Members of the General Assembly requested the Legislative Audit Council (LAC) to conduct an audit of the Child Protective Services (CPS) program at the Department of Social Services (DSS). Our review focused on DSS’s compliance with applicable laws and policies. In addition we examined CPS staffing levels and the department’s process for investigating and disciplining employees. We also reviewed DSS’s internal quality control process for CPS. Our findings are summarized below.

• We found a number of areas where DSS was in violation of either state law or DSS policy. For example, DSS policy requires that in treatment cases the victim child and family be visited every 30 days. In our five sample counties, the percentage of cases where at least one visit was not made in accordance with policy ranged from 38% in Kershaw County to 83% in Marlboro County.
• DSS maintains the Central Registry of Abuse and Neglect, which is separate from SLED’s Sex Offender Registry, and is used by agencies and businesses throughout the state to determine if prospective or current employees have a record of abuse and/or neglect. We found that individuals have not always been entered into the registry as required by law. We reviewed 77 cases of sexual abuse in 5 counties and found that in 30 (39%) of the cases, DSS had not followed the process for entering individuals into the central registry.
• Individuals who are convicted in criminal court of certain offenses involving the sexual or physical abuse of a child are also required to be placed on the central registry. We reviewed a sample of convicted sex offenders in Bamberg and Lexington counties and found 20 cases where the judge had not included in the sentencing order the requirement that the person be placed on the central registry, as required by law.
• Based on caseload information for 2005, the Department of Social Services needed additional staff to bring South Carolina more in line with the national standard for the number of treatment cases handled by a treatment caseworker. For FY 06-07, the General Assembly funded 91 additional treatment workers.
• From FY 02-03 through FY 04-05, there were 42 disciplinary actions, including 8 terminations, against CPS employees statewide. While disciplinary action should not be taken for all violations, we found significant violations of law and policy where no action was taken.
• DSS has a quality control process involving both external and internal reviews of CPS operations. We identified several instances where individual counties had consistently underperformed on certain CPS performance measures. We also found that actions taken by DSS to improve performance in these areas did not result in significant improvement.