S.C. Senate report eyes Social Services fixes

A S.C. Senate panel tasked with investigating the state’s child-welfare agency released a long-awaited report Wednesday, recommending legislative and policy changes aimed at improving the S.C. Department of Social Services.

The report’s recommendations stem from criticism of the agency that came up in testimony during several hearings last year by the Senate Social Services Oversight panel.

Critics said chronically high caseloads and high turnover rates among agency employees were causing children to fall through the cracks, including some who died while in Social Services’ care.

The report includes dozens of recommendations aimed at improving the agency’s child-protective services and its transparency in reporting statistics to the public.

Panel chairman Tom Young, R-Aiken, said he has called another meeting next week to continue the panel’s work.

Recommendations include:

▪  Improving the accuracy of reporting of child-fatalities, increasing communication between agencies that track child deaths, and posting child-fatality statistics on a website

▪  Enacting legislation penalizing county coroners who fail to report child fatalities

▪  Creating local child-fatality review committees for deaths that result from abuse and neglect

▪  Offering child-welfare workers competitive pay and more opportunities for career growth, and requiring caseworkers to have social work or behavioral health degrees

▪  Requiring all day-care facilities to be licensed – not just registered – if they provide care to children who are not family members

▪  Requiring Social Services to report the findings of its investigations of child-care facilities and post inspection data online

▪  Requiring Social Services to respond to reports of abuse or neglect within time frames based on the severity of the alleged abuse

▪  Adopting new standards that measure the number of cases that a child-welfare worker oversees by the number of children that worker must look after, not the number of families

▪  Establishing an independent board to supervise, review, and issue licenses to organizations that provide community-based counseling services to troubled families

▪  Examining whether Social Services should be restructured so it can focus on addressing child-protective services and other family issues

▪  Enacting a tuition-reimbursement program to assist Social Services in the recruiting and retention of caseworkers

▪  Having an independent, third-party group review cases that stay open past a year

▪  Supporting initiatives that work to educate mothers and families on proper nutrition, prenatal care, and early childhood development as well as appropriate strategies for raising children

▪  Creating an independent body to provide oversight of the agency

Read the full report here:

This story was originally published March 26, 2015 at 12:01 AM with the headline "S.C. Senate report eyes Social Services fixes."