Below is the Spotsylvania Department of Social Services Advisory Board message delivered to the Board of Supervisors advocating for the Department of Social Services’ budget. As a general rule, I thrive to seperate my community activities from this page. This message would have been delivered in a public forum and I’m highlighting it here to ensure maximum community viewership.
“The purpose of the Spotsylvania Department of Social Services Advisory Board is to assist the director of Social Services in an advisory capacity with the planning and development of programs and services providing public assistance to persons in need in the community.” - from the Spotsylvania County Government webpage.
Click here to learn more about the Spotsylvania DSS Advisory Board.
Good Evening Board members. My name is Todd Rump and I’m speaking tonight on behalf of Spotsylvania’s Department of Social Services Advisory Board. Each Advisory Board member was provided an opportunity to contribute to this message. Since it was drafted after our last meeting, I was only able to gain concurrence from the Board’s majority. However, it’s worth noting that the DSS Advisory Board supported unanimously the Department’s proposed budget, which included the initiatives we advocate for below.
To provide a brief recap for the community, last summer the Board of Supervisors directed the Advisory Board to become more active in its State mandated duties and responsibilities. Since much of what DSS does involves confidential information, the Advisory Board has focused on areas such as DSS operations, policy reviews, personnel duties, the budget, and partner grant applications. The Board of Supervisors should have been provided with the results of the Advisory Board’s deliberations on partner grant applications. Almost every recommendation was adopted unanimously and when there were disagreements, we provided those concerns to the Board. We are happy to answer any additional questions if the Board has them as the budget process moves forward. In the interest of time, the Advisory Board would like to focus on the DSS budget, specifically the requests for new positions.
As the Board is aware, DSS serves the most vulnerable members of our community and because of that their work carries an elevated level of importance. For DSS to adequately serve the population reasonable staffing is needed to ensure timeliness and quality of services. There has been discussion about the County’s low growth rate, but this fails to account for Medicaid expansion, which has left the Department to balance timeliness of processing requests and accuracy.
The Advisory Board commends the County Administrator for recognizing this issue, demonstrated by including 4 DSS eligibility workers and 1 DSS eligibility supervisor in his recommended budget. However, the Advisory Board would strongly encourage the Board of Supervisors to fund the 4 DSS eligibility workers for the entire Fiscal year 2021. The current proposed budget funds these positions starting on January 1, 2021.
The Advisory Board would like to reiterate some of the justification for these positions that were included in the budget. If the Department remains understaffed the Advisory Board believes it will delay prompt facilitation of requests from County citizens to receive needed services. If forms cannot be processed in a timely manner, those most vulnerable will be subjected to undue hardships. In recent months, Spotsy DSS workers have done a tremendous job at surging to meet State timeliness goals, but the Advisory Board does not believe it’s reasonable to expect the staff to continue that pace until January 2021. Therefore, we would expect citizens to experience some delays in processing between now and January. An additional consideration we would like to highlight is that the current understaffing has caused eligibility supervisors – whose primary task is to provide oversight, quality control, and professional development – to take on caseloads. While such a shift may be necessary for short periods, or times of crises, the Advisory Board believes such reallocation of resources to meet day-to-day operations comes at the expense of DSS staff and the long-term effectiveness of the Department as professional development efforts are sacrificed to meet present community demands.
This development creates the conditions that could lead to increased employee turnover – which is already elevated due to the demanding nature of social services work. Further, if supervisors are unable to focus on their true functions it creates potential liabilities if staff is promoted to new positions without receiving the mentorship and professional development we would expect, which could have long-term negative consequences.
In closing, the Advisory Board appreciates that the Board of Supervisors have many factors to consider in the budget process. We have observed the increased concern expressed about seniors and low-income populations so far in the budget cycle and the Advisory Board believes that delaying the 4 eligibility workers to January 2021 will negatively affect these vulnerable populations by delaying needed medical care, food, and assistance.
The Advisory Board respectfully submits that the Board ensures funding is identified in the budget to allow all 5 eligibility positions to begin on July 1, 2021. Thank you for your time.
Message Sent to Board of Supervisors on March 31, 2020