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ENERGY ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

Section Four: Crisis Payments Intake, Operations & Policy Manual

Program Year 2026 72 Crisis payments should reflect actual need and, with the exception of prepaid accounts, should only result in a credit if well justified. (For prepaid accounts, it is understood that any payment will result in a credit.) Justification for the crisis benefit and amount must be documented, particularly when the payment will result in a credit on a non-prepaid vendor/utility account. If the crisis payment is to a prepaid account, please include that information in the comments. Crisis Payments should not be utilized to fulfill high pricing or delivery charges for bulk fuels (please use a Fuel Payment for these situations) or as a means to correct payment errors. Please note: Payment overage requests should be sent directly to both the OHCS energy programs coordinator and the OHCS energy programs compliance officer for review and if approved, will be sent over to the OPUS HelpDesk for processing. Such overage requests must include the authorization number of the payment overage request; the amount of the payment needs to be and include a justification comment in both the email and the payment comment box in OPUS. All Crisis Payments must be approved by the local energy assistance coordinator, or their designee, with a description of the situation written in the Comments Section of the Authorization form and in OPUS. Crisis Services Sub-grantees must reserve a reasonable amount of LIHEAP crisis funds until March 15th of each program year to ensure crisis intervention guidelines as outlined in the LIHEAP statue will be adhered to. Spending of sub-grantee funding is generally tracked on a weekly basis during request for funds processing (RFF) but no less than monthly. If an agency was to exhaust funding down to an unreasonable amount prior to the March 15th deadline, OHCS would ensure said agency would limit spending to only crisis assistance until after March 15th. Previous year’s spending data during this timeframe should be considered to assist in determining what a reasonable amount of funds would need to be at that point in time. Life-Threatening Crisis A life-threatening crisis exists when a household member(s) health and/or well-being would likely be endangered by the interruption of heating or cooling/energy services. Generally, this would require an active medical certificate but may be deemed a life- threatening crisis by the local service provider if extreme circumstances are present. Example: Extreme cold or heat, supply shortage of deliverable fuels, etc.