Dear friends,

We received a letter this month from a woman who receives a food assistance debit card from our agency. She came to us after losing her job and becoming homeless. 

Her food assistance card was in the letter. She noted that she had been “blessed” to receive our services and had now obtained a job. She was returning the card so that someone who “really needs it” could use it.  

We are an agency that helps. I see reminders of this every day, but few are as poignant as this story.  

We are the largest provider of food assistance in Southwest Ohio. Last year, we provided Hamilton County residents with more than $100 million in food coupons. We are also the largest provider of medical assistance in this area. We provided nearly $1 billion in medical assistance to Hamilton County residents in 2008. We also provide the most child care assistance, job training and many other types of assistance that help people to a better place in life. 

We are an agency that helps. At few times in our more than 60 years of doing business has this been so important.  

A walk through the Job and Family Services lobby these days is a sobering experience. We are definitely seeing the effects of the nation’s economic downturn in our teeming lobbies and rapidly-rising caseloads. I have always heard the disadvantaged are hit the first and hardest when it comes to economic downturns, and that certainly seems to be the case. 

Our food stamp caseload – the best measure of the economy because the widest group of people is eligible, including working families -- is up 13,000 people over a year ago. Medicaid, child care and cash assistance rolls have seen similar increases. Most are at their highest points this decade, or even since welfare reform began in 1996. 

Couple the increase in need with our recent layoffs and it equals packed lobbies and overflowing phone lines. We are doing our best to keep up, and we are looking at our work processes to see how we can improve. I hope you will have patience with us. It may take longer to get service, but you will get the assistance you need.  

Government entities sometimes suffer from poor reputations because they have contact with so many, they are bound to disappoint a portion. A person might receive prompt and courteous service through a dozen interactions, but if they have a poor experience on their 13^th visit, that is what they remember.  

JFS is no exception. Some of the criticisms is deserved, some not. But I do know the good work we do for so many is sometimes lost in the unhappy cries of a few. We serve hundreds of thousands of local residents each year, and many of them make multiple visits to our agency. Approximately 40,000 people per month come into the lobby of our main office.  

The overwhelming majority of folks who visit us receive the help they need and are treated with respect. You will not hear about it on a newscast or read it in an editorial. It will not show up in a government report, nor are your neighbors likely to talk about it. But it is happening every day, thousands of times a day.   

We are an agency that helps.     

Sincerely,

Moira