Background: Section 5107.04 of the Revised Code requires the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services to increase the Ohio Works First (OWF) payment standard on the first day of each January by the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that occurs in the previous year. The COLA is announced by the Social Security Administration.
New Payment Standard: On October 18, 2016, the Social Security Administration announced a COLA increase of 0.3 percent. Beginning January 1, 2017, ODJFS will issue the following revised OWF and Refugee Cash Assistance payments, based on assistance group size and reflecting the COLA increase:
| Assistance Group Size | Payments as of January 1, 2017 |
|---|
| 1 | $283 |
| 2 | $387 |
| 3 | $474 |
| 4 | $584 |
| 5 | $684 |
| 6 | $761 |
| 7 | $851 |
| 8 | $943 |
| 9 | $1037 |
| 10 | $1130 |
| 11 | $1222 |
| 12 | $1316 |
| 13 | $1409 |
| 14 | $1500 |
| 15 | $1596 |
| +15 ADD | $118 |
Implementation: Over the Thanksgiving weekend a mass change will run in CRIS-E to update the payments. Alerts will be generated, and exception reports will be created for all cases that CRIS-E could not update automatically. For those cases, eligibility workers must run ED/BC in order for the changes to be implemented. All assistance groups affected will receive notices stating their new benefit amounts. A CLVB was issued with the details of the system changes.