County Social

A Woodlawn-area native who spent a quarter-century working in social and human services in Maryland before moving to Florida in 1993 has been tapped to lead Baltimore County's Department of Social Services. If his appointment is approved by the County Council this month, Timothy W. Griffith, 58, said he wants to immediately begin work overseeing the department, which has 644 employees and a $36 million operating budget. He would take over for Marci Van De Mark, the agency's interim director since Barbara Gradet left last summer.

Catherine R. Kane, a Harford County government administrator who earlier had worked for the Baltimore County Department of Social Services, died Feb. 12 from colon cancer at her Bel Air home. She was 65. "She really was an important part of Social Services when I was director," said Camille B. Wheeler, who had been director of Baltimore County Social Services for 19 years before retiring in 1998. "She was hard-working and understood everything about the mission of the department.

Samuel W. Marshall has successfully navigated Maryland's bureaucratic waters for four decades, but as he retired this week as Howard County's social services director, he worried about what he is leaving behind. After three years of state job freezes, budget cuts and the sudden firing of an assistant director last month, Marshall fears that the local autonomy he is used to is changing, and not for the better. "I think the Republicans are going to cut social services to the bare bones.

Chances are that if you drank a cup of coffee recently at the Bean Hollow Cafe in Ellicott City you sipped that steaming brew from a mug made by Greenbridge Pottery in Dayton. It feels good to support a local business or two. What feels even better is knowing that every time a mug or a plate or a yarn bowl is purchased directly from Greenbridge Pottery, a portion of the sale helps others in our community and around the world. It's called social enterprise. “We were making pottery to make ourselves and our customers happy by trying to make something useful and beautiful.

Accepting needed cash but then not using it could be considered rude, but that is what Maryland officials did with $350,000 Howard County provided to help staff the state-run social services office in Columbia. The county government contributes more than $400,000 annually to help the local Social Services office hire clerks and support staff, according to county budget officials. But because of the combined effects of high turnover and a partial state hiring freeze in place since 2001, a portion of the local aid remains unused while the county's poor wait for service.

With four Baltimore-area jurisdictions seeking new social service directors, state and Howard County leaders yesterday agreed to a committee approach that state Human Resources Secretary Christopher J. McCabe said he hopes will become a statewide model. A joint state-county committee will review candidates and suggest two or three finalists, McCabe said - similar to a Baltimore County group created last week for the same purpose. New directors also are being sought in Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County.

The family of a mentally retarded Columbia man claims that state and county social services officials have violated the ruling of an administrative judge, state law and the man's constitutional rights by failing to place him in a supervised residential home.In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in Howard County Circuit Court, Mary and Vincent Finan of the 9200 block of Bellfall Court, allege that their son, Dennis J. Finan, 28, has deteriorated significantly since the Howard County Department of Social Services decided that he could not return to a group home in Columbia where he was formerly a resident.

When abused children die, they never get a chance to tell their stories. We get information from the autopsy and police reports. We hear from neighbors and relatives. But we don't know what their last hours were like. We don't know what went on inside their heads.What were Rita Fisher's last thoughts before she died on June 25? Was she frightened or was she relieved to leave behind such a wretched existence?The picture of her death that emerges from court records and law enforcement officials is truly horrible.

State welfare officials have refused to allow Howard County's social services office to use private and local government funds to fill vacant jobs because it might create a perception that state government is growing, agency leaders said. Howard's welfare officials said that since Maryland's job freeze started in October 2001, the Ehrlich administration has refused permission to hire five replacement workers, who would not have been paid with state money. That office has suffered a staff loss of about 30 percent, worsening conditions in an already overburdened office.

State Secretary of Human Resources Christopher J. McCabe was accused this week of creating a climate of fear among social workers because of his abrupt firing of a Howard social services official in June shortly after she aired complaints to the local social services board. County social services board member Gerald M. Richman, an attorney, told McCabe during a board meeting in Columbia late Monday that the firing of assistant county social services director Kathi Heslin - just weeks after she told board members that staff shortages were creating serious problems and that state officials refused to fill vacant state jobs that Howard County would pay for - could mean staff would no longer give the board unpleasant news.

