Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfers (P-EBT) have been around since 2020 and is a program to help families with children pay for food when the youngsters are not in school.
The system was set up to provide retroactive payment to any kids who missed school due to any Covid-related issue. That means if your child wasn’t able to be in school in person, be it because the school was closed, or providing virtual classes, or your child himself was absent due to a positive test, then your family could be eligible for those payments.
Of course, not everyone will qualify as the P-EBT’s purpose is to feed those who were signed up for free or reduced-price meals during the school year.
The incertitude in today’s title stems from the ambiguity of the source material for this blog (Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) Program – Maryland Department of Human Services) which only records that payments are expected to be made ‘at the end of June 2022’. Further efforts from this writer to gain confirmation of a date led him through a byzantine maze of electronic phone chains only to end up dazed and back where he started; a little older but none the wiser. Our intrepid reporter then hoofed it to his local DSS office where he was quite charmingly informed that he should check the website for details.
If the expected payments do arrive, they will still only cover the days your child missed out on a meal at school between September 2021 and February 2022. More payments are expected in the coming months to cover the remainder of the last school year. All said, it works out that for every day you lost you’ll get $7.10 in EBT payments. Those funds should be uploaded automatically onto your P-EBT card.
For further reading and to address any questions please go to the website listed above. If you have the time and the mental fortitude you can call 1-833-330-7328. If you actually have a P-EBT card you can also try 1-800-997-2222 and that may prove more forthcoming.