New Year’s Resolutions

In case you missed it, here is my latest column in Update, our community newsletter. It lays out some of our agency goals for 2014. If you are not an update Subscriber, here’s a link to the latest issue, where you can sign up to receive the monthly newsletter: http://www.hcjfs.hamilton-co.org/UpdateNew2014/January/Cover.htm

 

Like everyone else, I like to make New Year’s resolutions. There is no better time to take stock of your life and set new goals for yourself.

I do the same with our organization. While we are constantly looking at ways to improve how we serve the public, the annual turning of the calendar is a great time to publicize our plans for organizational improvement.

This year, the number one goal at JFS will be to improve the customer experience. We want to make the experience with us as quick and simple as possible. I realize that with the volume we serve – we serve more than half a million people in this community annually – “quick and simple” is a relative term. Still, I would like it to be less cumbersome.

Therefore, we will be working on doing all of the following:

• Emphasizing answering/solving consumer contacts at the initial contact, thereby reducing the need for follow up contacts
• Reducing hold times in our busy call center
• Maintaining statewide metropolitan county leadership in food stamp timeliness and work participation rates
• Matching or passing our next closest metropolitan county in Child Support incentive categories
• Increasing our mobile/web presence, making it easier to conduct business with the agency
• Increasing our social media presence to educate the public about JFS
• Examining current-day best practices in customer service and implementing the best

Another major goal is to oversee the expansion of Medicaid and the implementation of the Ohio Integrated Eligibility System (the computer system used to process public assistance applications). The expansion of Medicaid is expected to add 42,000 more people to our caseloads, pushing us to over 200,000 recipients, which is one fourth of all county residents. These two projects together will take up much agency time and effort in 2014.

Finally, we are going to embark on an education campaign with the community that details the work we do and how we help this community. I worry sometimes that message gets lost. We are an agency that helps, whether it is protecting abused children and the elderly, ensuring children receive the financial support they deserve, providing a lifeline during times of trouble, assisting with the cost of child care so a parent can work or aiding in a job search. We do good work here and I want the public to know that.

That is our plan for 2014. Let’s make it a great year! 

 

Advertisement

Medicaid Expansion Launches Monday

Beginning Monday, more low-income Ohioans can apply for Medicaid, with coverage starting on or after January 1.

Now, families can earn up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level and still be eligible for Medcaid. That is $2,245 (gross) a month for a single mother of two or $2,708 a month for a family of four. We expect an additional 42,000 Hamilton County residents will be eligible. That is on top of our current caseload, which totals more than 175,000 county residents.

That is approximately one out of every four people in this county!

One key message: apply online! This is the fastest and easiest way to apply. I wrote about this subject in our Update Newsletter,  so you can find more detail here: http://www.hcjfs.hamilton-co.org/UpdateNew2013/December/Letter.htm

While you are there, become a subscriber!

Great Stories Coming Out of JFS

I hope you are following us on Facebook, Or Twitter. Or receiving our electronic newsletter.  If so, you get to read some of the great stories that come out of our agency,

I especially liked these two from the past week:

http://www.hcjfs.hamilton-co.org/UpdateNew2013/October/Story3.htm

http://www.hcjfs.hamilton-co.org/UpdateNew2013/October/Story1.htm

One is a story of a family that came together under impossible circumstances. Look at the smile on that young boy’s face!

The other tells of the great work a couple of our employees did on behalf of a consumer who was not receiving her child support.

Stories like these keep me going during trying times. I know we help so many people out there — about a half million a year in some way or another!  These stories don’t make the news, but they are very representative of the work we do.

To make sure you stay up on great stories like these, visit our website, www.hcjfs.org, and sign up for our newsletter. Also, like us on Facebook at Hamilton County (Ohio) Department of Job and Family Services or follow us on Twitter @HamiltonCoJFS

Closed for MLK Day

Our offices will be closed Monday for Martin Luther King Day. We will open again on Tuesday. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday weekend.

Retiring Employees will be Missed

Changes in the Ohio Public Employee Retirement System will result in the retirement of more employees than usual this year. Come Dec. 31, we will have lost more than a dozen employees with a combined total of about 400 years of service.

They will be difficult to replace. We have others who are eager to fill the void, but anytime you lose that kind of experience, it takes a toll on a business. We will work hard to ensure the transitions are seamless to the public and service is not impacted.

Many of the people who are leaving are dedicated public servants who gave more than 30 years of their lives to serving Hamilton County residents. I am extremely grateful for their commitment and proud to have served along side them.

They will be missed.

Operational Changes

Just a reminder on a couple of changes hitting our agency this week:

• Effective today, the Child Support cashier’s window has moved from 800 Broadway to the third floor of our main building, 222 E. Central Parkway. With the number of people who pay at the window dropping because of online payments, we can easily absorb the traffic at our main location, which is only a few blocks away.
• Effective Thursday, the agency will have will have new phone hours and office hours to better serve customers and provide more consistency. By moving to 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m, we can increase the number of workers here during peak hours.

Thank you for your cooperation!

