Oneida County Social Services delivers final annual report

With the elimination of the Human Service Center and the creation of a new Human Service Department, the Oneida County Social Services Department has gone the way of the dinosaur, and this past week outgoing and retiring director Mary Rideout was on hand to deliver the agency’s final ever report.

Along the way, Rideout reported significant improvements in services provided and wait lists resolved with the new department. However, just like with the extinction of dinosaurs, it wasn’t all good news coming from the social services annual report.

“As I think you are all aware, we did not end fiscally in a good spot in social services last year,” Rideout said. “We had a $825,000 deficit. That is due to the cost of youth and out-of-home placements.”

Unfortunately, Rideout said, that is continuing into 2025: “But we are working diligently to try to bring those numbers down,” she said. 

For the Human Service Center, Rideout reported a $1.8-million deficit, but she said that was not what it seemed.

“Keep in mind the counties did not provide county tax levy to the Human Service Center in 2024 and the tax levy would have been $1.8 million,” she said. “So pretty much that budget broke even for 2024 and that is very close to final.”

Rideout said out-of-home care placement really drives the department’s budget. According to the annual report, there was a 2.36-percent increase in children placed out of home from 2022 to 2024, but costs increased during that same time frame by 10.53 percent.

“The number of youth that we’re placing in an out-of-home care placement is going down, which is a good thing,” she said. “But the cost to place youth is going up significantly and we also have youth that are in very high needs placements, probably the most I’ve seen in my career or very close to it. So that is a concern.”

Even so, Rideout said, the board’s decision to create a Human Service Department has put the county in a better position to address that issue.

“We now sit at the table with our Child Protective Services staff, our staff at the Timber Drive location that do our mental health, our substance use,” she said. “And we’re now able to sit down as a group and work through these issues and determine what is our best course of action. And I think that is just one example of what we’re able to do now as a Human Service Department and I think it may take a couple years for us to get that down perfectly, but in the long run that is going to serve you very well.”

Giving back

Rideout said the department’s staff likes to give back to the community.

“So we have a volunteer committee, we have a process where if we want to wear jeans on Friday, we have to give $2 to the fund, and then every month they decide on the local organization to give those funds to,” she said. “So in 2024 we provided about $2,400 of staff money to other organizations within the community. In addition, the Human Service Center also provided a monthly meeting for our homeless shelter. So our staff really do a lot for our community besides the work that they do.”

Rideout said the decision to create the new combined agency was beginning to yield positive results in emergency services.

“We now are providing in-person screening during the day,” she said. “That has been very well received by our stakeholders — law enforcement, the hospitals — and that is going very well. We also have a staff member that is located in Vilas County because that’s a service that we’re providing in both Oneida and Vilas. So we have one of our staff that actually works out of the Vilas County Human Service Department and that again is very well received in Vilas County.”

Rideout expressed excitement about services at the outpatient clinic.

“Last year when we began working with the outpatient clinic, we had a hundred people on our wait list for mental health services,” she said.”I can report today that we have zero on our wait list. We have also been able to add a psychiatrist that will serve children 11 and up.”

Rideout said that is new.

“We were only serving adults and also we recently hired a behavioral health therapist that will also be able to see youth,” she said. “So that is a huge benefit for our community and certainly will assist our Child Protective Services unit in getting the services they need for their families.”

Rideout said the managers within both departments have done an amazing job with their program areas. 

“In addition, our children’s long-term support program, we also had a wait list for this service last year and I’m happy to report we have absolutely no wait list again in children’s long-term support services,” she said.

There’s progress, too, on the wait list for Comprehensive Community Services program, Rideout said.

“We had a wait list of about 80 folks,” she said. “The last update I had was that we had contacted everybody except for 11 people on that wait list and we anticipate that that we will have no wait list within the next couple of months and that will be resolved.”

The chairman of the county’s Human Service Committee, supervisor Robb Jensen, concurred that, as Rideout put it, “super-positive things were happening with the new department,” and he pointed to what he called Rideout’s exceptional work and many years of service as an integral part of that success.

“There’s still challenges,” Jensen said. “Nobody disagrees with that. But then a lot of [the success] is because Mary has done what she’s done. She was one of the most organized department heads that I’ve ever worked with. When you go to her meeting and she provides the background information for decisions, it’s there and I think she’s a role model for that.”

With that Jensen thanked her for her service, and the board and the audience responded with a standing ovation. For her part, Rideout thanked the county board really for the opportunity to serve the county and the people who live in it.

“For all of you, for past county board members, thank you for your support, your questions, your agreements, your disagreements and for allowing me this opportunity,” she said. “I have strived, as Robb said, to provide good services to the residents of Oneida County. My benchmark is, it’s got to be good enough for my family. It’s got to be good enough for your family or it’s not good enough. So that’s how I’ve approached this. It's been an amazing experience. So thank you all.”

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