The services provided are also quickly becoming an increasingly expensive part of the annual budget in a number of counties. County officials began a conversation at its annual meeting last month about shifting responsibility for delivering social services to the state.
Terry Traynor works with the North Dakota Association of Counties as assistant director of Policy and Programs. He said at the organization's annual convention in October, there was conversation about studying the idea of moving responsibility to the state, beginning in 2011.
Movement on a resolution failed to pass during the annual meeting, but he said this week a group of North Dakota County Commission Association members in the Grand Forks region passed a resolution to look into the matter in their area.
Traynor said an internal study is a good idea. "The point of an internal study is to weigh the pros and cons. Social services is a rather complex collection of programs," said Traynor.
Traynor said since the Grand Forks area is pursuing the idea, conversations elsewhere in the state are likely to take place.
"Next year as a statewide group it would likely be brought up again," said Traynor.
Williams County Social Services director Lois Reierson said there are a lot of programs that are coordinated through her department. Many of the programs are interconnected or could be seriously impacted by changes in who operates them, she said.
Reierson said the current annual budget for her department is over $2 million.
"One of the challenges currently is meeting the various federal and state mandates without additional funds," said Reierson.
Reierson said 60.8 percent of the annual funding for social services comes from the county. About 34.7 percent of the funding comes from the federal government and 4.5 percent from the state.
She added there is increasing demand for various child welfare services such as foster care, as well as financial services such as Medicaid and food stamps. With more demand to provide essential services without increased funding, the burden becomes larger for local government.
"I think we have a good system as is. We just need to address funding to meet the demand," said Reierson.
One of the arguments in favor of switching to a state-run system is the increasing difficulty for rural counties to afford the cost of providing services. Two options for resolving this dilemma are to put social services under state control or to regionalize it.
Reierson said there are potential risks in these options that could impact the care residents receive. She said if the state takes over, it may simply say no and not fund certain services, forcing people to travel to get what is needed.
Reierson said if the state is divided into regions to provide services, that could happen as well.
"If it were regional, we'd likely have something like Divide, Williams and McKenzie counties together, perhaps with more counties rolled into it," said Reierson.
If this were to happen, the current office in Williston may or may not be the "central hub" as Reierson put it. Being the central hub for providing service in a region, or not, could impact staff levels and how many people they're able to assist.
"People have access without having to travel. It would really add to the problems they're already having if they had to. As for staff, it's hard to say," said Reierson.
Williams County Commission Chair Dan Kalil said although no action was taken in October, the issue is likely to receive more attention in the future. He said there a lot of pros and cons he hasn't been able to take a long look at yet.
He said social services costs are quite substantial for the county. Kalil added that while streamlining services may on the surface seem like a good idea, he feels local government may be better suited to operate it.
"I'm still a strong believer that more local government is better," said Kalil.
Williams County Auditor Beth Innis also said such a switch is a tough decision to make.
"On the one hand it would be a little more than $2 million per year less of a tax burden, but then on the other hand they might cut some of the government programs. It's kind of a Catch-22 situation," said Innis.
Reierson said whatever happens, she's confident the right choice is going to be made and local officials will add strong feedback and ideas during any future talks about social services.
"There's a lot of pros and cons and they need to be carefully considered in the decision-making process. We're going to provide quality services to the area whether things are state provided or not," she said.
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