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2 <br /> BOARD OF ORANGE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS <br /> RESOLUTION OPPOSING THE MANDATORY REGIONALIZATION <br /> OF SOCIAL SERVICES DEPARTMENTS <br /> WHEREAS, Orange County is committed to protecting children from maltreatment and to <br /> working with the community to improve child wellbeing and strengthen families; and <br /> WHEREAS, Orange County commits significant local funds to support the programs and <br /> services to meet these needs by administering both mandated and County initiatives that are <br /> designed with the particular needs of the local community in mind; and <br /> WHEREAS, SB594/HB608, now provisions in the Senate budget bill, would require mandatory <br /> regionalization of all social services programs and require counties to continue to finance these <br /> services; and <br /> WHEREAS, most authority for services would be vested in regional authorities with little county <br /> input or control; and <br /> WHEREAS, Orange County continues to provide quality services to families and believes that <br /> mandatory regionalization will negatively impact the quality of services available to our families; <br /> and <br /> WHEREAS, local departments, in addition to their child welfare duties, provide a wide arrange <br /> of services to their communities, including Medicaid, Food and Nutrition, employment services, <br /> child care support, services to elderly and disabled adults, crisis assistance and disaster <br /> assistance; and <br /> WHEREAS, Orange County's data shows over the course of the last five years improved <br /> outcomes for children including the percentage of children achieving placement stability within <br /> the first year, the percentage of children remaining in their initial placement, and reduced court <br /> involvement due to effective social work intervention; and <br /> WHEREAS, the State of North Carolina already has better performance than the national <br /> average on six of seven national performance measures; and <br /> WHEREAS, there is no evidence that regionalization will provide improvements in the <br /> statewide child welfare system; there seems to be no national evidence of any correlation <br /> between performance and structure of services; and <br /> WHEREAS, fiscal and legal issues related to regionalization will be extremely complex, and will <br /> take considerable time to study, and may lead to unintended negative consequences; and <br /> WHEREAS, county employees are already raising questions about the impact of this bill on <br /> their ongoing work at social services potentially causing the system to lose well-trained social <br /> workers who choose to seek more stable employment; and <br /> WHEREAS, counties are working aggressively on program improvement plans and continuous <br /> improvement initiatives to improve practice and to have that reflected in the next federal child <br /> welfare review; disrupting services with studies or with staff concerns about their employment <br />