By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Wood County is seeing a spike in unemployment, food assistance, and Medicaid applications. Officials also suspect there’s an escalation in child abuse cases – with many going unreported right now.
As of last week, another 511 Wood County residents filed for unemployment. They join the 8,885 local residents who had already filed for jobless benefits.
About 400 new applications are coming in each week for SNAP – Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – which was formerly called food stamps. Normally there are 94 new applications a week, according to Dave Wigent, director of the Wood County Department of Job and Family Services.
Local residents who have not had to turn to the government for help before are finding themselves in dire need now.
“I would say a significant percentage of them are for the first time. It seems like we’re seeing a lot of new people,” Wigent said.
The decisions to close non-essential businesses and issue a stay-at-home order in Ohio is credited with slowing the surge of COVID-19 cases. But the orders created their own surge of people out of work.
The magnitude of help needed statewide is massive, according to Bret Crow, spokesperson with the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
“Our online system is overloaded, but no one who built the system envisioned it would have to have the capacity needed now to handle an influx of claims that arrived essentially all at once,” Crow said last month.
Prior to the pandemic, the dollar value of the SNAP benefits in Wood County was about $700,000 a month. That has swelled to about $1.9 million a month, Wigent said.
Wood County JFS is the administrator of that program – with the funding coming from state and federal monies.
“That’s never in jeopardy,” Wigent said.
The number of people seeking Medicaid also continues to see steady growth – from 285 in February, to 394 in March, and up to 424 in April. Wigent doesn’t expect that growth to stop anytime soon.
As for child abuse and neglect cases, the county has seen a 35% to 50% drop in reports.
“We do not believe COVID has cured child abuse,” Wigent said.
But while the stressors in many homes are higher right now, the contact is limited that children have with adults who normally notice and are required to report abuse.
A spike in child abuse cases is often seen in the fall when students return to school. Wigent expects the numbers to be especially high this fall.
“We’re deeply concerned about the fall,” he said. “We’re going to have a tidal wave of cases in the fall.”
Meanwhile, the number of new unemployment claims in Wood County are growing at a slower rate each week. At the end of March, 4,029 local residents filed for unemployment in one week. When April rolled around, the number seeking jobless benefits was 2,727.
But even as the numbers drop of new people seeking help, they are in stark contrast to the low numbers Wood County had been seeing. For example, just 68 people filed for jobless benefits in the first week of February.
Wigent said his office often gets calls from annoyed people who can’t get through to the state – but the local office is of little help since counties don’t handle unemployment.
“They can’t get anybody on the phone in Columbus. So they call our office and are very angry,” he said.
The state has been overwhelmed, he said, seeing nearly 20 times the normal number of requests for unemployment assistance.
“They were unable to handle that tsunami that came at them very quickly,” Wigent said.
