The governor created OHSI last August and that department has been working on ways of implementing the governor’s blueprint for moving Ohioans out of the poverty. Shelly Hoffman, communications director for OHSI, said the plan is all about providing a “seamless” path out of poverty by coordinating the efforts of the public assistance side of JFS and the workforce arm.
“It’s looking at who we currently serve and serving them in a different way,” she said. “Everyone would have a comprehensive case management plan that’s tailored to their individual barriers so that we can help move people more quickly to being self sufficient, so we can get them into jobs, get them into better jobs.”
The budget bill set a deadline of this December for county JFS agencies to target workforce, education and training services for teens and young adults ages 16-24. The implementation of the one-stop-shop plan for the rest of the impoverished population is July 2016. The work group is recommending focusing on the 16- to 24-year-old initiative and then assess the success before opening up the plan to the entire population.
The bill does not include new money for these initiatives rather it reallocates $310 million in state and federal funds. Simple math puts that at $3.5 million per county, but as with most of the budget bill initiative, details don’t spell out how the funds will be disbursed to the 88 counties. However, the counties in Ohio are very diverse in terms of size, access to transportation and a myriad of other services that would be needed to implement the plan, so funding wouldn’t like be the same for all.
Tim McCartney, chief operating officer for Hamilton County’s JFS, was the chair of the Workgroup to Reduce Reliance on Public Assistance. He said they were not tasked with studying the governor’s budget bill but rather to look at what it would take to transform the way the state serves its poor. So he said he can’t hazard a guess on whether the $310 million will be enough or not.
“There needs to be a deeper dive into looking at what resources are available and how they can be utilized,” he said. “That is a budget proposal and we are proposing a program to reduce reliance on public assistance. While there are certainly some similarities between the two, they are two separate things.”
The report acknowledges all the challenges local officials have voiced about the governor’s bill, like the fact that while all four of the human services agencies — JFS, Children Services, Ohio Means Jobs and Child Support Enforcement — need to be involved in a case management type program, access to computer information and files between agencies is currently not only not allowed but physically impossible.
Butler County JFS Director Jerome Kearns said the IT issue is a challenge at his agency.
“The softwares do not speak to one another that’s been a big frustration,” Kearns said. “Particularly with the changes that are coming down, just on the public assistance side, our staff are working in two different systems to process food stamps, Medicaid applications.”
The report also echoes what Kearns said about his current staff. Prior to state funding cuts a couple years ago — when 50 JFS workers had to be laid off — they were operating on a case management system, with case workers personally guiding their clients through the process. Now they are mainly processing assistance applications.
“Person-centered case management relies on the time, resources and expertise of county staff to complete many activities: effectively assess each recipient whose goal is long-term employment, employ proven initial engagement strategies (and re-engagement strategies when necessary), wrap appropriate services around the entire family, and monitor participation in necessary initiatives/steps to overcome barriers,” the report reads.
“Accomplishing this work will require a much higher level of social work than is generally available in the eligibility-determination-driven public assistance program that has been emphasized over the last several years in Ohio. It also will require a large-scale culture shift, with extensive training and appropriate compensation. Funding and training resources must be available to counties to effect this change. In addition, great care must be taken in the implementation.”
One of the barriers specifically identified in the budget bill is the fact that as people start earning more money, they lose their child care subsidies which could cause them to quit because they can’t afford daycare. Currently a parent with two children loses their child care subsidy when their pay tops $39,576. Under the bill a family of three can earn up to $59,376 and still receive a subsidy, which is doled out on a sliding scale according to income.
The governor’s bill also includes a penalty. If counties fail to meet the governor’s goals, their total funding for these services will be yanked away and administration of the services will be handed to another county or entity.
Hoffman said the services would still be provided within the home county but they haven’t yet worked out the details of how this would work. She said they are also still working on how to measure success or failure.
Lauren Cavanaugh, who heads JFS in Warren County, said she doesn’t understand how the state can grade them on these reforms when there is no baseline to compare it to. She also wonders how one county would have the manpower to handle two agencies. She said the punishment doesn’t make any sense.
“Without knowing the details it just doesn’t seem to be a logical solution to the problem,” she said. “I always equate it to schools, if they are not performing we’re going to take away their funding, we’re going to take away money. The funny part about that is that doesn’t help anything. It’s the same concept, if they’re not performing well, is it because there is not enough funding for them to perform at the level they need to.”
Moving outsiders in to use a failed county’s facilities and equipment could probably concern county officials, but Kasich’s spokesman Rob Nichols said that is not their concern.
“The concern is the people receiving the benefits, not the comfort of those administering the system…,” he said. “First is measuring, who is doing what effectively, and ensuring that the benefits and the services are being administered to the optimum level. Our focus is on those receiving the services, are they getting what they need to succeed and if they’re not, then we’ll find someone capable of providing those services.”
Joel Potts, executive director of the Ohio Job and Family Services Directors’ Association, said there is a lot of anxiety in his world right now because there are so few details about how the plan will work and how it will be evaluated. He said people can differ on what is the proper type of case management system. They can have a different opinion on what percentage of assistance-to-job successes constitutes adequate performance.
“If you are 10 percent successful at helping people who are chronically poor and generational poverty, if we can get 10 percent in a years’ time out of poverty, is that a success or failure,” he said. “Most people would look at it and say well hell that’s a 90 percent failure rate, that’s horrible. But in reality I’m not aware of any program in the country that’s taken 10 percent of hard core cases and moving them out of poverty.”
Not everyone is a naysayer on budget bill. Butler County Commissioner Don Dixon said his county won’t fail in the initiative, but if they did, he’d expect there to be repercussions. Butler County just made a big change in the JFS realm by naming CSEA Executive Director Ray Pater the chief of the entire JFS operation. Dixon said this was a statewide initiative that has long been needed.
“It’s way past time that they put some common sense to those programs and make them work,” he said.
About the Author