CHANGING TIMES AT DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SERVICES
Extra funds set to fortify child welfare
Unprecedented budget increase lifts hopes at DSS
Extra funds set to fortify child welfare
Unprecedented budget increase lifts hopes at DSS
Posted on Tue, Oct. 03, 2006
"After years of budget cuts and low national rankings, the S.C. Department of Social Services is poised to receive its largest one-year budget increase in the agency's history, a move that officials say will fuel a turnaround for the department charged with ensuring the safety of the state's most vulnerable residents - its children."
This follows the coat tail of the mistake that cost a family to loose their children, then regain them after a judge ruled that their children should never have been taken to begin with. Children that saw what a Pscyh ward looks like first hand, and the horrors of our system. Children that will be forever changed from this experience. The reason? Too much of a case load...........
"A $14.3 million increase in the agency's budget for the 2006-07 fiscal year will add 350 new permanent child welfare workers, restore the foster care board rate, provide matching funds for some group homes and emergency shelters, and partially fund a projected adoptions subsidy deficit, DSS officials said."
Isn't this what the standards required to begin with? Why was this money not delivered before this year?
"If all goes well, South Carolina will become one of a few - or maybe the only - states in the nation with the average of 12 cases per foster care worker recommended by the Child Welfare League of America. Some workers have as many as three times that number today."
This is a sad fact that we must all worry about. Most states have workers with 48 cases per foster care worker. How do we expect those workers to not make mistakes? How do we expect our children to be safe? YET, it continues, and our children pay the price...........
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