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Big Brothers Big Sisters warns TANF cut will leave more than 1,000 Ohio children without mentors

3717113 · May 27, 2025
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Summary

Stephanie Hightower of Big Brothers Big Sisters told the Senate Finance Committee that recent budget changes remove the TANF line that provided $1 million per fiscal year, jeopardizing over 500 new mentoring matches annually and leaving more than 2,000 children statewide on waiting lists.

Stephanie Hightower, representing Big Brothers Big Sisters in Central Ohio, told the Senate Finance Committee that the organization’s TANF funding was cut from the House and then removed entirely by the Senate, and that loss would sharply reduce mentoring capacity statewide. "Without these dollars, over a thousand children statewide go without a mentor over the next 2 years," Hightower said, adding that the program had produced more than 500 new mentoring relationships annually under the prior appropriation.

Nut graf: The testimony came during the…

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