Advocacy & Issues Management Committee

 

Social Services Transition Issues
Executive Summary

Our vision is to partner with families in achieving permanence, prosperity and safety.

• Economic issues, substance abuse and family violence are key. We must focus on family strengths, partner with other organizations, simplify bureaucratic processes and build flexibility into our programs to help us achieve our vision. Building on successful initiatives, we must develop new measures of success for agencies and families.
• Older adults are NC’s fastest growing population – which translates into increased service needs in Long Term Care, for prescription drug coverage and adult day care.
• Child abuse and neglect rates are up an intolerable 12% in NC. We must address prevention, permanence and safety as we help families to overcome poverty, family violence and substance abuse issues. We have a serious crisis in social worker turnover.
• NC’s 50% decline in the Work First cash assistance caseload provides an opportunity to reinvest in working families. The cash assistance caseload decline has peaked. We must develop more appropriate, family-centered outcome goals for families and address the complex barriers to employment that they face.
• Helping low-income families move from poverty to prosperity by connecting them with the services and benefits they need to support their families must remain a priority, including Food Assistance (EBT), health insurance and the earned income tax credit. NC ranks #1 in enrolling children in the children’s health insurance program, but funding is running out!
• Every child in NC deserves the support of both parents. A unified child support system makes sense for families. Making the transition to a unified system and expanding the services offered through the Clerk of Court offices will require funding and careful planning.
• Providing access to quality child day care is critical to the success of Work First. Waiting lists are increasing across the state putting our success in welfare reform in jeopardy.
• Very few families who need public assistance commit fraud, but when fraud occurs, it taints the public image of our programs. Fraud prevention and prosecution efforts are critical to fair treatment of those in need of assistance and to assuring public confidence in programs for which they pay.
• We have too many categorical funding streams that prevent counties from providing holistic services for families. DSS has more than 75 different funding sources with strict guidelines for eligibility on the use of those funds. Most funding sources to support non-entitlement social work services are found in block-grants that tend to be reduced regularly at the federal level to balance the federal budget, despite increasing demand at the local level.
• Training must be funded if our system is to achieve its vision of partnering with families to achieve prosperity, permanence and safety. County DSS Directors are leading the change process, re-engineering business processes and working more collaboratively with community based agencies. Training is needed to facilitate those changes. Technology, data management, and customer service training is imperative.
• Technology is critical for effectively and efficiently serving families and individuals in a non-duplicating manner and without adding staff. Unfortunately, technology has not been well funded in our system. Our clients suffer with outdated, cumbersome eligibility determination systems and with social workers who are overburdened by paperwork at the expense of direct client contact. County DSS agencies need an automated shared application/eligibility process.