Monroe County says it has found a way to avoid setting up a waiting list for families needing early intervention services for their children.
The county has a shortage of outside agencies providing such services for children with developmental disabilities, and the county doesn’t have enough of its own coordinators to meet the demand.
The county and its critics agree that the state isn’t providing enough funding to counties to hire more service coordinators. County spokesman Jesse Sleezer says half-a-dozen clerical and administrative workers in the county’s Public Health Department will be reassigned to handle the paperwork for the service coordinators, easing the workload on them so they can serve more children. Six of the 12 service coordinators will be assigned to child intake, leaving the others to manage the existing cases.
Sleezer warns this is only temporary and can’t be sustained for the long term