Facing social distancing orders, furloughs and other countermeasures to prevent spreading the coronavirus, the county's human resources department continues to operate at a mostly normal level.

The department controls a number of organizations including Children and Youth Services, where 15 of 53 employees are marked as either taking vacation, on sick leave or have been furloughed per a recent order from county commissioners calling for nonessential county personnel to go on unpaid furlough for an unspecified amount of time.

The department as a whole, according to director Brandon Savochka, has seen a “limited amount of furloughs because we have people that perform essential functions.”

“The reality is safety standards and priorities haven't changed,” he said, adding that a recent court order scaling court proceedings to limit physical contact has led to a decrease in the workload for workers with Children and Youth Services.

“The one thing that has changed, there's a little less demand since there's less court time,” he said.

Generally, Savochka said, social workers with CYS do not provide visitation for families, sourcing out the work to third parties. Those third parties, Savochka said, are holding visitations with things like live streams.

And things have stayed the same for their social workers who are called for emergency face-to-face meetings.

“If there's a need to go out and see someone face to face we will still do that. For investigations, we'll go out and see them,” Savochka said.

But he also cautioned that this is just the beginning of the coronavirus safety precautions, and that things could and will change to react to developments.

“Remember we're only about 10 days into this, so it's too early to say how reports and referrals will be affected,” Savochka said.

Children and Youth Services agencies in surrounding counties are responding similarly, he said.

In Westmoreland County, where the board of commissioners issued a Declaration of Disaster Emergency on March 13, the County Children's Bureau had nine employees on site. The remaining 100-plus employees were able to fulfill their job duties remotely, according to Shara Saveikis, the bureau's executive director.

On March 19 Westmoreland County reported its first known COVID-19 case.

In Butler, no plan to work from home is in place.

And in Armstrong County, the Children, Youth and Family Services has ended in-person visitation between parents and dependants, substituting them with telephone and video conferences, according to Paula McClure, the agency's administrator.

And, like Butler, caseworkers will break social distancing protocol if a child's life is possibly in danger.

“We're practicing safe distancing when we do need to go to homes to asses allegations of abuse and neglect,” McClure said.

McClure said the number of referrals has dropped significantly. McClure believes that this likely is because children are in social isolation with school canceled, cutting them off from people like teachers and therapists who would usually be the ones to report such allegations.

Westmoreland and Armstrong counties have not instituted a furlough order.