Social-service leaders: assistance just not enough
By Nick Claussen
July 28, 2008
With gas prices going up and the cost of food and other expenses rising, human-services agencies from southern Ohio are pushing the state to increase funding for people relying on public assistance.
The Athens County Department of Job and Family Services (DJFS) and several other public-service agencies from around the region held a press conference in Chillicothe last week to call on the state to provide more money for the poor.
Jack Frech, director of Athens County DJFS, talked about the situation on Friday at his office in The Plains with local media representatives, and discussed how the problems for the poor have gotten worse in recent years thanks to cuts in funding and increases in prices.
“Everyone presumes there is a safety net out there,” Frech said. “There is no safety net.” People who cannot work and people who are out of work, he added, are not able to receive enough assistance from the government to get by.
Food stamps do not provide enough food for a month, nor do government-assistance programs such as Ohio Works First (OWF), Frech said. OWF funds are only provided to families with children, with the typical family receiving $320 a month in cash and $280 in food stamps, according to Frech.
The state budget calls for increasing the OWF cash benefits for a typical family to $330 a month, but this $10 increase will not keep up with rising prices and does not help the families who already have no way to dig out of their financial problems, he noted.
Frech and other human-services officials in the region are calling on the state to increase OWF benefits by $100 a month, while also expanding the number of people eligible for Medicaid and increasing the mental-health and substance-abuse services available for people living below the poverty level. They are also calling on the state to improve the disability determination system, as it can now take up to two years to be approved for disability benefits, Frech said.
The local leaders are also calling on the federal government to increase food-stamp benefits by $10-$100 a month, and increase the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits significantly, Frech said.
Fifteen years ago, Athens County only had one or two food banks, because the demand for the food was not so high, Frech said. Today, nearly every community has a food bank, there are numerous free-lunch programs, and other programs have sprung up to help the poor, Frech said.
Welfare reform pushed two-thirds of the people off of public assistance, and the only people left are the people who meet all of the set requirements for receiving assistance, Frech said. These people cannot work because of health or family responsibilities, and the state is not meeting their basic needs, he charged.
“We give half as much as we know they need to live on,” Frech said. “In my mind, that’s intentionally abusive.” He added that it is even worse when you consider that the people hurt most by this lack of assistance are children.
State officials may say they do not have the funding to pay for an increase in public-assistance money, but they also failed to increase the money for the poor when millions of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) money went unspent by the state, Frech said.
The state needs to make it a priority to meet the basic needs of its people, and needs to find funding to do so, Frech said.
A REPORT FROM Athens County DJFS included comments from several people who receive OWF funding about their financial situation. The comments include stories from families who are suffering from medical problems, grandparents who are raising their grandchildren, and single parents who are struggling to get by.
Gregg and Debbie Cox of Guysville were among the OWF recipients who told Athens County DJFS about their story, and agreed to talk to people in the media. On Saturday, Gregg Cox explained how his family ended up on public assistance, and why it is so difficult for them to get by.
“I used to make $70,000 to $80,000 a year,” Cox said. He did construction work, often in a supervisory capacity, and enjoyed his job.
Today, his family is living on public assistance, struggling to make it through every month.
“Right now, I’ve got $4 in my pocket,” Cox said. “I don’t want to be this way, but my family’s health in the last five years put me in this situation.”
In the last nine years, his wife has had 15 major surgical procedures, including three brain surgeries, Cox said.
“She’s doing all right,” he added.
In addition, his 11-year-old son has autism and his 9-year-old son has cerebral palsy.
“My youngest boy can’t speak,” Cox said, adding that his son attends Beacon School and is receiving a good education there.
“He’s a beautiful little boy; he just can’t talk,” Cox said. Medicaid paid for a sound board for his son to touch to talk for him, and Cox said his boy will push on it “I want a hot dog. I want a hot dog,” over and over again when he’s hungry.
“He’s pretty cool,” Cox said.
His other son is exceptionally smart and a straight A student, but needs medications to help with the problems caused by autism.
“He can remember a thousand things,” Cox said, adding that his son recently has been doing well with the autism.
With his wife having major health problems and his children needing special assistance, Cox has to be home with them instead of going to work.
“They call me a caregiver, but there’s no money in that,” he said. He cooks all of the meals, does all of the laundry, does the shopping, and takes care of things around the house.
“She can help me make the beds. I hate making the beds,” he added. It used to be when he went to Wal-Mart, he would buy something as close to the cash register as possible and get out quickly because he did not like shopping, he said.
“Now I know the whole Goddamn store,” Cox declared.
His family receives $1,200 a month from the federal government because of the medical conditions of his two sons, and the family also receives $300 a month in OWF funding, Cox said. It is more funding than some families on public assistance receive, but his family also has extra costs with all of the health problems.
The money is not enough to get through the month, he said.
“We’re not drug addicts or alcoholics; we don’t spend any of it (carelessly),” Cox said. “We used to be broke by the end of the second week (each month), and that really sucked.” Today, he can stretch out the money to three weeks, and that is with visiting the food pantry in Lottridge, eating the free lunch in Lottridge, getting produce from neighbors, and buying things on sale whenever possible. The high gas prices hurt his family, and Cox said it would be helpful if the state could increase the OWF funding.
He said he’s looking forward to a time when he can work again to make money for his family, but today he, like many people in the county, lives off what he receives from the government, and it’s not enough to get by.
“It’s really been a challenge,” Cox said.
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