2012: Year of Transition

Below is my latest column in Update, our community newsletter. You can check out the column and much more news about our agency at the link below. I encourage you to become a regular subscriber.

http://www.hcjfs.hamilton-co.org/UpdateNew2012/December/Cover.htm 

 

Our recent mass adoption ceremony – always an emotional, uplifting experience – gave me a chance to reflect on the past year here at JFS. While the ceremony always draws a lot of attention, we have many other positive events throughout the year that often get lost in the day-to-day work of serving Hamilton County residents. It is nice to sometimes take stock of these victories.

We have had a year of transition in many areas. We transitioned the county’s Family and Children First Council under our stewardship, saving the county about $150,000 in annual administrative costs. We also transitioned the SuperJobs Center from a private operator to JFS, allowing us to save $500,000 in administrative costs, which were funneled back into services to the community.

I am happy to report both have gone well, particularly the SuperJobs transition. We are serving more than double the people served the year before in our Workforce Investment Act programs and we expect to lead the state in on-the-job training accounts with private businesses. SuperJobs is a great economic engine for this community, helping the unemployed find work and training, while aiding local businesses in locating the skilled employees they need to complete their workforce.

We transitioned from worst to first in processing food assistance requests. Faced with a caseload that jumped nearly 70,000 cases in a four-year period, we had fallen to a state low in meeting the 30-day limit to process applications and reapplications. But our staff tackled the problem head on, working long hours to get caught up and implementing technology solutions, such as document imaging, for long-term improvement.

The result has been nothing short of unbelievable. Hamilton County became the first metropolitan county in history to process more than 90 percent of food assistance cases in a timely manner and then proceeded to do so for nine months running (and still counting). That is likely to be a record never broken.

While we are on the subject of success with public assistance cases, I would be remiss if I did not point out we again led all metropolitan counties in workforce participation rates for Ohio Works First clients. This is extremely important because the federal government has targeted the state for heavy financial sanctions if those rates do not improve. We have actually been asked by the state to help other counties understand our processes so they can increase their rates.

I am extremely proud when we lead the state in any category, but I am also happy to see us simply improve upon our own benchmarks. That is exactly what is happening in child support, where we are setting records for case establishment and paternity establishment. When you combine that work with the Division’s new programs – one to help provide safe visitation between parents and their children and another to help fathers work through issues that keep them from consistent child support payments – it is easy to see our folks are working harder than ever on behalf of Hamilton County’s children.

This year, we also transitioned from our traditional Pinwheels for Prevention child abuse awareness campaign to a more noticeable Wear Blue to Work campaign. The campaign drew a lot of support from around the county and was much easier for people to participate in. We look forward to another great campaign in April!

So, as you can see, there has been a lot of transition – all with successful endings – in 2012. While they are certainly the most notable events of our past year, they are just a small fraction of the work we have performed. In fact, they stand as symbols of a much broader success we have experienced on a daily basis.

I am extremely proud of the service we provide Hamilton County residents. Our staff is full of dedicated people who care about our consumers and are committed to doing great work. That sometimes gets lost in the grind of our day-to-day work. There is no better time than the end of the year to recognize their success and say thanks.

 

Facebook Can Be Your Source for JFS-related News

If you are looking for a job, you may want to follow our SuperJobs Center Facebook page. We often post hiring events and open jobs on that page and you will be alerted with each post.

In fact, our agency has three Facebook pages and they are all worth following for interesting news about jobs, job training, children available for adoption, public assistance changes and just about any other topic that is relevant to the work we do at JFS. We don’t just post about what is happening at our agency; we look for news that is relevant to the consumers we serve.

Below are the links to our three Facebook pages. Check them out and see the different kinds of news we share. Then, like us so you can get alerts when we post.

https://www.facebook.com/HCJFS

https://www.facebook.com/SuperJobs.OneStop

https://www.facebook.com/hcadopt

Rising Number of Food Assistance Recipients Grabbing Attention

Did you know one in six Hamilton County residents now receives food assistance? Hopefully, if you follow our agency, you do. We have made a point of keeping people educated on this growing trend. The Cincinnati Enquirer published an article recently that brought it to the attention of many others.

I talk about it in this month’s issue of Update, our community newsletter. Check it out here, along with stories about child support visits, an adoption luau and other topics. Thanks for reading!

State Surpasses Benchmark in Work Participation

Ohio has surpassed the 50 percent mark in work participation in the Ohio Works First program for the first time since 2007. This could help the state avoid $135 million in penalties from the federal government.

This is something worth celebrating because the penalties would be crippling. But there is still a long way to go.

Requiring work of cash assistance recipients is a stipulation of the nation’s overhaul of its welfare system back in 1996. State’s are required to have 50 percent of all families and 90 percent of two-parent families working or face financial penalties.

Ohio currently falls well short of the 90 percent mark for two-parent families, so it is still at risk of losing crucial dollars that are used to administer programs for needy families.   

Hamilton County remains the best major metropolitan county in both categories at 58 percent for the all-family rate and 69 percent for the two-parent rate. But, we too are falling short in the two-parent category.

I pledge that we take this very seriously and will keep at it. We have made this a focus over the past year and our success has vaulted us to the forefront of large counties. But there is still much work to do.