South Carolina Legislature

HOUSE LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE


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Agency Information

 

Agency Goals & Strategic Plan

At the highest level, an agency's goals logically and naturally derive from the agency's mission statement. Goals state what the agency wants to accomplish over the next two or three years. They provide the basis for decisions about the nature, scope, and relative priorities of all programs and activities. Agency actions should facilitate the attainment of one or more goals.

Below are links, by year, to Excel documents that include details about the agency goals, objectives in the agency's strategic plan, and the programs that help the agency accomplish its strategic plan. Also included is an overview of the agency's strategic plan at the time the Subcommittee was meeting with the agency. This information was provided by the agency in its Annual Restructuring Report, Program Evaluation, Request for Information, or Accountability Report.

In the Strategic Plan Details Excel document, details of the goals are on one tab and details for each objective are on separate individual tabs. The Objective tabs include the person responsible for ensuring the agency accomplishes the objective; amount spent to accomplish it; performance measures; potential negative impact to the public if the agency does not accomplish it; any external or internal reviews or audits which relate to it; and the entities with whom the agency is currently working in order to accomplish the objective.

The Agency Programs and Related Objectives Excel document includes a list of the agency's programs, a description of the program, the legal standard requiring the program and the objective in the strategic plan that the program helps to accomplish.

Click on any of the links below to go to the applicable part of this webpage:

Strategic Plan Overview

Goal 1 - Promote the safety and well-being of children and vulnerable adults; promote permanency for children.

  • Public Benefit/Intended Outcome: The intended outcome of this goal is the increased promotion of the safety, permanency, and well-being of children and vulnerable adults. This includes making quality intake decisions, improving the timeliness of initiating investigations, improving the quality and consistency of ongoing assessments of safety and risk, reducing repeat maltreatment, developing a Case Practice Model, improving the permanency and stability of children and vulnerable adults in their living situations, ensuring the educational, physical and mental health needs of children and vulnerable adults are addressed, providing services and supports to help youth in foster care successfully transition to living independently, improving the continuity of family connections, educating families and training providers to help ensure children receive safe and quality child care, improving the assessment, referral and follow-up of domestic violence services, and more.
  • Responsible Person Name: Joan Meacham, Chief of Staff, and the Deputy and Division Directors (Responsible for less than 1 year)

  • Objective A1 - Assess and improve the quality of Abuse and Neglect Report Intake decisions.
  • Objective A2 - Improve the timeliness of initiating investigations.
  • Objective A3 - Improve the quality and consistency of ongoing assessments of safety and risk to children and vulnerable adults.
  • Objective A4 - Reduce repeat maltreatment for children and vulnerable adults.
  • Objective A5 - Develop a Case Practice Model that clearly articulates Best Practice and the core values that inform how DSS interacts with children, families and vulnerable adults to increase safety and well-being.
  • Objective A6 - Improve the permanency and stability of children and vulnerable adults in their living situations by providing supports to help preserve the family unit.
  • Objective A7 - Ensure the educational, physical and mental health needs of children and vulnerable adults are addressed.
  • Objective A8 - Provide services and supports to help youth in foster care successfully transition to living independently.
  • Objective A9 - Improve the continuity of family connections and work towards equitable access to services by ensuring services are aligned with the needs of children and connected to their neighborhood, community, faith, extended family, tribe, school and friends.
  • Objective A10 - Educate families and train providers to help ensure children receive safe and quality child care.
  • Objective A11 - Improve assessment, referral and follow-up of domestic violence services.

    • Goal 2 - Help preserve the family unit by enhancing the capacity of individuals and families to provide for their own needs.

  • Public Benefit/Intended Outcome: The intended outcome of this goal is that family units will be preserved by enhancing the capacity of individuals and families to provide for their own needs. This includes increasing the recruitment, retention, and capacity of foster and adoptive parents, helping prepare and transition clients to employment and self-sufficiency, ensuring appropriate resources are distributed with integrity and in a timely, accurate, and equitable manner, providing assistance to custodial parents who need help obtaining child support payments, completing the transformation of the Child Support Program, and more.
  • Responsible Person Name: Joan Meacham, Chief of Staff, and the Deputy and Division Directors (Responsible for less than 1 year)

  • Objective B1 - Increase recruitment, retention, and capacity of foster and adoptive parents.
  • Objective B2 - Help prepare and transition clients to employment and self-sufficiency.
  • Objective B3 - Ensure appropriate resources are distributed with integrity and in a timely, accurate, and equitable manner.
  • Objective B4 - Provide assistance to custodial parents who need help obtaining child support payments.
  • Objective B5 - Complete the transformation of the Child Support Program.

