The Graham County Department of Social Services Board met Tuesday night, marking Graham County DSS Director Amy Seay’s first meeting in her new role.
Seay was hired in September, following the resignation of former Graham County Department of Social Services Director Cris Weatherford. Seay began her new duties on Sept. 27.
During her update, Seay listed staffing as the biggest issue the department was facing currently, with some divisions having to work harder than normal for lack of workers.
She said the department’s Medicaid division was down to two people.
“We still need an adult worker, a long-term care worker,” Seay said. “I talked to someone today about an application they put in, and they were really clear with me that they would do family and children’s, but they wouldn’t touch long-term care Medicaid.”
She called Medicaid a “big deal” for the department.
“Medicaid patients keep coming in, they need to be served, they need to be certified,” Seay said. “This is it for the most part. They’re feeling it pretty heavy.”
However, she said even while being short staffed, the Medicaid program was going well.
Seay also said the department needed another permanency planning social worker and an investigator for its child welfare division.
“Right now our supervisor is hearing a caseload, so that’s not normally how you want to see things happen, but that’s where we are,” Seay said. “The other worker’s currently quarantined. We’re down to slim pickings here.”
However, Seay said that she was impressed with the number of foster homes in the county. There are currently 25 active foster cases in the county, including four young adults in the 18-21 program.
She said some neighboring counties had no foster homes.
“Things are moving along,” Seay said. “We’re looking at training. We’re looking at hiring. We’ve interviewed a few folks, had a few applications, but not near enough to fit all the vacancies, so that’s our biggest concern right now – filling the vacancies.”