Were you a federal or a state employee? As a "career counselor," wasn't your job to get people off these people into the workforce and off Food Stamps, etc.?
As for the "Income Maintenance Workers," did their pay increase with the number of enrollees into Food Stamps? Did that perverse incentive cause them to be lax in applying the standards to qualify for the Food Stamps?
According to Mark Levin on his radio show, at least part of the explosion of Food Stamps recipients under the Obama Administration has been due a more proactive promotion of the program and federal employees whose incomes depend on the number of new people they enroll. That system provides an incentive opposite to a salesman's commission in the private sector: the more they cost their (federal government) employer, the more income they earn.
I was a state employee in a federally funded position. About 35% of my tenure there was spent teaching job-seeking classes to AFDC (now called TANF) and food stamp recipients and 65% was helping veterans find work or entrepreneurial opportunities. Guess which one I enjoyed more? And yes, my job was to get them off welfare. What do you think that was like?