    • Goal 3 - Ensure DSS workforce is supported in their efforts to provide high-quality service that is responsible and engaged.

  • Public Benefit/Intended Outcome: The intended outcome of this goal is that the workforce at DSS is supported in their efforts to provide high-quality service that is responsible and engaged. This includes recruiting and retaining a sufficient workforce of qualified and diverse individuals, improving the performance and quality of service through continuous professional development, coaching, training, and cross training, fostering a culture of customer service, both internally and externally, managing caseloads by establishing and implementing caseload standards, establishing and maintaining a Continuous Quality Improvement System and enhancing the capacity of DSS staff to analyze and use data to inform and improve decision-making, strengthening and supporting the well-being of the DSS workforce, including assistance to address secondary trauma experienced by staff, developing uniform processes for updating and disseminating policy updates, including statutory changes, enduring all contracts have a defined purpose and include measurable outcomes and deliverables, protecting the assets of DSS, ensuring accountability over funds, and helping prevent and defect fraud waste, and abuse, and more.
  • Responsible Employee: Joan Meacham, Chief of Staff, and the Deputy and Division Directors (Responsible for less than one year)

  • Objective C1 - Recruit and retain sufficient workforce of qualified and diverse individuals.
  • Objective C2 - Improve performance and quality of service through continuous professional development, coaching, training, and cross training.
  • Objective C3 - Foster a culture of customer service, both internally and externally.
  • Objective C4 - Manage caseloads by establishing and implementing caseload standards.
  • Objective C5 - Establish and maintain a Continuous Quality Improvement System and enhance the capacity of DSS staff to analyze and use data to inform and improve decision-making.
  • Objective C6 - Strengthen and support the well-being of the DSS workforce, including assistance to address secondary trauma experienced by staff.
  • Objective C7 - Develop uniform process for updating and disseminating policy updates, including statutory changes.
  • Objective C8 - Ensure all contracts have a defined purpose and include measurable outcomes and deliverables.
  • Objective C9 - Protect the assets of DSS, ensure accountability over funds, and help prevent and detect fraud, waste, and abuse.

    • Goal 4 - Foster trust, collaboration and communication with stakeholders to improve outcomes for children, families and vulnerable adults.

  • Public Benefit/Intended Outcome: The intended outcome of this goal is to foster trust, collaboration and communication with stakeholders to improve outcomes for children, families and vulnerable adults. This includes strengthening partner relationships and increasing recognition that safety and well-being of children and vulnerable adults is the responsibility of the entire community, increasing awareness of DSS mission, programs, services, and strategic priorities, strengthening alignment among DSS and other governmental agencies to provide more effective and efficient services to clients, fostering a culture of transparency, providing timely, consistent, accurate and culturally responsive communication, improving responsiveness to public feedback, providing two-way communication channels to keep employees and partners informed while soliciting on-going input, and more.
  • Responsible Employee: Joan Meacham, Chief of Staff, and the Deputy and Division Directors (Responsible for less than 1 year)

  • Objective D1 - Strengthen partner relationships and increase recognition that safety and well-being of children and vulnerable adults is the responsibility of the entire community.
  • Objective D2 - Increase awareness of DSS mission, programs, services and strategic priorities.
  • Objective D3 - Strengthen alignment among DSS and other governmental agencies to provide more effective and efficient services to clients.
  • Objective D4 - Foster a culture of transparency.
  • Objective D5 - Provide timely, consistent, accurate and culturally responsive communication.
  • Objective D6 - Improve responsiveness to public feedback.
  • Objective D7 - Provide two-way communication channels to keep employees and external stakeholders informed while soliciting on-going input.

    • Strategic Plan Documents & Previous Strategic Plans

    Responsible Employee Explained

    The Responsible Employee for an agency Goal may have different teams of employees to help accomplish the goal. The Responsible Employee is the person who, either alone or in conjunction with a team and appropriate approval, determines the strategy and objectives necessary to accomplish the goal.

    The Responsible Employee for an agency Objective may have employees or teams of employees to help accomplish the objective. If it is a small agency, it may be the same person responsible for the overarching goal. The same person is not required to be responsible for all the objectives. The Responsible Employee has some level of decision making power as this person, in conjunction with the team and appropriate approval, sets the performance measure targets and determines the plan for how to accomplish the objective.


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