Officials from Knox County Job & Family Services reported to the Board of Commissioners on July 16 that in just a few weeks the decision to leave the regional C8 Call Center has shown promising results.
"We officially began the standalone operations on July 1. We've already observed several positive results. By controlling our own scheduling, we can set our intake, our redetermination appointments, more efficiently and complete them in a timely manner. This structure allows us to maintain progress on case approvals without delays caused by multiple county call center obligations, and we are expediting our own cases," said Public Assistance Administrator Carla Poland, according to a video recording of the meeting.
According to the video recording, Poland said Knox County participated in the C8 group, a collaboration of eight counties funded by the state to create the call center. Knox County had to join a group to benefit from the funding. She said the Knox County agency had to follow the group's regulations as voted on by the group. She said Knox County was always the leader, helping out other counties, telling them how to process documents and meet state requirements. Poland said they learned the state changed its procedures allowing a county to stand alone and only handle county cases, though it must belong to a group. County staff will exclusively process county cases to improve customer service with a focus on the local workload.
Poland also said in the video recording that there were past problems with other counties making mistakes that affected Knox County's application timeliness because applications were not approved correctly. She noted that four caseworker positions are currently open at Knox County Job & Family Services but under the standalone model only one new hire is planned due to improved time management and streamlined workflow.
Meeting all state requirements while reducing staffing costs should result in significant fiscal savings without needing additional caseworkers, according to Poland in the video recording. From July 1 through July 14, Knox County received 372 calls and answered 360 of them for an answer rate of 96.8%. The average speed of answer was 1.9 minutes and average handle time was 17.4 minutes; by comparison, she said, statewide averages are 26.8 minutes for speed of answer and 21.6 minutes for handle time.
Poland further said that technology upgrades from the state will continue for their call center operations and that in October they will formally leave C8 and join Group 10—a consortium of counties operating as standalone units for several years including Allen, Ashland, Medina, Mercer, Ottawa, and Tusk counties—resulting in additional savings since there will no longer be a need for a C8 coordinator position. Only emergencies such as floods would require cross-county support within Group 10; so far this has not occurred among member counties.
