The NACo Achievement Awards program, now in its 38th year, gives national recognition to significant and innovative programs that improve county organization, management and service delivery. Catawba County has won 187 awards over the history of the NACo program and has been honored during each of the program's 38 years.

"NACo awards demonstrate Catawba County's continuing effort to find innovative and creative ways to deliver the very best services to our citizens," said Kitty Barnes, Chair of the Board of Commissioners. "My fellow commissioners and I are very proud of this national recognition."

Catawba County Social Services’ Child Protective Services staff described itself as “flabbergasted” when they received new State documentation requirements in 2008. The new guidelines included a fifteen page booklet that required staff to manually fill in data blanks and narrative.

“Child Protective Services staff was given only two months to incorporate these requirements into our existing processes,” said Cyndy Benson, Child Protective Services Program Manager. “We faced a real possibility that our staff would be spending upwards of 40 additional minutes with each of the 2000+ cases we assess each year, just to meet this new mandate. We all agreed this was not an acceptable addition to the already heavy workloads our staff meets every day.”

Child Protective Services staff assembled the appropriate programming personnel and discussed ways to address the issue. They decided they could not adapt the division’s existing system due to the magnitude of changes being required by the State.

“Our team created a master application document that could be connected to future development efforts,” Benson said. “The team mapped out the specifications and needs, designed a system, and created a master application that consolidated the State’s new documentation requirements and five other existing applications the agency had been using. The team considered all aspects of service provision, from program management and supervision to data analysis to data entry.”

The easy solution would have been to simply require staff to meet the new State mandates, but the team understood the hardships this was likely to create,” Benson concluded. “The team’s work saved over 1600 additional hours of staff time, provided an opportunity to consolidate several applications into one document with a more seamless look, and created a connection to Social Services’ main child welfare applications, allowing for a more cohesive connection for analysis and report. The real credit goes to our IT Project Leader, Diane Linder and our Business Manager, Michele Francois. We just told them what we needed and they created it and it is a life saver. I’m really proud of them.”

The Report Outcome and Services Team also won a 2008 Catawba County Team Award for its efforts.

Team members include: Diane Linder, IT Project Leader; Michele Francois, Business Manager II; Cyndy Benson, Child Protective Services Program Manager; Katie Turk, Child Protective Services Supervisor; Pam Brooks, Child Protective Services Supervisor; Dianne Driver, Administrative Assistant I; Jason Hughes, Protective Services Social Worker; and Christina Triplett, Protective Services Social Worker, all with Catawba County Social Services.