Visit to the Ashland County Dept. of Job and Family Services 2-4-26
Wow. Where do I start. I sat down with Director J. Peter Stefaniuk and had a very enjoyable chat with him about his Department’s role in the County. This entity wears so many hats and administers so many programs it makes one’s head spin. There are 8 main service types provided and in those individual categories, there are multiple services.
They are:
Child protective services
Adult protective services
Public assistance
Jobs assistance
Foster care assistance
Adoption
Child support
PRC assistance
When I asked if there was a common thread that tied all of these seemingly diverse programs together, he replied “family.” He began by telling me that his Dept. is a “quad combined agency.” This means the Dept. handles more responsibilities than most JFS agencies in Ohio. They manage four areas (the quad) – public assistance, children’s services, child support and workforce development. So, their employees handle everything from food and cash assistance to adult protection and child care. Most of Ohio’s 88 counties divide those tasks up a bit more. Mr. Stefaniuk said that they administer 50 different types of programs at the County level. I will briefly go through the main programs, but I know you don’t want to read about all 50. I will go over these main points briefly. I will try to keep this under 500 pages (JK). I will address how much all of this costs the County Taxpayers near the end (stay with me). We discussed many figures, so I hope I wrote it all down correctly.
Child’s Protective Services. From their website:
“Our child protective services unit works to ensure the safety and well-being of children in our county while working in tandem with families and social service providers. As a team in the community, we work to reduce the risk of harm to children and better equip families to live in healthy and safe environments. Our goal is to give families in Ashland County the tools and support they need to reduce the risk of future abuse and/or neglect of children and educate the community about resources and services available to them to prevent abuse and neglect of children.” Continuing:
“As a Public Children Services Agency, we receive and investigate reports of child abuse and neglect and investigate those reports in a timely manner. In most cases where a need for services has been identified, ACDJFS provides services to the child and family while the child remains in the home.” Notice they say “ACDJFS provides services to the child and family while the child remains in the home.” Italics mine. This means they will help out both the children AND the parents until the crises that caused the Dept. to be contacted in the first place is remediated if possible. If not, they have to develop a plan detailing the activities that must occur to ensure that the child is able to return home safely. If that is not possible, the plan will identify an alternative safe, stable, permanent living environment. They will first try to put the child with a relative: https://www.ashlandjfs.org/upload/documents/kinshipcare_fact_sheet.pdf
Adult Protective Services:
“ACDJFS works to resolve issues, including helping seniors transition to safer living conditions, connecting them to local support for basic needs, and linking them to opportunities for financial assistance. Investigations of reports alleging abuse, neglect and exploitation are mandated to be initiated within 24 hours, if any emergency exists, or within 3 working days after the report is received. Upon completion of the investigation, the department will determine whether or not the adult, who is the subject of the investigation, is in need of protective services.” I like the line “linking them to opportunities for financial assistance.” A lot of people just don’t know if help is available for their particular need. I am pleased that this Dept. can be a resource to guide them.
Public Assistance: This includes Food assistance(SNAP), cash assistance through Ohio Works First, medical assistance, child care, pregnancy related services, and non emergency transportation services through the NET program. Here is the link including the apply links for these various programs with their respective qualification requirements.
https://www.ashlandjfs.org/public-assistance#cash
Jobs assistance: Resources available through OhioMeansJobs. The resource room is available at 15 West Fourth Street in Ashland, M-F 8am-4 pm and provides free resources to anyone seeking employment or re-employment.
Assistance with resume preparation Information on local weekly job openings; Ashland, Holmes, Wayne Counties
Job lists from outside the local area - Career counseling
Use of copier, fax, and phone service for employment-related needs
Internet access for job searching clothes and gas vouchers to assist in the application and interview process
Information about local educational opportunities and financial aid
Initial assessment of employable skills and abilities.
Foster Care and Adoption:
This program has many facets and is best explained by going to their website. The foster program requires some education and dedication to be sure you are ready for a child, but is worth it. The ACDJFS is there to help you navigate the process. There is also help with adoption.
Child Support: The Dept. helps with forms and guides you through the process of applying for child support. Available services include:
Enforce payment of child support as ordered by the Courts or by the Administrative Officer. Enforce payment of arrears owed, but not paid by non-custodial parent. Establish paternity—either in the court or by the administrative process. Establish support orders—either in the court or by the administrative process. Establish medical orders to cover the children. Collect and disburse child support payments. Locate non-custodial parents.
PRC assistance: This stands for Prevention, Retention, & Contingency. What’s this mean? This program is designed to help needy families to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency. It provides nonrecurring, short term, crisis oriented benefits directly related to one or more of the four purposes of the federal “Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. The four purposes are as follows (abidged) 1. To provide assistance so children can be cared for in their homes or relative’s homes. 2. To end the dependence of needy parents on Government benefits by Promoting job preparation, work and marriage. 3. To prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and 4. To encourage the formation and maintenance of two parent families. The PDF that explains all of this is 35 pages long and can be found here:
https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/jfs.ohio.gov/PRC/AshlandcountyPRCplaneffective.pdf
Whew. Still with me? Oh, and something else, last year they had the Ready, Set, Learn program which provided $250 to eligible school age children (K-12) for the purchase of school clothing and supplies. The application window was extremely short though (June 16 to June 27).
So, What’s it all cost? There are two different parts of the funding. One is program costs. I am happy to report that all or nearly all of this money going out is State or Federal money. Yes, it is our taxes but not directly paid by the County budget. Then there are administrative costs. This is the cost of 60 employees that administer all of these myriad of programs. Our annual administrative costs for divisions of Child Support, Public Assistance, Child & Adult Protective Services and Workforce/WIOA is approximately $4.1 million. Most of these admin costs to run Ashland JFS are paid with federal funds, and to a smaller extent, the state. If my notes are correct, the Dept. gets $500,000 from the County which amounts to 12.2 % of the total budget.
Some other facts: there are 4800 people in Ashland County on SNAP payments at a cost of 2.2 million dollars per month. In the State of Ohio the SNAP program spends about 3.2 Billion per year. Unfortunately, in the BBB (big beautiful bill), there were two changes to this program that will impact County finances. Two particular changes that the director and I discussed were that the states would share a percentage of the program costs (i.e. food costs) of the SNAP program if they have SNAP payment error rates 6% or above. At the time of the bill’s passage, Ohio had 9.01% error rate, which under the bill’s language, would mean that Ohio would share in the SNAP program cost (food cost = program cost) to the tune of $320 million. Ohio has until FFY2027, October 1, 2026, to bring that error rate to under 6% so that no share in the program cost is borne by the state. (The federal government currently pays 100% of the $3.2 billion yearly program costs for Ohio’s SNAP program.) Good news, currently, as of February 2nd, the error rate has fallen to 6.52%, which is very close to our goal with about 7.5 months to go. Ashland JFS’s public assistance unit is contributing to that success with a zero percent error rate according to the 2025 report and the state recently randomly pulled ten Ashland cases and found ZERO errors by The ACDJFS staff! Good job by Director Stefaniuk and his staff! Now the other part of this matter is that the state has made it clear that if there is any program cost sharing, it would end up being an additional cost for the counties. Director Stefaniuk argued with the state that that is not fair to counties, like Ashland, that are not part of the problem and would only punish them for their good work… So far the state is not agreeing with him. But of course, the best path is we avoid this issue all together by reaching our goal as a state. And it seems we are on track! The second change we discussed to SNAP from the Big Beautiful Bill is that the federal government will no longer pay for 50% of the administrative cost (i.e. running the program/staff costs). Prior to this bill, the federal government and the states split this cost 50/50. Now the Feds will pay only 25%. And Ohio has not amended its budget to cover this missing 25%, so the cost falls to the counties. This passed on $51 million per year statewide to the counties. For Ashland County, that works out to an estimated $148,708 in additional cost for SNAP. This is added onto our mandated share, which the director mentioned to me. Each board of county commissioners is required to pay a share of the public assistance net expenditures base on a formula outlined in OAC 5101:9-6-31. Ashland’s mandated share amount is $88,224 for 2026. These numbers added together are $236,932.
Another change that has been made since he became director is that when you call the Ashland County Dept. Of Job and Family services, you get a person answering the phone that is here, not India or Pakistan.
So, dear reader, I want to extend to you the “I haven’t been ruined by the 20 second attention span, meme filled world of most social media” metal of honor, if you read this in it’s entirety. Real issues take real discussion and can’t be condensed into “don’t bother me with facts, I just want the quick answer whether its accurate or not.” Unfortunately, many people have digressed to making their voting decisions in all races based on 20 second blurbs on social media. You, taking the time to read this means that you are not a low information or no information voter.
Thanks for your time. See you at the polls on May 5th.
Jeff Hardman