 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne. I'm the Sheboygan County administrative coordinator and co-host of this program. Chairman Bill Gehring is not with us today. He's attending a meeting in Milwaukee, actually a summit that the governor's put on. So he could not be with us today, but we are pleased, or at least I am pleased, to introduce our guest Ann Wundergem Ann is director of the Health and Human Services Department, our largest department. Sheboygan County has 23 departments. One of which has over a $36 million budget and that is the Health and Human Services Department. A lot of wonderful activities going on over the holidays and certainly that department provides such important services to the people of Sheboygan County. So Ann, why don't you start off by telling our viewers a little bit about yourself how long you've worked for the department and we'll go from there. I'm not sure I want to say how long I work for the department. It might give my age away, but I'm happy to be back. I usually get the December show and I really do appreciate that because there's a lot that goes on year round, but particularly at the holiday season, much more that we do for families throughout Sheboygan County. I've been with Sheboygan County since 1978 in one capacity or another, starting at the Comprehensive Health Care Center. And since 1980 with Sheboygan County with Health and Human Services. So it's been a long tenure, Adam. Which should make you about 35 or so. I'm 39 for the 10th time. Excellent, excellent. Well it's nice to have you with us today. And again, a lot to cover. We have a lot of good questions for Ann. And why don't we start with the big picture. What's the primary mission or responsibilities of your department? We always try to do it succinctly and of course that doesn't tell you a lot, but basically our goal is to improve the quality of life and of course the self-sufficiency of Sheboygan County residents. That doesn't tell you a lot. So what we really do is how I like to say it is we take care of people prior to birth, all the way through death. And that sounds a little strange, but when you think about it, through our division and public health, we provide prenatal services to women through our WIC program. And when someone dies and needs assistance with burial, through our economic support division, we can assist with that. And we do everything else in between also. So 36 million dollar budget, how many employees do you have? We have 196 employees, but that's only a small part of that budget. That represents about 10 million dollars worth of expenses. About 22.5 million is actual contracts. We contract for group home services. We contract for home health care. So we contract with vendors throughout the county and that accounts for about 22.5 million of that 36 million. And five divisions, share with us a little bit what the different divisions are and their responsibilities. And I think you remember Adam, up until about two years ago we had four divisions and then we split out economic support with the growth in the W2 program. But I'm going to do them alphabetically because that probably is more politically correct in terms of handling it. And we'll start with the division on aging. Of course, that's elderly. And elderly for programs will vary anywhere from 60 years of age on up. Primarily, though, that division concentrates on the senior dining sites, previously known as our meal sites out in the county. And of course, we currently have 10. And starting in January, we'll be down to nine meal sites. They also operate the homespun post, which is very, very busy at this time of the year in terms of sales. It also provides some additional income for our senior citizens that are able to sell their goods there. Our transportation program is a major program. And that's the handy care program. And we do that in cooperation between the city and the county. And our numbers are increasing there. They do other smaller types of services, but those are the main programs in that particular division. For the division of aging. And if anyone's looking to get a homemade Christmas present and doesn't have time to make one themselves, they can stop by the homespun post. Correct. And it's on North A Street, just a little bit north of Yonkers. Excellent. Four others. Four others. Community programs alphabetically as next. Their primary responsibility falls in the area of services to people who have mental health issues. Primarily those that would be classified as severe and persistent. So it would be individuals who don't have insurance that need help with medication counseling, that type of thing. We also have mandatory responsibility for OWIs operating well intoxicated. And we do the assessment and then referral out for services. This division also has the long term support services and services for people with developmental disabilities. That's about a $10 million budget and serves well over 600 people annually. You could compare it to nursing home services in the community. Community programs is located in two locations in our main building at 1011 North A Street and then also our annex location, which is the former Baxter building a little bit further south. Very good. Next division alphabetically is economic support, which I mentioned earlier. Financial assistance, food stamps, medical assistance, badger care, all the medical assistance programs. We'll talk a little bit later about energy assistance. And then of course W2 or Wisconsin Works. The economic support unit is located out, or division now, is located out at the job center on Wilgus with our partner agencies. Again a significant growth right now given the economy in the workload and the caseload for the staff out at the job center. I mean there's been some recent remodeling and upgrades out there. Yes, a big expansion. The child care center within that building was relocated. There's some additional classroom space and the LTC foundation office is now located in that new addition and some expanded parking. We're actually very happy the construction is done. It was pretty miserable during that time in terms of actually providing services to people and meeting everyone's needs. Great. