If you receive food assistance from our agency — and one in six in the county do — you’ll need to know about an important change coming to the program.
Beginning Friday, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is changing the time frame for dispersing benefits. Previously, all 140,000 Hamilton County residents received their food benefits, loaded to their Ohio Directional Card, within the first 10 days the month. Going forward, the benefits will be dispersed over a 20-day period.
To be clear, this only affects new recipients, people who had a break in eligibility or people who move. If you are a current recipient and do not move or have a break in your eligibility, you will continue receiving your benefits on your designated day. (The exact day is determined by the last digit in your case number and that will remain the protocol in the new system.)
But if you were to lose eligibility for even a short time, or move, you might have to wait longer than 30 days for your next round of assistance to load. For example, if you previously received your benefits on the first day of the month, when you re-enroll, you may find that you have now been assigned the 20th day of the month for your card to load. So you might go as long as 50 days — instead of the normal 30 — in between loads on your card.
This would only be a problem for the first month back. After that, you would be back on a regular schedule.
Why the change? Grocers for some time have said a longer window for dispersing benefits would help them be able to staff more evenly throughout the month and to be able to keep a more steady supply of quality food.
Filed under: Communication | Tagged: food assistance, food stamps, hamilton county department of job and family services, hamilton county job and family services, moira weir, ohio direction card |
HCJFS Director's Blog 
It is certainly not the policy of our office to be discriminatory in any manner. I apologize for your experience. We will look into your case to determine exactly what is happening.
After holding for over an hour I was given information that directly conflicted with the documents provided to me for my Interview (specifically regarding determining who is eligible for a phone interview based on medical/disability status), talked down to and talked over by a “supervisor”, then (IMO) discriminated against due to my disability status. Now, (IMO) because of filing a discrimination complaint from that incident,my medical information was never updated in my file (case being mismanaged) & my benefits are being terminated…HOW CAN THEY CUT OFF YOUR BENEFITS IN THE MIDDLE OF AN INVESTIGATION INTO A DISCRIMINATION COMPLAINT???