Exiting Department of Social Services Director Michael Leach (Provided by the Governor’s Office)
COLUMBIA — The head of the state agency that oversees foster care, grocery assistance and other programs for children and vulnerable adults is resigning. His last day is Jan. 2.
Michael Leach has led the state Department of Social Services since Gov. Henry McMaster picked him as director in March 2019. He came to South Carolina after spending a decade working in Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services. McMaster offered him the job partly because of his reputation for helping turn around Tennessee’s agency.
Like South Carolina, it had been under federal oversight over that state’s treatment of children in its care.
“I believe I was destined to be here in South Carolina at DSS during a chaotic time when people needed help more than ever,” Leach wrote in his resignation letter, dated Monday. “I am proud of the work we have done and the positive impact we’ve made on our South Carolina community.”
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An agency spokeswoman did not elaborate on Leach’s future plans beyond saying he has no plans to leave South Carolina.
It’s unclear who will succeed him. The 2½-month official notice gives some time to look for a replacement.
“The person who wants to take this on has to appreciate and be willing to take on a great challenge,” McMaster told reporters Tuesday. “It has to be a passion. It can’t just be another person.”
McMaster’s office said the governor will make an announcement later.
“I am probably as sad as I have ever been about an agency director leaving,” said Sen. Katrina Shealy, who in 2014 led a Senate investigation into high caseloads and turnover endangering children in DSS’ care. “Director Leach has been the saving grace for DSS and the children of South Carolina.”
The Lexington Republican, who lost her re-election bid in June, chairs the Senate committee that oversees family services. Shealy’s tenacity and public questioning following the deaths of several children in DSS’ care eventually resulted in Director Lillian Koller resigning despite then-Gov. Nikki Haley refusing to fire her.
Shealy said she begged Leach on Monday to reconsider his resignation, but the rigors of the job and his commitment to it had drained him.
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Shealy said Leach’s personal involvement included making trips to foster homes amid the COVID-19 pandemic to deliver books and check in on children.
“If there was a problem he knew about it,” Shealy said. “You’re not going to find that kind of director just anywhere.”
When teachers lost contact with thousands of students after schools closed and learning went virtual in spring 2020, Leach took charge of finding them. Social workers paired up with law enforcement officers statewide to track them down. By September 2020, all but 60 had been located.
Leach also has made progress toward complying with a 2016 federal class action lawsuit settlement.
A year earlier, advocates sued the agency for relying on group homes rather than placing abused and neglected children with families — South Carolina had the highest rate in the country for institutionalizing children ages 12 and under — as well as separating siblings, not meeting children’s medical and food needs and generally putting them in danger.
When Leach arrived, the agency was not meeting its promises.
Over the last five years, more relatives or close friends have stepped in to care for children taken from their homes — rising from 6% participation to over 27%.
From top left to right, Sen. Tameika Isaac Devine, D-Columbia; Michael Leach, Department of Social Services Director; Eden Hendrick, Department of Juvenile Justice director; and Georgia Mjartan, First Steps director, watch a presentation on preschool suspensions at the Statehouse on Thursday, April 18, 2024. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
To bolster the program, Leach helped champion major reforms, alongside Shealy, including through laws she sponsored in 2022 and 2023 that fast tracked and increased financial support for family members who took in their relatives’ children.
And in 2023, the state set a record with 645 public adoptions, bringing the total number of adoptions since 2019, when Leach’s term started, to 2,572, according to the governor’s office.
“He (Leach) put his heart and soul into that agency,” Shealy said.
Pay increases the agency asked the Legislature to fund have also helped hire more social workers, reducing caseloads that had some employees responsible for more than 100 children at a time. The agency has also started programs to help foster families sign up for financial assistance available to them.
“I’m really sorry to see him go,” said Susan Berkowitz, director of the SC Appleseed Legal Justice Center, which was a party to the federal lawsuit. “The system had been pretty broken before he ever got there. He has done a lot and worked really hard in an effort to fix things.”
In particular, Leach’s focus on keeping foster children with family members made more federal dollars available to those families for the children’s care, Berkowitz and Shealy said.
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Still, making improvements to the agency that’s been under-resourced and overwhelmed will likely take years, Berkowitz said.
And efforts must extend beyond DSS to the state departments of Juvenile Justice and Mental Health, “if we truly want to help our most vulnerable populations,” she said.
Shealy said when either of those agencies don’t have space for children in need of services, the agencies release those children back to DSS’ care. That has resulted in last-minute scrambles to find those children a place to stay, resulting in the continued practice of children sleeping in agency offices overnight because no other option is immediately available.
Such sleepovers have become far more common instead of less, according to the court’s latest progress report.
In the five years between April 2018 and March 2023, children slept overnight in DSS offices for a total of 506 nights. But over the next six months, they doubled to 1,012 nights.
Foster children are still being shuffled around far too often, staying at an average of six homes for every 1,000 days — or 2.7 years — that they’re in the state’s care. And they’re spending more nights in emergency placements, such as group homes. Those are supposed to be a temporary solution for children removed from a dangerous situation, whether because a parent has died suddenly or abuse is suspected.
Between April and September 2023, 555 children spent 8,991 nights in emergency placements.
“Despite efforts by DSS, this crisis is growing and shows no signs of abating,” the report reads.
The weight of that, Shealy said, has fallen heavily on Leach.
“It’s just become overwhelming,” she said.
Leach will not be easily replaced, Shealy said, and when it comes to finding an agency head to oversee these problems, “you can’t work someone to death and expect them to stay.”
Leach’s salary is $250,000. It was $187,000 before the Legislature’s Agency Head Salary Commission approved the pay increase in March 2023.
In a statement, McMaster thanked Leach for his leadership.
“Director Leach has been an exemplary leader for our state, excelling in a challenging role at a crucial time,” the governor said. “The agency is stronger and more effective than when he started. He has improved all aspects of the agency and has positively impacted thousands of lives through his foster care reforms. I deeply appreciate his commitment and service to South Carolina, and I wish him nothing but success in his future endeavors.”