Steve Selzer, of Seville, waits outside Medina County Job and Family Services, 232 Northland Drive, Medina, early Sept. 1 to be picked up for the Work School program, which has the unemployed work for their welfare money, food stamps or other benefits. Mead Wilkins, director of the JFS, said two years ago he would see six to 10 people participating in the school each day, almost all of them women. Now, he said, it can be between 50 and 100, about 30 percent of them men. (Photo by Maria Kacik, The Gazette.)

MEDINA — Mead Wilkins walks into work at the Medina County Job and Family Services some mornings to see a line of people wrapped around the Northland Drive offices waiting to see a case worker.

The agency is so overloaded, said its director, that some of these people won’t be seen that day. They’d have to come back another morning and hope to be early enough to make it toward the front of the line.

With an economy that is still in limbo, the amount of Medina County residents who qualify for JFS’ services — such as welfare income, Medicaid and food stamps — has been increasing over the last couple years. Wilkins said many of the 8,000 currently unemployed people in the county are now looking to the agency to provide them with money for bills, food and health care.

And this is happening while the state, federal and local governments are withdrawing some of their support to Job and Family Services departments throughout the state.

“We have been continuously cut since 2006. At this point, we’re getting cuts upon cuts,” Wilkins said.

To stay afloat in a time when money is tight and need is great, Wilkins said the agency has had to be creative with its resources and ultimately cut back in what it provides to Medina County’s poor.

Chris Lubinksi attends to those waiting for service Sept. 1 at Medina County Job and Family Services. Mead Wilkins, director of the JFS, said people often line up outside the agency before it opens to see a case worker. Often, he said, people are turned away when more are waiting than the agency can handle in a day. (Photo by Maria Kacik, The Gazette.)

Waning budget

The Medina County JFS, 232 Northland Drive, Medina, began this fiscal year with $1.1 million less from the state. The agency will have to operate this year on a $7.2 million budget, almost 14 percent smaller than last year’s.

“Most of the cuts we got are based on lack of state revenues,” Wilkins said. “Everybody’s paying less taxes. The amount of money the state gets is reduced.”

But Wilkins pointed out that many are paying less in taxes because they are out of jobs and more in need of assistance.
Wilkins spoke to the Medina County commissioners at their meeting two weeks ago to keep them up to date on the state of his department and its budget.

“You’re in a tough spot, I know. That’s not good.” said Commissioner Pat Geissman, liaison to JFS, as she perused the budget. “There’s way too much red on this sheet.”

To deal with the cutbacks, Wilkins said the JFS has been partnering with other Medina County agencies — such as Medina County Family First — to ensure that services aren’t doubled in specific cases.

And over the last year, the JFS went from around 113 staff to less than 70. Wilkins said the employees, all of them lost through attrition, were child welfare and public assistance case workers.

But less money is just one part of the story. Wilkins said the problem becomes exponential once coupled with the number of people who have been knocking on the JFS’ door for assistance in the last few years.

“That’s the squeeze we’re in. It’s like a vice,” he said.

Lennie Davis, of Medina, hammers out some transmission parts at the Medina Assembly and Packaging plant in Wadsworth. He is part of a Medina County Job and Family Services program that has participants work at the factory to receive food stamps, welfare money or other benefits. (Photo by Maria Kacik, The Gazette.)

More in need

Since some of the welfare reform of the late 1990s, those who receive welfare have to work between 20 and 35 hours a week, Wilkins explained. If its clients don’t have employment, it’s up to the JFS to provide it.

Wilkins said about two years ago six to 10 people came to the agency every day to work at Medina Assembly and Packaging, a Wadsworth firm that contracts with the JFS to provide work opportunities for its clients. Now, the JFS can have as many as 100 sign up to go to the plant each day.

“We literally have to contract for transportation services to get them to go back and forth,” Wilkins said.

In July 2007, JFS issued $509,000 in food stamps to 2,290 homes. This July it issued $1,158,383 in food stamps to 3,678 homes.

And the numbers are rising for health care, too. From July 2008 to July 2009 there was a
16 percent increase in the number of children receiving family Medicaid and a 20 percent increase in the adults receiving family Medicaid.

Wilkins said much of this is tied to the county’s unemployment. According to the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services’ data for July 2009, Medina was the county with the fourth fewest unemployed workers — 8.5 percent. Ohio’s unemployment rate was 11.2 percent that month.

But that’s still more than a 3 percentage point jump from the county’s 5.3 percent unemployment rate in July 2007.
Wilkins said that as those numbers go up, the more people he sees coming to JFS’s offices.

Adam Zarzour fills out an appication for medical insurance from the Medina County Job and Family Services. (Photo by Maria Kacik, The Gazette.)

Crisis mode

Wilkins explained JFS once had two primary groups of clientele: the working poor and the “core group” that consists of the destitute and the elderly.

But since the group of the newly unemployed entered the picture at the start of the recession, Wilkins said his department has had to cut its assistance to the working poor.

It no longer offers training opportunities and help with bills or car repairs that once “helped to make sure they would stay employed and productive and pay taxes,” Wilkins said.

The agency is now bailing out Medina County’s poorest and not working on preventative measures to ensure the at-risk families don’t join the ranks of the destitute. “All those services that once made a difference in someone’s life are gone,” he said.

“So that’s the group that was barely holding on by their fingertips. We’ve pulled out all our supports and now some have come back and are on benefits,” Wilkins said.

The agency also cut 80 percent of its emergency assistance budget, which went to pay bills for those who had their utilities shut off. It once allocated $400,000 for that fund but has only $75,000 for the year.

Wilkins said he doesn’t see an out of the recession anytime soon, but he insists that hasn’t stopped his agency from providing services to those who need it most, the ones he said who are most at risk of going hungry.

“This is one of the richest counties in the state. We’re living in one of the richest countries in the world. We should certainly find a way to take care of our children,” Wilkins said.

Contact Maria Kacik at (330) 721-4049 or mkacik@ohio.net.