep in mind it’s not a dollar value on it, it’s based on the amount or the size, 16 ounces or 1 pound. People have been finding that bread is tricky, because most loaves are larger than 16 ounces,” MacKinnon explained.
Jackman says while her kids loved seeing the delivery truck, she’s ready for the switch. “I like that this has so many options," she says. "And with the whole grains, we would just get bread, but now we can get wraps.”
“Families are like, we won’t have four gallons of milk sitting in the fridge at one time!” MacKinnon added. She said there is a smartphone app women can download that will scan a barcode and let them know if an item is WIC eligible.
Cook says this new generation of WIC participants is ready for the transition in May, when Addison County becomes the final district to begin using the smart cards in stores.
