Botetourt Social Services reports to Supervisors

Social services in Botetourt County can be broken down by numbers, but ultimately, “Social Services is about people,” Susan Goad, Director of the Department of Social Services (DSS) in Botetourt, told the Board of Supervisors at its May meeting.

Part of the department’s initiative includes work assistance, including education and training. Jason Perdue, DSS Human Services Assistant, said job training has helped numerous people find employment. He cited three cases. One man, Steve, aged 64, had been out of work for some time caring for a terminally ill spouse. After she died, he needed help returning to work. He found a job and “now has confidence that will carry him forward,” Perdue said.

Holly, 25 and the mother of one child, found a good job in food management through DSS efforts, Perdue said.

And Brandi, also 25, took classes for 16 weeks to become a Certified Nursing Assistant. She is now employed at Carilion.

“Affordable child care and transportation are the biggest issues,” Perdue said.

DSS processed 1,045 Medicaid applications from November 2018 to April 2019, compared to 695 for the same period last year, Goad said. She attributed this to the state’s Medicaid Expansion, which began in January of this year.

The state provided the county with $75,462 in funding for the projected costs of Medicaid expansion. No local match was required for the first two years of the program, Goad said.

Her department hired one new worker to accommodate the increase in applications.

Goad also noted that DSS is serving more people. Her office is seeing an increase in walk-in client, need for adult services, and an increase in children placed in foster care.

The latter category means that more foster homes are needed, especially for teenagers. The costs of housing children in a residential setting (i.e., a juvenile home), is significantly higher and has less positive outcomes than when children are placed in foster care. In 2018, Child Protective Services made 382 referrals for children in need of assistance. There are currently 4 children in foster care.

On a related note, the county is in need of more childcare providers. Goad said regulations have stopped many places such as churches or other community caregivers from opening new daycare facilities. Lack of childcare makes it difficult for people to find employment if there is no one to care for their children.

Overall, DSS provided services to 4,524 county residents in 2018. That includes folks who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), or Medicaid benefits.

Goad provided the following information to the supervisors:

• 2,101 people, or 6 percent of county residents, live in poverty. Of those, 512 are children under the age of 18. The rate of people of all ages living in poverty in the county declined slightly.
• The rate of unemployment has dropped since 2010.
• The rate of non-marital births experienced an increase from 2013 to 2015, but declined in 2016.
• The teen birth rate has declined steadily since 1998.
• 96.5 percent of spending by DSS goes to benefits. Most of the department’s funding comes from state and federal sources. DSS’s total budget was $34.8 million in fiscal year 2018 and the locality contributed $734,757 to that total.
• Adult Protective Services made 186 referrals in 2018.
• One department member concentrates solely on fraud investigations. “We investigate and take fraud seriously,” Goad said.

–by Anita Firebaugh, Special To The Botetourt Bee; photo by Cathy Benson