SCDSS “Signs Of Safety” Program Raises Concerns

RACIAL REMARK UPSETS AGENCY’S BLACK EMPLOYEES

By FITSNEWS || Sources at Nikki Haley‘s Department of Social Services (SCDSS) tell FITS they are concerned with a new child welfare program being implemented at the agency called “Signs of Safety.”

Developed in the 1990s in Western Australia, SCDSS began working with the organization that administers this program earlier this year.  In fact according to the organization’s website, one of its top executives “was in South Carolina in May 2014 working on Signs of Safety implementation with the South Carolina’s Department of Social Service.”

This included “planning workshops with executive leadership and partner agencies and then a one day workshop for 300 staff and partners to ‘kick off’ the Statewide implementation.”

In other words, the program was being ramped up less than one month before the resignation of former SCDSS director Lillian Koller.

Hmmmm …

Koller was forced out of her job for a number of reasons: Dead kids, cooked books, botched boondoggles, manipulated data and questionable consultant payments.

Despite Koller’s departure, “Signs of Safety” is still being implemented.  In fact SCDSS held a major training session for the program earlier this week – one that has caused a storm of controversy within the agency.

Child care advocates tell FITS “Signs of Safety” is a clinical tool that is designed to assist caseworkers.

“Basically it’s an assessment out of Australia that asks families: What are we worried about, what’s working well, what needs to happen, et cetera (in order to) to determine an action plan for the family,” one advocate explained.

According to multiple sources familiar with the training session for the program, though, an administrator made a comment regarding its implementation that offended the agency’s black caseworkers.

“They said the program was just for blacks,” one source told us. “That it was just black families that needed it.”

Needless to say, the remark did not go over well.

“What a slap in the face to all the African Americans employed with (the) South Carolina Department of Social Services,” another added in a written message. “We don’t just serve blacks; we serve whites, Hispanic, Indian, Latinos and others.”

“I am outraged that this program was not screened more before being forced upon SCDSS as an agency,” the employee added. “This agency is a mess and it keeps getting worse.”

Another source at the agency who did not attend the “Signs of Safety” training session told FITS that racist views on the part of the agency’s upper management was a “pervasive problem” at SCDSS.

Wow … racial dram.  Just what SCDSS did not need as its interim director, Amber Gillum, struggles to respond to its ongoing crisis.

FITS first began exposing problems at SCDSS more than two years ago (while the rest of the state’s media was sound asleep).  These reports that have since mushroomed into a full-fledged debacle for Haley – one that keeps getting worse as we glean more insider information from the agency.

Oh, and as the public learns more about the disaster thanks to the efforts of a handful of state lawmakers led by S.C. Sen. Katrina Shealy and Jenny Horne.