Oneida County to consolidate social, human services delivery

On March 19 the Oneida County board of supervisors voted to reorganize its delivery of social services and human services by consolidating those departments into one Department of Human Services starting January 1, 2025.

Right now, the Human Service Center (HSC) provides Oneida, Forest, and Vilas counties with so-called human services that include mental health, substance use, and services to children with disabilities, also known as Department of Community Programs (DCP), while the county’s Department of Social Services (DSS) provides programs to address child and family welfare, child and adult protective services, income maintenance, and juvenile justice populations, as well as aging in some cases.

The consolidation resolution before the county board last Tuesday asserted that the services provided by the two agencies sometimes overlap and are duplicative, creating inefficiencies. Because of that prospect, in the 1980s state statutes were enacted allowing counties to combine services provided by multiple agencies into unified organizations.

The three counties are now taking advantage of that option, as most other counties in the state already have.

Practically speaking, the consolidation eliminates the HSC, which had contractually provided its services for years as a vendor, and brings those services into the county organizational fold. Oneida County, along with Vilas and Forest counties, had earlier voted to terminate that contract at the end of this year. Vilas and Forest counties had similar reorganization votes pending this week and next.

On Tuesday, Oneida County social services director Mary Rideout — who is expected to lead the new department — said the consolidation was the result of many years of discussion and study regarding how human services should be structured in the county. After ending the HSC contract, the county board empaneled a transition oversight team and hired consultant Patrick Cork to conduct a feasibility study on how those services should be delivered.

That study recommended that each county create a consolidated department, or single-county human services department [HSD], based on feedback from stakeholder groups and research on other counties’ governance structures. 

“This option is considered the most efficient structural design and offers the greatest potential to resolve identified issues with human and social services,” Cork’s March 2024 feasibility study stated. “This option aligns with practice across the state of Wisconsin, as such there are resources available to guide [the three counties] in implementing this transition.”

That structural reorganization would require each county to combine human and social services into a single agency, the feasibility study asserted.

“Each county needs to develop an HSD implementation plan which outlines how they intend to merge human and social services,” the study stated. “The counties need to identify how to combine human services which are now provided to the three-county region with social services provided by each county individually. This task needs to be completed by each county while preserving the human and social services currently offered.”

The single county HSD structure is offered as the most viable model, Cork found, because it offered both self-governance and regional flexibility. 

“This model offers the three counties greater autonomy in decision making about services provided to residents,” the study stated. “This model offers options for service delivery to occur in a regional format, at an individual county level, or a combination of these approaches. The counties are encouraged to assess the effectiveness of options chosen over time and implement quality improvements during the process.”

Rideout: Consolidation offers many benefits

Rideout told county supervisors the social services department embraced that recommendation.

“This recommendation should not come as much of a surprise as nearly 90 percent of the counties in Wisconsin are organized in this way,” Rideout said. “Counties have continued to move in the direction of a combined department of community programs, which is provided by the Human Service Center for Oneida, Vilas, and Forest counties and the Department of Social Services for decades, and as recently as 2024 when Fond du Lac County combined their separate DSS and DCP departments to create the Department of Human Services. To date, no county had transitioned from the new combined structure back to their prior structure.”

Moving to a human service structure comes with many benefits, Rideout said. 

“It allows for a clearer understanding of the structure by board members, staff, stakeholders and clients,” she said. “Each county has autonomy to determine the level of service in their community. There should be a reduction and hopefully an elimination of the us-versus-them mentality and the not-my-problem issue that can plague a multi-department structure.”

The consolidation will also allow the county to combine the planning and prioritization of critical services, Rideout said. 

“It maximizes the available state and federal funds to reduce the use of tax levy to human services,” she said. “We would have one combined budget, which eliminates the who-is-paying issue. It would increase the coordination of services to families. It will improve the coordination and cooperation with other county departments, and issues will be brought to the same governing body.”

