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MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF SOCIAL SERVICES April 20,2026 DSS is providing financial support for the mammogram tests. Various town and county departments are participating as well as various community partners. Lastly, the annual foster parent appreciation event will be held on Friday May 29 from 5:30p-8p at the Chapel Hill Community Center. We would welcome board members to attend if able. 2. PATH NC Check-In — Crystal Wiese Crystal Wiese updated the Board on PATH NC. Next Monday, April 27th, is the go live date for the new child welfare technology solution. Orange County is going in for all parts of child welfare, from intake through adoption. Training is occurring on system functionality, policy changes/updates, and data cleanup. All intakes and completed assessments have converted and the remaining information will be converted after 5pm on Friday. PATH NC staff will be onsite on Monday to provide support as needed for go live. Assessment staff will continue to work in both systems temporarily. We have been invited to participate in a state-county group to talk through system defects and suggested enhancements; enhancements will be dependent on the State passing a budget. Staff have been working hard on this alongside their regular jobs and are ready to finally get into the system. 3. Budget and Staffing Update Lindsey Shewmaker updated the Board on the current status of the budget. The DSS Board approved the FY27 budget request back in February and the County Manager is now working on putting together his recommended budget to present on May 6th to the County Commissioners. After his presentation there will be a number of BOCC work sessions until final adoption in mid-to- late June. Staff met with the County Manager in March on the proposed budget and thought the meeting went well. Last week staff attended a second budget meeting where additional cuts were explained but the Budget Director. These primarily affect personnel —two positions have been identified to eliminate and the salary step plan for DSS is being paused for a year. We were asked to provide information to the HR Director earlier in the year when the step plan came up for discussion. Staff looked at positions primarily in child welfare, adult Medicaid, and general public assistance. Our step plan is attractive to potential new employees, particularly when we are competing with Durham and Wake counties who are offering hiring bonuses. While the step plan takes away salary negotiations during the offer process, it is attractive for retention. Statewide there is a hiring crisis for these positions and the cost of not being able to compete to hire and retain staff has the potential for significant impacts. Currently, the County Manager is proposing to pause the step plan for next fiscal year. Additionally, the County Manager froze all positions and at one time we had 26 vacancies. We have made some progress and are down to 20 vacancies. After the freeze was implemented, we had asked permission to unfreeze mandated positions and that left 6 frozen. Two of these positions will be reclassified to satisfy the two new Medicaid positions we requested. One is the IT position that has been vacant since the beginning of the year and there has been some confusion about the number of IT positions we had at DSS. For comparison, the Sheriff and Emergency Services each have two, so we will now be the only large department without two IT staff. We have spoken with the county's Chief Information Officer about tasks that County IT will need to take on with the loss of this position. County IT is already struggling with too few staff and will now be taking on increased workload. The number of open help desk tickets is currently 50, all of which have really come in the last few months. When both IT positions are filled, we can fix most issues internally without having to forward to county IT. 2