The main office of Henrico County Social Services is crammed with workstations and filing cabinets. A closet is so packed with car seats and other items that the door won’t close. Phones ring without pause along narrow hallways and across a maze of cubicles.
Department Director Gretchen Brown recognizes the challenge of meeting the community’s needs in a building that opened in 1988.
“We are serving more clients today than ever, and we have expanded as much as we can in this building, to the tune of having to double, triple up,” she said.
She pointed to an office occupied by five social service assistants – and thanked them for their continued patience and understanding.
For those workers and the residents they serve, relief is on the way. On March 24, the Board of Supervisors approved a contract with Hourigan Construction that will provide a new building for Social Services by early 2028. The two-story brick building will encompass nearly 40,000 square feet and be built nearby, at Credit Union and Dixon Powers drives.
Social Services’ caseload has grown immensely and the staff has nearly tripled since 1988, when the department moved into the Human Services Building on Dixon Powers. Last year, more than 50,000 people sought the department’s help accessing services such as protective care, Medicaid, and supplemental food and financial benefits.
The new building will primarily house the department’s Family Services functions, including meetings for Child Protective Services, adoption, foster care and family preservation.
Administrative and other functions will remain at the Human Services Building and at the county’s East Center on Nine Mile Road.
By dedicating space for private, in-person meetings, the agency will be able to offer community members a comfortable space with modern upgrades for more confidentiality and sensitivity.
“We are going to be designing space that is child-friendly and trauma-informed,” Brown said. “So that in very difficult moments when we’re serving children and families, they have a welcoming and very private space to come and engage with each other.”
The new building will incorporate soundproofing and window coverings, as well as technology to offer virtual and hybrid meetings. It will offer extra space for record keeping and supplies for young children. At the Human Services Building, closets are jammed floor-to-ceiling with donated items, including diapers, car seats and playpens, which are provided to foster parents and are available to safely transport children of all ages at a moment’s notice.
In recent years, Henrico has renovated the lobby at the Human Services Building to improve the visitor experience, and Social Services has converted offices and conference rooms to accommodate family visitation and community partner meetings.
Brown referenced one such room that had been retrofitted with cheerful wallpaper, a cozy couch and toys. She conceded that a space intentionally designed to meet the needs of families would be far better. The new building will address that need and represent an overall improvement for the entire agency, she said.
“We are also handling a very high volume of paperwork that gets dropped off,” she said. “We think this is going to give us an opportunity to give people a third location to physically go to, to interact with us, so we’ll be able to spread our business out, meet them in a more-timely manner.”
For more information about Social Services’ programs, visit the Social Services webpage.
