From monitoring suspected cases of child abuse and neglect to accounting for children in foster care, to taking on additional emergency responsibilities and maintaining essential services amid power and communications outages, county Department of Social Services offices have faced with major disruption due to Tropical Storm Helene in the northwest. Caroline.

Road damage created ongoing challenges for mandatory home visits for child protective services and foster care supervision, as well as inspections of long-term care facilities for adults.

“Many DSS county offices lost power, internet and cell service and were affected by numerous road closures due to flooding, which affected the ability to initially contact adoptive parents and conduct child support services,” the carrier NC Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Kelly Haight said Connor Carolina Public Press.

“NCDHHS-Division of Social Services was in contact with all 27 counties as soon as possible after the storm to help assess needs and determine the capacity of affected counties to provide child welfare services. All 27 counties were able to operate child protection services, some by communicating through local law enforcement or the Emergency Operations Center, until their communications network was operational.”

Of the roughly 12,000 children in foster care in North Carolina, a quarter of them were in the custody of the 27 counties in the disaster area when Helene battered the state in late September.

As of Friday, all 3,096 children in the custody of counties in the disaster area are considered safe, Connor said in an email. Another 261 children in the custody of counties outside the disaster declaration were living in the disaster area when Helene hit and were also accounted for.

Now comes the hard work of making sure those children and others who rely on local DSS agencies receive adequate services amid a long recovery process in western North Carolina. Executive orders and a hurricane relief package have provided some support, but DSS’s day-to-day responsibilities continue to be challenged by the utter devastation of communications and transportation infrastructure.

The local DSS is working to get back on track

In addition to child protective services and child welfare, local DSS agencies also operate programs involving Medicaid, food and housing assistance, child care subsidies, services for seniors and adults with disabilities, and job search assistance. During times of emergency, the local DSS is also tasked with coordinating the opening of emergency shelters and operating the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (D-SNAP).

Rutherford County DSS Director Dee Hunt told CPP she had to get used to wearing many hats in the immediate aftermath of the storm. In addition to figuring out how to carry out their normal duties, members of Hunt’s team supervised Rutherford’s emergency shelter for five days before the Red Cross took over.

“We’ve had employees lose power, lose feed, down trees so they can’t get out,” Hunt said. “So they come to work, then they have to work at the shelter and also the D-SNAP program, and then they go home and try to continue to get the debris out of their yards. So it was emotionally difficult for all of us.”

Hunt told CPP that of the children living in any of Rutherford County’s 24 foster homes, two were temporarily displaced and had to stay in hotels after the storm. Hunt added that there have been fewer problems with their care homes for adults. Some lost power but were able to run on generators until it was restored.

Haywood County DSS told CPP they are back to normal operations with the support of the sheriff’s office. Many of Avery County’s government buildings in Newland sustained significant flood damage, and its DSS office is temporarily located in the lower level of the public library.

According to state numbers from DHHS, 67 children were initially reported as displaced by the storm and 13 children in foster care remain in temporary housing with their foster care providers as of Friday, November 8. There are 224 children placed in 29 licensed groups. homes in the disaster area and all accounted for and safe.

In addition, DHHS told CPP that there are 2,418 adult wards living in the affected counties, all of whom have been accounted for and are safe. There are 236 licensed assisted living facilities – 127 adult care homes and 109 family care homes – located in disaster area counties.

Nineteen of those facilities (8 adult care homes and 11 family care homes) have evacuated their residents, according to the Division of Health Service Regulation-Licensing Section of Adult Care of DHHS. Half were able to return to their original facilities, while residents from the other assisted living facilities were admitted to new facilities.

The state is providing relief, but roads are still a challenge

On October 24, the North Carolina General Assembly passed a $600 million hurricane relief batch which directed $71.4 million to DHHS. A portion of this money was specifically allocated to county DSS offices to provide rental assistance to individuals. Eligible households will receive a one-time payment equal to the fair market rent of a two-bedroom unit.

In addition, the NC General Assembly allocated $1.4 million to county departments of social services to support vulnerable adults affected by Hurricane Helene and another $4 million to assist children and families affected by the disaster.

Prior to that, Gov. Roy Cooper issued a executive order on Oct. 17, which waived regulatory and licensing requirements for foster care in disaster areas until the end of the year. That order will allow temporary living arrangements for foster families without imposing licensing regulations until Jan. 1, and will allow oversight agencies to conduct virtual visits, rather than home visits, as needed, until the end of November.

Virtual visits are still required for some hard-to-reach homes in the North Carolina mountains, but the executive order does not include social workers in child protective services cases. As of Monday, the North Carolina Department of Transportation reports 293 road closures as a result of Helene.

That challenge has been acutely felt in McDowell County, where DSS Director Bobbie Sigmon said county social workers have struggled to reach out to people who need services.

These included children and adults in the county’s custody, as well as families involved in cases of abuse, neglect or addiction. The latter requires in-person visits from a social worker to develop a safety plan for the child, which usually involves ongoing monitoring.

Sigmon said some families whose driveways were washed out by the storm have opened up entirely new paths to their properties.

“A lot of these families have made new routes to their homes that weren’t there before, so we have that,” Sigmon said. “Other families may not stay at home day in and day out. Maybe they’re staying with friends or relatives or different things, so we’re seeing them in a different house than they would normally stay in.”

Sometimes social workers from neighboring counties have had to check on McDowell residents when their homes are not accessible, such as an adult who lost his home to a landslide during the storm and is staying temporarily in a hotel in Little Switzerland. .

After Sigmon’s staff worked around the clock to reach out to all the children and adults in the county’s care or supervision, she said, they were able to secure housing for everyone who was displaced and needed help to find a place to stay.

“I’m very proud of my staff for going with the flow on this, because no one expected a hurricane of this magnitude to hit the mountains of North Carolina.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.