Samantha Gorsuch's 5-year-old boy has talked nonstop about the talking dump truck he expects from Santa. But the single mother of two, who works two jobs, could not afford to buy the $60 toy on her own. She found it, with batteries included, at the Baltimore County Department of Social Services' annual toy giveaway. "Look, it eats cars," said Gorsuch, who had waited in line for nearly an hour in bitter cold Monday, before the store opened at an Essex church. "It's just what my son wanted and it will mean a better Christmas for him. " Like nearly 1,000 income-eligible families in the county with a total of 3,000 children, Gorsuch was mailed an invitation to shop at the store.

B eth K. Currie, a popular Lansdowne High School social studies teacher who believed it was important to get students out of the confines of the classroom and textbooks, died of pneumonia Tuesday at St. Agnes Hospital. She was 78. Beth Kopelke, whose parents were grocers, was born in Aurora, Ill., and spent her early years in the family grocery store. When the business failed during the Depression, the family moved to Florida, where members found jobs on a dairy farm, and then to Baltimore in the 1940s, when her father went to work for the Bettar Ice Cream Co. as a master ice cream maker.

Accepting needed cash but then not using it could be considered rude, but that is what Maryland officials did with $350,000 Howard County provided to help staff the state-run social services office in Columbia. The county government contributes more than $400,000 annually to help the local Social Services office hire clerks and support staff, according to county budget officials. But because of the combined effects of high turnover and a partial state hiring freeze in place since 2001, a portion of the local aid remains unused while the county's poor wait for service.

The celebration last week of an expanded human services operation in North Laurel is the kind of ribbon-cutting event that politicians love, and a bunch of them -- all Democrats -- showed up at the Whiskey Bottom Shopping Center to mark the start of what County Executive Ken Ulman called "a major step forward" in bringing more services to the southeastern corner of the county. "There can often be two counties in Howard County," Ulman said at the event Wednesday morning.

The Baltimore County Department of Social Services said yesterday it will review notification procedures after a 9-year-old boy taken into the agency's custody was reported missing to police, resulting in a frantic, 24-hour search before the mix-up was resolved Saturday night. Gabriel Hudgins, a third-grader at Middlesex Elementary School, was picked up Friday afternoon at his Essex school by a social worker and placed in a foster home pursuant to a court order, said spokeswoman Maureen Robinson.

Baltimore County authorities said yesterday that they can find no records of any allegations being raised in 1997 against a private school teacher now charged with sexually abusing a student decades ago. County police and social services officials said a records search produced no evidence that they had received a report in 1997 from the Park School of allegations against the teacher, who went on to teach in Michigan before his arrest last month....

"I worked all my life. Why can't I get these food stamps now?" new welfare applicants demand of counselors in Baltimore County's social service offices. The last thing they want to hear about is the long wait to process applications.As the recession drags formerly middle-class families into poverty, it is the level of anger expressed by this crop of "new poor" that most surprises social service workers. The poor, at least, are wise in the ways of welfare. Apply. Wait. Get help. Get off the list.

With four Baltimore-area jurisdictions seeking new social service directors, state and Howard County leaders yesterday agreed to a committee approach that state Human Resources Secretary Christopher J. McCabe said he hopes will become a statewide model. A joint state-county committee will review candidates and suggest two or three finalists, McCabe said - similar to a Baltimore County group created last week for the same purpose. New directors also are being sought in Baltimore City and Anne Arundel County.

County social services officials see the infusion of $250,000 in anti-poverty assistance into next year's budget as a badly needed boost for agencies hard-pressed to keep up with rising rent and utility costs in one of the nation's wealthiest jurisdictions. The money -- expected to be approved today when the County Council votes on a last-minute amendment to County Executive James N. Robey's fiscal 2007 budget -- is intended to create a Family Stabilization Fund to help stave off more homelessness and help seniors on fixed incomes.

With thousands of defense-related jobs coming to Maryland in the next few years, local social services officials see a golden opportunity for poor people to get better jobs, especially in high-priced suburbs in Howard, Anne Arundel and Harford counties near the targeted bases. The Aberdeen Proving Ground area is expected to get 27,000 new jobs in the next decade, said Rick Walker, Harford County's assistant director of social services. Officials in Howard and Anne Arundel counties expect the first 5,300 jobs coming directly to Fort Meade will be followed in five or six years by two or three times more private defense and support jobs.