Stop choking DSS

Perhaps the hardest hit agency in South Carolina's revenue shortfall crisis is the Department of Social Services. Budget cuts will cost 500 jobs, adding up to a total of almost 1,400 fewer jobs at the agency since 2000, said Teresa Arnold, DSS governmental affairs director. "Our plan calls for the cuts to come from the Columbia office first, then the counties," she said.

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In tight budget times, legislators work hard to spare education and Medicaid as much pain as possible; so it's the other agencies and programs that have to take it on the chin. Since 2000, DSS funding has been cut by a whopping $48 million.

Does that matter? You bet it does. A recent report shows that elder abuse is on the rise in the state and combating such abuse is one of DSS' jobs. The agency, which currently employs about 4,100 people, also investigates child abuse, operates the state's foster-care system, administers the federal food-stamp program, enforces child support, licenses child-care facilities, oversees the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program and handles refugee resettlements.

Much of the $88 million in state funds allocated to the agency is committed by law to particular programs, Arnold said. "All the cuts are coming from the child welfare area," she said of reductions in the past two years.

What this means is that DSS employees - already overworked and underpaid - will have to work even harder now. This can lead to a tragic situation where a child gets lost in the system, is overlooked or winds up dead or severely abused because of insufficient DSS oversight.

When something like this happens, the public (understandably) gets irate, politicians and bureaucrats point fingers, and sometimes one or two of those overworked and underpaid caseworkers must face child-neglect charges or worse.

Now here's the point: Given all the cuts DSS has endured the past several years, if some tragedy does rock the state, then put the blame where it properly belongs - not on hapless caseworkers or bungling bureaucrats, but on inadequate funding for the agency to staff and properly do its job. If an agency is not given the resources to fulfill its responsibilities, then when it fails one has to look elsewhere for blame.

The DSS may still be able to scrape by. But one thing is sure, it must become a higher funding priority, even in tight budget times, than it has been. It surely can't stand any more cutbacks in revenues or personnel.

--From the Wednesday, June 11, 2003 printed edition of the Augusta Chronicle