Jackie Freeman Breast Cancer Fund will help fight disease

Bob Benedetti

A breast cancer grant request, adoption law, technical issues and a day care update highlighted the Edgecombe County Department of Social Services meeting on Monday.

Edgecombe County ranks 16th in the United States for incidents of women who have contracted breast cancer. Through a nine-page document containing statistical information and a summary, DSS Coordinator Michele Cherry expressed that "a gap in services" exists for families living with breast cancer.

Cherry explained that although services exist for breast cancer patients, the afflicted individuals do not live in isolation. They are part of a family unit also impacted by the disease "financially, emotionally and physically."

Cherry requested approval for a program entitled the Jackie Freeman Breast Cancer Fund. Pertaining only to Heritage and Nash General hospitals, it would allow families living with breast cancer to receive funding based on need instead of income. A a part-time social worker to work will a resource agent, effectively navigating breast cancer patient families through the DSS system.

Freeman is the former Edgecombe County tax collector who died of breast cancer in April.

The monetary source for the Freeman Memorial Fund will be "grant funding from the N.C. Triangle Affiliate of the Komen Foundation," Cherry said. The STEP (Screening, Treatment, Education and Post-diagnosis) grant ranges from $40,000-$75,000 annually, while the Kay grant (in honor of cancer combatant, N.C. State women’s basketball head coach Kay Yow) of up to $5,000 is also a prospect.

The board approved continuing the grant application.

DSS Assistant Director Clifton Hickman discussed a county "adoption confidential intermediary policy." Taking effect on Jan. 1, the policy would permit social services "to act as confidential intermediaries" between a person adopted through DSS to another person within proper jurisdiction. The scope of information would vary depending upon adoptee age.

Hickman and the board worked through legal verbiage and arrived at a required initial deposit of $250 for cost of research services. Any counseling would be billed at $31.95 per hour. Board member George Cooper asked whether already thin worker resources were able to accommodate an influx of clientele the additional service may subsequently create. Projected numbers were not provided and no anticipated legal concerns were cited.

During an annual county audit performed recently, the inability to locate a record and account for $2,000 in food stamps from a "number of things they look at," drew a review from Director Marva Scott of "all in all, it wasn’t a bad audit at all."

Scott saw the illusive record as "probably there but not able to call itself up" due to new Recollect software being used. Bill Gates may want to know about files with similar self-launching capabilities.

A possibility that $2,000 in food stamps shrinkage may have been fraud was quickly rebuffed by Fiscal Officer P.J. Quinn and tagged as a "computation error."

For those who'd consider retrieving hardcopy items for further research, Scott said, "You would have to wade through boxes" of paperwork in a back trailer for hard copy backups and they'd probably take "months, maybe."

Additional system snags include a failed scanning system and a lack of external information backup. Scott confirmed that "(County Manager) Lorenzo Carmen is aware we’re unable to get that system in place yet," and that "CPS has not yet been able to scan any of our records into the Recollect system."

Quinn elaborated on a larger system woe; "no backup for Recollect at this minute" and that neither DSS location (Rocky Mount or Tarboro) has off-site data storage. An attempt to utilize the county building’s main server as a data reserve was a lethargic affair. The try was terminated, still incomplete after 36 hours.

Quinn said a conversation between the county I.T. person and an Embarq representative estimated upgrades from the existing legacy hardware, including servers and backup would be about $80,000. Meanwhile, the potential outcome is stark.

"If either one goes down, it's all lost," Quinn admitted.

So much for redundancy.

Day care was another area of concern, according to Financial Officer Isham Spann. A growing number of children in need of daycare services combined with increasing vendor cost presents a fiscal demand that is mushrooming.

More than 3,000 children in Edgecombe County are eligible for subsidized childcare.

Right now, 1,012 are enrolled. Spann estimated that if both continue to maintain at their present enrollment and funding lags, social services could be looking at up to a $1.4 million deficit for this fiscal year.

An added inflationary expense pertains to increased day care costs. Since DSS pays agencies directly instead of parents, there is no checks-and-balances system on child centers. "Centers get kids in, (realize that) parents don’t want to change (facilities to more cost-effective ones) and they have a secured payment," said Cooper.

Spann recommended a few partial solutions: Complete a 100 percent audit of all childcare rolls to identify and clear out inactive persons, create a wait list for new signees, and if necessary, reduce the clients served.

"We'll complete these steps by the end of the month. If they don't help, we'll ask for additional state funding in January," said Spann.

At the agency's present budget, he estimates up to 557 children may need to have service terminated.

An IDA housing project that had 37 signees in the last eight years was also cut.

A January board meeting was canceled and board retreat is to be announced later.

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