Personnel Committee Minutes - August 13, 2003

NCACDSS

PERSONNEL COMMITTEE MEETING

MINUTES

August 13, 2003

Present:

Don Yousey (Health Director, Brunswick Co.), Lori Lancaster (Wilson Co.), Jackie Jordan-McLeod (Pender Co.), Deborah L. McAllister (Pender Co.), Christy Ward (Columbus Co.), Tony Beaman (Haywood Co.& Co-Chair), Jack Jones (Lenoir Co. & Co-Chair), Donn Gunderson (Craven Co.), Dianne Gallimore (Alamance Co.), Holly Steed (Wayne Co.), Jerry Rhodes (Washington Co.), Colleen Turner (Gates Co.), Shirley Harris (Cumberland Co.), JoAnn Lamm (Div. Of Social Services) and Patrick McCoy (OSP).

Jack called the meeting to order. Committee members and guests introduced themselves.

  1. CPS Turnover: Discussion of the Charlotte Observer (and other) newspaper articles about CPS. Donna and Joann were present to discuss this specific issue. Committee agreed that data about staff turnover and vacancy rates is needed to work with OSP for recommendations to the State Personnel Commission, perhaps to study this class (entire Child Welfare Social Worker III class) and for recruitment efforts. Patrick stated the Governor has directed Secretary Odom to look at the child welfare staff issues and several counties have called OSP regarding pay for CPS staff. Questions to address are how does OSP fit into this issue, what data is there already. OSP is ready to help however they can. Need information from counties (i.e., turnover, non-qualified staff, average pay.) Perhaps look at other states’ pay, etc. Joann cautioned that we need to look at other states who are doing similar initiatives and workload as NC because all states are not at the same place as NC. Tony and Jerry noted that OSP also need to look at school system and mental health salaries for similar positions, which typically pay higher salaries than DSS’s. Donn did a survey a few years ago about staff turnover which he shared with the Committee. Joann mentioned the annual caseload survey and asked if that can be used and Jerry mentioned the staff turnover report developed by the Eastern Regional Personnel Office several years ago. Need to look at on-call issues and supervisory issues also.   Colleen made a motion, seconded by Jerry to tweak the existing Division Annual Child Welfare Caseload survey to capture needed information as this could be done fairly quickly which is important. Motion approved by the Committee. A Task Force composed of Donn, Lori, Patrick and Jerry will work with Joanne to revise the Division survey.

  1. Scope of Work: Jack will get this out to all Committee members.

  1. Rewrite of Chapter 126 of the State Personnel Act: Jack asked if Committee members did not get the copy of the current & proposed copies of Ch. 126 and his comments, to let him know and he would send them. The Study Commission to look at rewriting Ch. 126 was not passed by the Legislature prior to adjournment, however, OSP is proceeding with this task and Tom Wright, Director of OSP has put together a Task Force to do this. Jack Jones is representing NCACDSS and the Health Directors’ Association. Patrick stated that Tom wants to maintain the current protections afforded local government employees in any revisions to Ch. 126 and does not want to get too detailed in code or rules so best practices in Human Resources can be adopted easier. Jack urged Committee members to study these documents and become very familiar with them and to let him know of issues, questions and suggestions. Patrick offered to invite Valerie Bateman, Attorney with the AG’s office who works with OSP on legal matters, to attend subsequent Committee meetings to address questions we may have. Jack noted the position paper the Association developed a couple of years ago about the importance of State Personnel Act protections for employees subject to the State Personnel Act. Jack will send this to Committee members.

  1. Delegation of Authority: Patrick noted he is close to completing the agreement between OSP and county DSS’s and Health Depts. regarding authority to make qualification determination for positions. This will accomplished following specific written qualifying guidelines for all positions and oversight and would expedite hiring and improve consistency between counties.   OSP will train persons who do the qualifying. Jerry suggested he use the Regional Meetings as a training forum. OSP will still be available to help with questionable situations. This action will also free up OSP personnel to help with other projects. Substantially equivalent counties sometimes have issues on consistency so this may help them also. OSP will initially focus signing agreements with those counties who already have approval for some levels of delegation. This should be done in September.

Patrick stated there has been very little interest in counties becoming substantially equivalent, probably due to having to bring on additional staff to do this work when OSP does it at no cost to the county. He stated OSP is currently monitoring substantially equivalent counties.

  1. Social Worker Trainee and Child Support Agent II qualifications: Patrick stated the revisions of what kind of experience counts toward qualification for these two positions was approved.

There being no further business for the Committee, the meeting was adjourned.

Tony Beaman

Co-chair