News

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FRANKFORT, KY. (April 23, 2026) — Today, Auditor Allison Ball released the inaugural Commonwealth Office of the Ombudsman Annual Report. This report details the first 18 months of the Ombudsman's time under the Auditor's Office and highlights the widespread success of the Ombudsman.

2023 Senate Bill 48 removed the Ombudsman from the control of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services (CHFS) —the very entity the Ombudsman is charged with investigating—and transferred it to the Auditor's Office. The General Assembly did this to ensure independent oversight of one of the Commonwealth's largest and most critical agencies which administers nearly $24 billion in services to more than one million Kentuckians.

“The Ombudsman's Office has protected the most vulnerable Kentuckians from falling through the cracks of bureaucracy," Auditor Ball said. “We have advocated for foster kids experiencing harsh treatment from CHFS, senior citizens who lost their access to meals due to poor financial management at CHFS,  Kentuckians whose public benefits were inappropriately canceled due to processing errors at CHFS, and many more. Their work is deeply impactful in the lives of Kentuckians in need."  

The report highlights numerous areas in which the Ombudsman has intervened on behalf of Kentuckians, including:

• Resolving Kentuckians' Complaints Against CHFS: The Ombudsman has assisted more than 20,000 Kentuckians in 2025 alone and issued 156 corrective action plans to CHFS to address policy violations.

• Medicaid Waiver Access: The Ombudsman has identified and corrected improper denials of waiver services for children with special needs, ensuring eligible families regained access to care.
• Ensuring Child Safety: The Ombudsman has prompted the relocation of a Kentucky foster child from an out-of-state psychiatric facility after identifying serious deficiencies, including the inappropriate use of chemical restraints, the stopping and restarting of medications, and the failure to obtain valid and timely physician signatures on orders for restraint and seclusion. The Ombudsman conveyed to CHFS that no more Kentucky children should be sent to that facility.

• CHILD Waiver Access: The Ombudsman has raised numerous concerns about CHFS's implementation of the CHILD Waiver, including far too restrictive Kentuckian eligibility rules and limited Kentuckian access. ​
  
  

• CHFS Data Breach: The Ombudsman notified CHFS that CHFS had a data breach which disclosed children's newly adopted names to their biological parents (who no longer had parental rights). The breach affected 2,465 people. The Ombudsman repeatedly requested CHFS take appropriate measures to inform those exposed.
  
  

• Foster Youth Credit Checks: The Ombudsman has strengthened protections for foster youth by working with CHFS to implement updated credit check requirements.
   

• Error Rates in Public Benefits Distribution: The Ombudsman has warned CHFS that its error rates in its distribution of public benefits are far too high, harming the Kentuckians who need those benefits and the Kentucky taxpayers who pay for those benefits. Corrective Action Plans remain unresolved across most counties, with many persisting for over a year and some exceeding two years, reflecting a lack of sustained corrective action by CHFS. With the help of the Ombudsman, CHFS has reduced its SNAP payment error rate—when CHFS pays a SNAP recipient either too much or too little—from 9.10% to 3.52%. However, the other public benefit programs retain alarmingly high error rates, still, including a 47.5% error rate in Long Term Care allotments and a 28% error rate in Medicare Savings Program benefit cases.
   
  
• CHFS Failure to Follow Their Policies: The Ombudsman measures the financial impact of errors that slipped by CHFS in processing SNAP benefits application.  Nearly nine out of ten (89.25%) SNAP cases reviewed contained some form of deficiency which reflects a serious systemic compliance issue with their own policies.
   
• Children Sleeping in Office Buildings, Hotels, & State Parks: The Ombudsman took a deep dive into the issue of foster children being housed in office buildings, state parks, and hotels and revealed a system rife with abuse, vulnerability to sex trafficking, and other forms of trauma. The Ombudsman provided CHFS with a blueprint to fix the issue, but it remains to be seen whether CHFS will act on it.
  
  
• Kinship Care: The Ombudsman has advocated on behalf of Kinship care families to get CHFS to implement 2024 Senate Bill 151. Yet, CHFS has still failed to provide the much-needed financial support to these families as mandated by the General Assembly.