• By Nigel Alston
• Posted Friday, September 12, 2014

DSS In-House Employment Center to Open Soon

The Forsyth County Department of Social Services (DSS) is about to embark on an innovative approach to serving our customers. We will soon be opening an in-house Employment Center on the first floor of the agency.

We will be expanding the services offered to customers to include in-house Job Readiness instruction from Forsyth Technical Community College (FTCC), along with workshops on dressing for work, money management, and much more. We hope to incorporate on-site Employment Job Fairs as well as possible support groups.

Additionally, we are expanding the population we serve to include the non-custodial parents of children who receive Work First, basically a large portion of our Child Support Customers. Our focus is to help non-custodial parents increase their ability to pay child support through employment. We would also like to see these parents develop stronger relationships with their children and more cooperative co-parenting with the parent who has custody of the child.

In the future, our vision is to further expand who we are able to serve to include other customers of DSS who have qualifying children, such as Medicaid and/or Food and Nutrition recipients, and adults involved with Family and Children’s Services.

Our new Employment Center will afford us the opportunity to address the overall needs of DSS customers in a more family-centered, holistic way, utilizing the expertise of Social Workers to provide Employment Services with a Social Work focus; an approach not readily seen elsewhere in the community. A more formal introduction to the Center is planned. You are invited to stop by and take a look at the area, as the social work staff would be happy to show you around.