CADIZ — Harrison County Department of Job and Family Services officials are pleased with the response they received to a recent survey regarding services provided through its Title XX Plan.

Deputy Director Deb Knight spoke to Harrison County commissioners Wednesday about the plan and what services it will include. She said they are receiving $333,308 through Title XX funds this year.

“Title XX is a social services block grant that we get every year at Job and Family. … We’re required to submit a plan every year on how we’re going to spend the money and the plan is effective on a federal fiscal year basis, so from Oct. 1-Sept 30,” she said.

The county must create a plan that includes how it plans to spend the money and what programs it will help to fund. Prior to its approval, Knight said they are required to hold a public meeting; however, it typically yields a low turnout so they opted to instead allow interested residents to complete a public survey. She said she was pleasantly surprised by the amount of responses to the survey.

“We posted it on Facebook and I invited some of our partners to comment on the survey, and we actually had 64 respondents, which was astounding for us. Of those 64, 60 people said the current plan was fine and we didn’t need any more services. The four that thought we needed services said that we needed more services for kinship providers, services for teenagers aging out of the foster care system, helping elderly get groceries and helping them apply for benefits, and transportation services for the elderly or low income as well as safer walking transportation,” she said, adding that she was pleased with the comments they received.

Knight said the plan has not changed much from last year, although they adjusted the money for different services. Those services include adoption services, case management, counseling, foster care services for children, informational referral services, protective services for adults and for children, residential treatment services, and transportation.

“The transportation (services) is basically working with transit to help people get to where they need to go, if they qualify. I mean it’s not walking areas, it’s actually getting people to where they need to go,” she said.

Commissioner Don Bethel asked if eligibility for the services is income based.

Knight said most of the services they provide through the funding source are without regard to income.

“What we do typically is if we have a funding stream that people qualify for, we would use that first and then we would go to this if there’s no other way to cover the cost,” she added.

Commissioners Dale Norris, Paul Coffland and Bethel unanimously approved the plan contract.

In other matters, Engineer Doug Bachman opened bids for a resurfacing project on County Road 6. The county received two bids – one from NLS Paving out of St. Clairsville for $499,364.85 and another from Shelly & Sands out of Zanesville for $423,431.34.

Bachman recommended tabling the bids for further review.