Staffing assurances

Some supporters of the old Human Service Center — which had come under fire in recent years over alleged inadequate service delivery and lack of transparency, among other issues leading to its dissolution — have repeatedly said the move to reorganize has left current staff with no certainty about future employment, leading to significant staff departures.

On Tuesday, Rideout aimed to quell that uncertainty and stem the resignations.

“In order to protect client services moving through this transition, the recommendation includes Oneida County absorbing the staff at the Human Service Center and maintaining their current location in 2025,” she said.

Under the scenario, Rideout said Vilas and Forest counties would contract with Oneida County for the services they’re currently receiving. 

“Though adding an additional 50-plus employees to Oneida County may seem daunting, these are positions that Oneida, Vilas and Forest counties have been paying for for decades,” she said. “Bringing these staff into the county system eliminates the differences in salary and benefits between very similar county positions.”

And doing so gives the three counties time to determine what services will be provided directly by each county in the future and which services they would provide together through contract, Rideout said. 

Bringing current employees into the fold would also assure them of employment next year, the social services director added.

“It is the intent of the three county social services directors to bring staff providing these services in their communities and integrate them within the county system wherever possible,” she said. “If you approve this change today, we will begin putting together our new structure immediately. We would prioritize staffing and the integration of human service center staff into the county structure and would hope to make offers of employment as soon as possible so that staff at the Human Service Center know that they have employment past December 31, 2024.”

That new budget would be incorporated into the 2025 budget process, Rideout said, adding that she expected to maintain the tax levy at the proposed 2024 rate, if there are no unforeseen major changes. 

“Staff, as you know, are the most important part of any organization,” Rideout said. “This is a big change. It is a big change for all four organizations involved and we may lose staff because of that, but in the end I believe that a Department of Human Services is the best structure to serve our residents going into the future.”

Supervisor Linnaea Newman, who abstained in the final vote on the reorganization, ignored Rideout’s staffing plans, saying that in her view the county wasn’t doing enough for current HSC staff and didn’t have any plans to do so.

“I am equally concerned about the staff being taken care of, but I haven’t heard any measures on doing that,” Newman said. “When I was first appointed to the Human Service Center board, I did not know anything other than that they supplied mental health services to the community.”

But Newman said she learned a lot in the meantime.

“And from my experience in the private sector, I was very interested in how it was structured because I looked at what the turnover rate was in employees and the budget and the usual numbers things, and they had a very good turnover rate,” she said. “They had four open positions out of 48 positions, and anything in the realm of 20 percent is manageable.”

There is always going to be some turnover, Newman said, and people leave for a variety of reasons.

“It’s like people come on and they decide that the job isn’t for them and then they leave,” she said. “Maybe on-call isn’t their cup of tea. Or maybe it is harder than they thought it was going to be. But there are reasons people move. People get sick. There are reasons for those numbers. And their numbers were good. Their budget was good.”

And Newman said the HSC had squirreled away resources — “let’s call it a tin can” — for personnel needs.

“Like people who had to go to hospitalization at $1,500 a day and things like that were covered,” she said. “Then this whole structure thing exploded and people started leaving. Now, as numbers go, when things get above 25-percent turnover and they get into the 30-percent turnover, things start coming apart.”

And that’s where the HSC is today, Newman said.

“Fifteen people left because of the confusion,” she said. “They didn’t have answers to where they were going to go, what it was going to be like, if they were going to have their benefits continued. So they [have] 31 percent leaving, and I’m afraid that that’s going to get worse before it gets better because we don’t have anything in place to keep them on.”

Newman said the HSC board — which has had its wings clipped — did put together a retention package but that the county transition oversight panel had nixed it.

“So you’re not going to spend the money on retaining the employees,” she said. “Let’s take that money and keep that here. So, okay, so 31 percent of the employees have vacated.”

And that has a significant impact on the HSC and its ability to provide services, Newman said.

