Scotland County’s Department of Social Services, like almost every other DSS in the state and country, faces an uphill battle everyday. The challenges are many — not enough hours in the day, not enough employees to handle the caseload, a lack of local resources and oh, by the way, there’s been nearly two years of a worldwide pandemic that have bottled things up.
“The challenges we face are a constant,” said April Snead, director of DSS. “We often have struggles with things like getting a child diagnosed, difficulty finding relatives, parents often fight the process and there is a severe lack of foster homes.”
Putting all of that into perspective are the facts that Scotland County DSS currently has 105 children in foster care, as well as another 50 or 60 ongoing investigations that focus on determining if there has been parental neglect.
Those numbers are both up since the start of COVID.
Another challenge faced by DSS when it comes to getting children placed in foster homes or adopted into permanent families comes in the form of delays within the court system.
That’s an area that District 16A Chief Judge Amy Wilson wants to see improved, too.
She recently gathered together representatives from DSS, the state Department of Health and Human Services, clerk of courts, the Guardian ad Litem organization and the court system to discuss creating a permanency collaborative.
“We are a family court district with extra emphasis on families and children,” Wilson explained. “We all got together to ask how we could do this faster — and thought a collaborative effort will help with getting cases handled more efficiently and quicker.”
Wilson went on to explain that, when a child comes into DSS custody, there are strict rules that must be followed — including a federal mandate that children get placed within one year.
“The federal guideline is almost impossible to do,” Snead said about the one-year guideline. “Many times we have to work with a parent or parents for a year or more in an effort to get the child back to the permanent home.
“Some families we’ve known about for quite a bit of time before we can actually officially start to work with them,” she added.
Wilson said the first goal of the court often takes the longest.
“Our first goal is to reunite the family,” she said, “but the overall goal is to get the child into a safe setting.”
Snead said that, despite the struggles, she does see the possibility for light on the horizon.
“There’s no quick fix, but I am hopeful for the collaborative to help the process,” she said. “And I do want to give a shout-out to our commissioners for helping us get additional DSS agents to work with families.”
The permanency collaborative is scheduled to meet again in January, and will this time invite representatives from East Point to join in.
W. Curt Vincent can be reached at 910-506-3023 or cvincent@laurinburgexch.wpenginepowered.com.