EATON — While Job and Family Services (JFS) had a rough month with maintenance issues, according to Director Becky Sorrell, the staff is doing great things and making Preble County JFS known as a successful department.
Sorrell attended the Preble County Commissioners meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 20 to provide her monthly update.
“This past month has been a real challenge with some problems with the systems with the office,” she said. “The state is moving to a different Microsoft Product that they are rolling out. It crashed our system and we didn’t have any access to our documents and things like that. It created some problems with getting work done.
“Right after that our electric went out and we didn’t have electricity for that whole day, which caused the air to go out. The next day we had a bunch of women without air. The maintenance men came out to save the day,” she said.
“Other news, I think you’re as excited as I am and don’t think I just cherry picked some information. I could not believe this information on the work that is coming out of our office. First thing is that the Fraud Department earned $17,000 in incentive money for the work they have accomplished in the last year,” Sorrell continued.
“That work is done by Garry Spencer, Judy Plaugher, Kristy Jordan, and formerly Lori Desch. Regina Hapner is the supervisor in charge of this department. That is a good amount of money that we can use without strings attached to it. In addition to that, the state gives us a report every year, it is a reflection of the last six months.’
“They compare each countY to six comparable counties in caseload size,” Sorrell said. “Our Fraud Department has collected $24,082.55 more in fraud payments than the next closest county. Moving us again way up to the top on fraud identification and collection.”
The state also came out and did a review of their child care program and went through several cases. PC JFS did not know which cases they were going to review, but the county got a 100 percent performance review.
The department has to write and update its Food Assistance Employment and Training plan every two years. Lori Puckett submitted the plan and received an email from the state telling her it is one of the best plans the they have seen and that they would like to use it as a template.
In other good news, the Job Center received 156 “very satisfied” ratings, with the closest comparable Job Center in the area having 38.
In less exciting news, Children Services reports have gone up with schools starting back up. However, Sorrell noted, there has not been much change in the average cost and they have simply been receiving more reports since kids are in school and not on summer vacation.
