The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, (ODJFS), a department that employs 4,000 full time employees, has an annual budget of more than $17 billion. ODJFS supervises the provision of Medicaid, food stamps, child welfare and child support in Ohio. Also, ODJFS provides services such as unemployment compensation to Ohio's citizens.[1] The OSJFS is Ohio's largest state agency.[2]
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On July 1, 2000, the Ohio Department of Human Services and the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services combined to become the ODJFS.[3] ODJFS oversees programs helping unborn babies and their mothers with health care issues while also helping unemployed workers and senior citizens find food and shelter. [4]
In December 2004, the ODJFS and the Ohio Auditor's Office launched a joint audit. As a result, Ohio officials questioned $200 million in tax dollars spent by the Hamiltion County Department of Job and Family Services.[5]
In 2006, ODJFS took away the license for Lifeway For Youth, a nonprofit Christian-based placement agency, due to the death of a 3 year old boy. [6] Barbara Riley, then the director of ODJFS, questioned "how the private placement agency Lifeway for Youth, Butler County Children Services, and her own department failed the boy."[7]
For the year 2008, ODJFS sought federal help concerning Ohio’s unemployment insurance trust fund. State officials had stated that the fund was in danger of running out before the end of the year.[8] On December 5, 2008, ODJFS announced that extended unemployment benefit payments will start the week of December 22, 2008.[9] Scarlett Bouder, spokesperson for the ODJFS, stated that "an estimated 70,000 Ohioans are now eligible for the assistance and thousands more will qualify in the coming weeks as they exhaust their regular benefits."[10]
During last few weeks of the 2008 US Presidential election campaign, ODJFS director Helen Jones-Kelley, and members of her staff, became embroiled in a controversy over searches of Joe Wurzelbacher's government records. The matter led to substantial news media attention during the presidential campaign, a new law being signed in Ohio, and a federal civil rights lawsuit.[11][12][13]