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HomeMy WebLinkAboutDSS Board Minutes 102014MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES October 20, 2014 1 THE ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES MET ON MONDAY: October 20, 2014 at the Hillsborough Commons, Hillsborough, North Carolina. BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES MEMBERS PRESENT: Pat Garavaglia, Chair; Claire Millar; Tamara Dempsey-Tanner; and Earl McKee. GUEST: None. BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES MEMBER ABSENT: Ken Chavious. STAFF PRESENT: Nancy Coston, Director; Denise Shaffer, Assistant Director; Lindsey Shewmaker, Human Services Manager; Sharron Hinton, Human Services Manager; Suzanne Hitt, Social Work Supervisor; Tina Clark, Social Work Supervisor; Betsy Corbett, Veterans Officer; and Joyce Lee, Business Officer. I. Call to Order and Introductions DSS Chair, Pat Garavaglia, called the meeting to order at 4:04 pm. II. Board Comments None. III. Public Comments None. IV. Agenda Changes Nancy Coston suggested the agenda be changed to begin with the Adolescent Parenting Program. V. Action Items On a motion by Claire Millar the Board approved the Minutes of August 18, 2014. Earl McKee seconded the motion. The motion was carried without dissent. VI. Items for Discussion and/or Decision 1. Follow-Up on Child Care Issues Nancy Coston provided a draft handout to help explain all the child care changes. There will be a discussion on the November 11th Board of County Commissioners Work Session. Pat Garavaglia asked whether this information was ready to share with elected officials. Ms. Coston responded that once it is out of draft form, it can be shared. Tina Clark discussed all changes along with the staff recommendations for next steps. The first change relates to income eligibility. There are 85 Orange County families between now and the end of May 2015 who will lose eligibility under the new rules. Staff are recommending these families receive a three-month notice that will include three months of county funded child care allowing families to make a plan for ongoing child care. MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES October 20, 2014 2 The second change is a fee increase to 10% of a family’s monthly gross income. Staff have calculated the fees and informed all impacted families. Some families now have higher parent fees than the actual cost of care. This is true for many families who only utilize after-school or part-time care. Staff have suspended services for many of these families and they are now paying the full cost of care. Because they are suspended and not terminated, many of these families could be picked back up in the summer when full-time care is needed if funds are available. Beginning January 1, 2015 relatives who are caring for children will have income counted. This impacts 25 families right now and will be a significant problem for families previously involved with child welfare. The agency is recommending one of the school social work positions be used to provide prevention services to some of these families. There will be a market rate increase on January 1, 2015 of approximately 25%. It is difficult to project figures for this and staff will be better able to project costs in January. There is a decrease in funding for Orange County child care subsidy beginning this year. There will be three reductions over the next six years. Even though the county gave the agency an additional $500,000 there is a significant funding decrease from last year that will make it difficult to serve additional families. There are currently 276 children on the waiting list. Some of the families currently waiting may no longer be eligible once their income is counted under the new rules. Earl McKee asked how many might come off through natural attrition. Ms. Clark responded that 10- 15% of waiting clients will have found another plan or moved by the time staff contact them. Ms. Clark explained that the agency currently pays enhancements on children in 4- and 5-star facilities. Some child care facilities charge much more for private pay than subsidy can pay. The enhancements help bridge that gap. Paying for these enhancements currently takes available funds for subsidy off the table. After some discussion, the Board decided to table the enhancement discussion for now. Ms. Coston explained staff is working on how to balance the decreased funding and increased costs of care with the desire to move families off the waiting list. The county has provided an additional $500,000 for child care subsidy and staff is working through the best use of those funds to meet the greatest need. Mr. McKee talked about competing needs commissioners hoped to address in the Orange County budget over the next few years for Section 8 Housing, child care, and other emergent needs. 