GOP senator: Streamline DSS, transfer its duties

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Sen. Katrina Shealy says the Department of Social Services needs to be transformed into an agency that focuses entirely on protecting abused and neglected South Carolinians.

The Lexington Republican says the agency is failing some of South Carolina’s most vulnerable children and adults. She plans to introduce a bill Wednesday that would shrink the duties of DSS and rename it the Department of Family Protective Services by July 2016.

All of DSS’s other responsibilities would shift to the state’s Medicaid agency. That includes food stamps and welfare. Shealy says that would get rid of duplication between DSS and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Shealy sits on a bi-partisan Senate committee that’s been studying problems at DSS for the past year.