Robbinsville – At the Graham County Department of Social Services Board Meeting held Tuesday, Dec. 8, Director Cris Weatherford expressed some concerns about new state-level performance measures.
The measures would fault small counties and large counties in North Carolina proportionally based on the amount of errors in their DSS cases.
He said some counties were choosing not to sign the agreement with the state, while others were choosing to sign, but to also bring their concerns to the state.
“The biggest concern is that it doesn’t bring into account anything that’s outside of the county’s control, such as the pandemic, maybe it’s hard to have face-to-face contact or something,” Weatherford said.
He added that there was an appeal process should the county find itself in such a situation, but that it would be drawn out and convoluted.
Weatherford expressed similar concerns regarding the system being based on percentages.
“For a small county like us, you could have a high number of assessments that month because of something that’s outside of our control,” Weatherford said. “We could mess up on one case just like Mecklenburg or anyone else could.”
Graham County is the third-least populated in the state at 8,441 residents, while Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) boasts the state’s second largest population, at 1,110,356 people.
“We’re concerned about this not being equitable for us,” Weatherford said.
He also expressed concerns about a potential 67-percent reduction in funding for child advocacy centers from the state of North Carolina, which could have a major negative effect on advocacy programs in the region and require them to do more with less.
“We’re trying to get some letters out to legislators,” Weatherford said.