Community partners urge Beaufort County to slow human-services consolidation, warn of prevention gaps

Beaufort County Council on March 9 heard sustained public concern over plans to close the county's Human Services Department and transfer cases to an outside provider, Nexus.

At the start of public comment, Christina Wilson, executive director of the Child Abuse Prevention Association, urged council to "slow down and ensure the professionals and community partners who work with these families every day have the opportunity to help shape what comes next." She warned that referral without clear local prevention services risks leaving families without supports that currently coordinate housing, benefits, health care and education.

Dale Doued, president and CEO of United Way of the Low Country, described broad economic strain that he said increases need for prevention-oriented services and cautioned that reducing the county's coordination capacity will shift demand into costly emergency systems. "When up to half the workforce is economically fragile, reducing coordination and stabilization capacity does not reduce the need," he said.

Several current and former county staff echoed those concerns. Ashlin Houston, program coordinator in the Human Services Department, said staff learned of the closure and case transfer timeline from local media and said her caseload contains "not a single case that needs drug or alcohol use support." She said staff were excluded from planning and urged decisions to center clients. "I feel strongly that it is my ethical duty to my clients to ensure that they are being prioritized in every decision being made regarding the closure," Houston said.

Fred Laida, who led Beaufort County's human services work for decades, described the department's role as a neutral "coordination hub" connecting more than a hundred community partners and argued that the department's prevention focus has saved public dollars by avoiding more expensive interventions. "This work is not simply information and referral. It's a neutral coordination hub connecting more than a 100 community partners," Laida said.

County leaders acknowledged the concerns during liaison reports but did not take a formal vote on the department's planned closure at the meeting. The administration, which presented the plan in earlier committee meetings, says the change responds to broader system consolidation but has not supplied the detailed case-by-case transition plan requested by speakers at this session.

What happens next: Council members and community partners said they expect additional committee discussion and asked staff to provide clearer, client-level transition plans and opportunities for partner input. Council did not reverse the scheduled June 30 closure at the March 9 meeting.