2. Adolescent Parenting Program Sharron Hinton informed the Board she wanted to provide an overview on the Adolescent Parenting Program as part of ongoing efforts to keep board members updated on agency programs. Suzanne Hitt is the Social Work Supervisor who provides oversight for the program. Ms. Hitt briefly described the program. Staff works with males or females who are pregnant or parenting. Social workers help participants delay a second pregnancy and finish school. Last year the program had 35 teens that met the state requirement and additional teens who fell outside the state requirements but still needed services. Social workers provide parenting education, life skills, educational assistance, mental health referrals, and other needed services. The program began in 1985 and has been running successfully for 30 years in Orange County. This is a grant year and there are some new requirements including memorandums of understanding with partner agencies within the community. Last year 18 teens graduated with some type of degree, and quite a few went on to post-secondary education. There is a scholarship available to graduating program participants that MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES October 20, 2014 3 can assist with costs of post-secondary education. Claire Millar asked whether there is enough funding state-wide to continue to support the program. Nancy Coston replied that the grant has been on the chopping block for a while because not all counties run a program. She added that the grant does not currently pay the entire cost of the program. Ms. Hitt noted that Orange County’s adolescent pregnancy rate is low so it was not a target county for the grant. Earl McKee asked about the agency involvement in situations where a family may have been lacking parenting skills. Denise Shaffer replied that the only time the agency can truly mandate parenting services is through court. She added that social workers can be very persuasive in convincing parents to voluntarily attend parenting classes. Ms. Garavaglia asked whether there was a letter or other action the Board could take to support the program. She added that it is one of the agency programs she is most proud of. Ms. Hitt responded that a letter of support would be great. Ms. Garavaglia asked for notes she could use to write a letter of support. 3. Veterans’ Services Sharron Hinton introduced Betsy Corbett, the Veterans’ Services Coordinator. Ms. Corbett informed the Board that the annual Veterans’ Breakfast will be held on November 11th at 8:00am at the Central Orange Senior Center. There will be a dinner and musical starting at 4:00pm at the Seymour Center in Chapel Hill in honor of Veteran’s Day as well. Ms. Corbett commented that her job is to help veterans access services such as Veterans Administration benefits or public assistance benefits. Claire Millar asked about the age range of clients. Ms. Corbett responded that ages range from 20- 90 and that most are older. Ms. Corbett also mentioned she is starting a care package drive to send care packages to military members currently deployed. Earl McKee asked about whether there have been access issues to local VA Hospitals. Ms. Corbett responded that she has seen a few instances of this and has had to run interference on some occasions. Pat Garavaglia asked if many clients had PTSD. Ms. Corbett responded that many of the clients do have PTSD, both recent and older veterans. Ms. Hinton noted that this is one of the unfunded programs offered in Orange County. She thanked Commissioner McKee and the Board for funding this position. The Board thanked Ms. Corbett for her work. 4. Medicaid/ACA/NC FAST Update Lindsey Shewmaker updated the Board on the status of NC FAST. The number of overdue Medicaid applications has been reduced to about 60 from several thousand earlier in the year. Staff are doing a good job overall keeping up with applications in NC FAST in all program areas. The agency is now focusing on working through Medicaid reviews. During the initial implementation MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES October 20, 2014 4 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Center for Medicaid Services provided a waiver to the state of North Carolina to allow all reviews in certain Family and Children’s Medicaid programs not completed by deadline to automatically roll eligibility forward each month. Staff made an active decision to focus on applications since those clients were not receiving any benefits until applications were processed. This means the county now has thousands of applications that have rolled forward and need to be worked. By the end of December there will be approximately 8,000 Medicaid reviews due. Normally there would be 800-1000 per month. Staff are requesting 6 temporary staff to help with these reviews as well as energy programs which fall during the same time frame. Open enrollment for ACA will also begin on November 15th and the agency is anticipating additional applications during the enrollment period. 5. Director’s Report The Social Services Institute is Wednesday-Friday of this week. Nancy Coston will be on vacation the week of October 27, 2014. VII. Announcements The next regular meeting is scheduled for Monday, November 17, 2014 at the Hillsborough Commons, 113 Mayo Street, Hillsborough, North Carolina at 4:00 pm. Claire Millar moved to adjourn the meeting at 5:47 pm. Tamara Dempsey Tanner seconded the motion. The motion was carried without dissent. Submitted by Nancy Coston Director Pat Garavaglia Chair