but several senators have said the department was in crisissusan alford took over after hours of interrogation of former director lillian kohler and has been in the position a little over a year now. news 19's mary sturgill got an exclusive interview to talk about the problems and her plans to fix the system. 3 " i would like to be able to 3 make instant changes. i care deeply what happens with children. and it frustrates me too. " south carolina department of social services director susan alford, admits she came into a huge mess when she took the helm of the department a little over a year ago. " i was not happy about what i found in terms of over a period of time those case loads have gotten quite high. " in addition to visiting every county office, for more money for restructuruing the department " what we're going to do is work very hard to hire the case worker positions that they gave us but also hire vacancies and get enough staff so that our case loads can get down to our new case load standards. they also funded 2nd and 3rd shift pilot case loads so that we could get on call staff so