LAURINBURG — The Scotland County Board of Commissioners held a budget workshop on Monday and discussed a myriad of items.

Over the six hour meeting, the board received updates on phase one of the salary study and found out that the Scotland County Department of Social Services is losing social workers, said Jason Robinson, assistant to the County Manager.

“April Snead, social services director, said social workers are going to other counties where they can make $10,000 more a year,” he said.

At the meeting, Snead said social workers stay in the county for about two years before moving on to other surrounding counties. DSS has about 18 social workers and over the last three years, seven social workers have left for other counties.

“We can’t keep them and now I can’t hire them,” Snead said. “Hiring wasn’t always an issue. If can become competitive with our salary, maybe we can keep them longer.”

Snead added that social workers are working longer hours and many of them have so much comp time that they can’t take the time off because they can’t be out of work.

It costs about $10,000 to train a social worker and the county pays for it. Snead said Scotland has handed about $70,000 to other counties with the loss of staff.

“Hiring social workers is a problem across this state,” she said. “Any county will tell you that, all counties are taking from each other.”

Board chair Whit Gibson told WLNC after the meeting that the county has great staff and they don’t want to lose them. “But we know we risk that if we can’t compete with surrounding counties.”

While no decisions were made about increasing pay for social workers, the county budget will be adopted in June. The board will discuss the budget again at it’s regular meeting on March 7 and at a special meeting on March 27, said Robinson.

Robinson said, as part of the budget process, the board will have extra meetings through May.

At the meeting, the board was briefed on the American Rescue Plan funds and how that money can be used to improve water stations in the county and provide Viper radios in the county.

Cheris Hodges can be reached at chodges@laurinburgexch.wpenginepowered.com.