P&P June 2016

Figure A

for All-Family participation and in July 2015, it reached the 90-percent threshold for Two-Parent WPR. As of January of this year, FCDJFS’s All-Family WPR was 72.62 percent, marking 14 straight months topping 60-percent participation. Today, Franklin County regularly exceeds statewide averages and ranks first among Ohio’s eight metropolitan counties in TANF work participation. As the central Ohio economy has improved and WPR has increased, the agency has also seen a significant reduction in caseloads—much of it due to participants obtaining unsubsidized employment. Since August 2013, more than 3,500 TANF participants have obtained employment. Last year alone, the program saw more than 1,500 job placements, with an average wage of $9.90 per hour at an average of 32 hours a week. Although it has achieved and main- tained its WPR targets and made a substantial impact through job placements, FCDJFS has constantly sought to improve outcomes for TANF participants. The agency is currently undertaking a new initiative, dubbed “From Rate to Great,” that is exploring and implementing new strategies to place participants in jobs and on career tracks that pay a living wage so that ultimately, they are able to move off cash assistance and become economi- cally self-sufficient. Today, Franklin County’s TANF program has become a statewide and national model. FCDJFS frequently provides guidance to other counties and even other states’ human service agencies that find themselves facing many of the same work participation issues that had plagued the agency just a few years earlier. Chelsea Klosterman’s life also looks vastly different today than it did six years ago. Since leaving her job to become a full-time mom, she had given birth to a second son, but conditions within the home had worsened, so much so that she and the boys were forced to leave. Suddenly she found herself respon- sible for providing for her 6-year-old and 18-month-old on her own, but with a substantial employment gap in her résumé, job prospects were limited.

Community Consortium • Develops and manages all WEP sites • Assesses and assigns all WEP participants to each work site, managing participation on a daily, weekly and monthly basis • Makes appropriate sanction referrals to FCDJFS • Responsible for non-core hours through online ResCare Academy • Facilitates the Applicant Job Search assignment “I understand that there aremany different things that can bring someone here,” she said. “It’s not that someone’s lazy—they justmay be ina really rough spot at that point in their life…There are lots of people out there that want towork or dowork full time, but evenwith their full-time salaries still qualify for public assistance.” – CHELSEA KLOSTERMAN

FCDJFS • Determines Eligibility • Makes AppropriateWork Assignments; all WEP participants are assigned to ResCare

• Enters monthly hours in Client Registry Information System— Enhanced (CRISE) • Applies sanctions as needed

With nowhere left to turn, she came to FCDJFS in April 2015 and began par- ticipating in the TANF program. As it happened, she was assigned to work in the agency’s mailroom. “My boss in the mailroom, she normally interviews her ‘WEPs’ (work experience participants) but I kind of just got thrown on her,” Klosterman said. “But she accepted me like I was a member of their family, and I treated this [work assignment] like it was a full-time job.” Within two months, Klosterman was working full time, and today she is an official FCDJFS employee, though she still carries the “client perspective” with her. “I understand that there are many different things that can bring someone here,” she said. “It’s not that someone’s lazy—they just may be in a really rough spot at that point in their life… There are lots of people out there that want to work or do work full time, but even with their full- time salaries still qualify for public assistance.” That reality is not lost on FCDJFS, either, which is why the agency continues to pursue innovative strate- gies and community partnerships to improve participant outcomes. And it remains committed to people it serves, not numbers, in its mission to improve opportunities for all Franklin County residents.

Mike McCaman is the assistant director of the Franklin County (Ohio) Department of Job and Family Services.

June 2016   Policy&Practice 37