“That’s 77 years of combined experience and, yes, they’re hiring new people, and all the new people they hired have a combined total of zero experience, accruing day by day,” she said. “So what are we going to do to stop the flood of people that aren’t getting the answers they need? That’s my question to you and to all of us because we all sit on this board, we all answer to the community and the clients out there that want to know, am I still going to have my staff person? Am I still going to get taken care of on a timely basis when we haven’t been able to staunch the flow so far?”

Rideout to Newman: Try listening

Rideout responded forcefully to Newman, saying she had literally just outlined plans for the current staff to be absorbed into Oneida County, providing them secure employment. And again, Rideout reiterated, once the three county boards approved the reorganization — all of them scheduled to do so by the end of next week — implementation would begin and the top priority would be the staffing.

“I will work with [county human resources director] Lisa Charbarneau where folks should be appropriately placed in the pay schedule for Oneida County, and we have our corporation counsels looking at the employee protection statute, and our corporation counsels are looking at that to see how that affects those folks as they come on board,” she said.

Indeed, as Rideout pointed out, that state statute specifically provides employment protection to staff delivering human services when a county creates a department of human services.

That statute reads: “All persons employed by a county or by the state, whose functions are assumed by a county department of human services, shall continue as employees of the county department of human services without loss in seniority, status or benefits, subject to the merit or civil service system.”

Rideout said she could not be any clearer.

“I don’t know how many other ways to say it,” she said. “We need those staff, we want those [staff] to continue to do our services. I know the rumor mill gets crazy, but I wish somebody would just stop and pay attention to what I’m saying. We need the staff, we will need them going forward and we will work to get them incorporated into Oneida County’s pay structure.”

And all that will be done sooner rather than later, Rideout said.

“That will go through the committee [of jurisdiction] and back to this board and that will be done way before September,” she said, referencing the reorganization resolution’s timeline. “This will be a process as we work through the year to get this done. And like I said, for me that’s priority number one. I don’t think the transitional oversight committee feels any different about that.”

Other comments and concerns

In other discussion, county board chairman Scott Holewinski corrected Newman’s characterization that the county’s appointed transition oversight panel had blocked the HSC board’s proposed retention package.

“I would like to clarify what Linnaea said,” Holewinski said. “The county board sent the transition committee to do what they did. It wasn’t that committee that decided that. This county board decided, so that’s wrong in that statement.” 

Supervisor and administration committee chairman Billy Fried pointed to Rideout’s assertion that the 2024 tax levy, deposited in a contingency fund, could be maintained, and wondered if maybe the reorganization could do better.

“I’m always about the money,” Fried said. “ … I hope that we’re still open at looking at efficiencies that might bring savings.”

Absolutely, Rideout said, though she added that with major reorganization it will take time.

“Like any change like this, we just need time and we’re looking at that in our proposal, and that allows us to find efficiency but do it without disrupting services to our clients,” she said.

Fried said he appreciated addressing employment and staffing as a top priority. Indeed, while September 30 is the date for wrapping up reorganization in the resolution — among other things, the reorganization needs state approval, which is expected, and organizational charts and a budget must be submitted to the board by then — staffing issues would be dealt with immediately, Rideout told Fried.

“That’s when we want to have all that done so we can come to you and say, ‘Here’s our budget, here’s our organizational chart, everything is done,’” she said. “But we want to be working on that staffing immediately and being able to let those staff over there know that you’ve got a job past December 31.”

Supervisor Jim Winkler stressed that the reason for the reorganization was to improve services, and the recommendations would assure that improvement, and supervisor Robb Jensen said the reorganization was in good hands under Rideout’s leadership.

“I’ve had an opportunity to work with Mary as a county board supervisor, and not to offend any other department heads, but I don’t know if there is anyone more organized and better qualified to address the issues that are coming forward,” Jensen said. 

The resolution presented to the county board also authorized the county to continue to work with consultant Patrick Cork to develop the implementation plans and submission to the state for approval by July 31.

The board passed the resolution with 18 votes in support, two supervisors absent (Rio and Showalter) and Newman abstaining.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.