The Georgia Division of Family and Children Services is expected to close 53 offices, including five in Northeast Georgia, to meet the budget cuts expected to be implemented in next year's state budget.
The division will also cut services, give furlough days to employees and eliminate or suspend the child abuse registry to meet the 14 percent budget cut requested by Gov. Brian Kemp, director Tom Rawlings said in an email to state lawmakers.
The offices on the list for possible closure are in Dawson, Fannin, Lumpkin, Stephens and Towns counties.
“We plan to cut our physical plant by 14 percent as well, which would mean closing some county offices and moving to a ‘hub and spoke’ system in which one office serves several counties but in which we also negotiate free or shared spaces in those other counties,” Rawlings wrote.
He also said the division would increase the use of video and telephone visits in what he called a new "virtual lobby" system.
"Our child welfare workers have also expressed a newfound admiration for teleworking and meeting virtually, as it allows them less time driving to meetings or work and allows them to focus on what they enjoy," Rawlings wrote.
The cuts to the DFCS budget total $93.2 million dollars. The Georgia General Assembly returns to session on Monday to resume its session delayed by the coronavirus pandemic. Passing a budget for the new fiscal year, which begins July 1, will be a top priority.
Stan Helton, the chairman of the Fannin County Commission, told Georgia Public Broadcasting that closing his county's DFCS office would hurt his community. The Fannin County office serves four towns, McCaysville, Mineral Bluff, Blue Ridge and Morganton, all with fewer than 1,500 residents.
“It would have a very dire impact because Fannin County is kind of a dichotomy — if that’s the proper term — where we have a lot of more affluent retired people that have moved here, yet there are a lot of folks that are local [and] that have been here [and] this is their home and they struggle economically,” he said.
Among the services provided by DFCS are overseeing the SNAP benefits, Medicaid benefits and Temporary Assistance to Needy Families benefits, which provides cash assistance to families to pay for things like childcare. All are expected to see large reductions.
Also on the chopping block is the state's child abuse registry. Rawlings said the registry costs more than $1 million per year to operate. It is designed to maintain a registry of substantiated abuse and neglect cases that could be easily share with other jurisdictions and state and serve as a database for all cases.
If the cuts go through, employees would see a minimum of 24 furlough days, or two per month for the budget year. The highest paid employees could expect additional furloughs.
“Furloughs allow us to maintain the investment we have made in creating a well-trained workforce full of folks we already know we can rely on,” Rawlings wrote.
Court Appointed Special Advocates will see significant reductions in their state funding, and group homes would be cut about 5 percent.
