Agenda - 03-19-1985 - Laserfiche WebLink

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(continued)410 . TREND: c ocy ••I e • Delinquency/undisciplined charges in juvenile court ' 6 Classified as WillIe Nr/Violent and Agressive 2 Many children require services related to several of the above special - needs. Resources are scarce for such multi-problem children. Securing and maintaining services for each child requires a great investment of • time. At present, Northern Orange Children's Protective Services Unit has a need for additional staff time to devote to responsibility for its foster children. An additional twenty hours per week would be made available to the Hillsborough Childrens Protective Service staff if the unit were relieved of responsibility for general assistance intake, whidh consumes 2k days of one social worker's time. The application level for assistance relating to energy emergencies has increased rapidly in the past four heating seasons; from 120 in 1981 to over 300 during the 1984 winter. These figures do not include aid for former Cone Mills employees whose need, with only a few exceptions, has - been temporary. A major federal initative, the Crisis Intervention Program (CIP), became our administrative responsibility during this period with funding increasing to a total of over $34,000 last year. No new eligibility staff has been added, therefore, the increase& applications load for CI? and County General Assistance (GA) have been absorbed by the Social Work staff. County GA funds have increased from $19,500 in FY 1981 to $36,000 in FY 1985 with a corresponding increase, in applications. Social Work staff have provided coverage on a rotating basis between Childrens Protective Service and the Adult Service Units. Although the work has been done effectively, application of policy is never as uniform when handled by many persons as an add-on to their job assignment. These workers are also "on call" for all emergency needs - transient, run-aways, child and adult abuse and neglect reports as well as financial emergencies other than energy related. In many cases the waiting period has been toe long for clients who walk in the agency due to these other duties. The ' addition of an Eligibility Specialist I will relieve these problems and provide some time for Medicaid eligibility work generated by the recent approval of a Long Term Care Screening Program (LTCS). Adding a staff person to -do intake in the Hillsborough will relieve Adult Service staff of approximately twenty hours on intake service per week. Much of this time is needed to meet the new mandate effective October 1, 1984 that all clients must be visited quarterly and their service plans must be updated to show the continuing need for services. This may impact more heavily on the adult service staff than any other service unit in the agency because we probably have more long-term cases.than any other unit. Short term services will be closed before many visits are required. Our Chore Services program is- the other service area which is demanding more staff time. As a result of preparation for the 1984 monitoring of Chore Services program and the report on monitoring, administrative time for establishing new contracts and continuing services has increased. Additionally, we have had difficulty in being able to resolve the number of applicantions that we are receiving for Chore as quickly as we would like. The unit has spent a lot of time in training activities in the past year and we strongly believe that this training is essential in imporving the quality of care provided to our clients. We would like to continue to expand the training for both our Chore providers and the operators and staff of rest homes and family care homes.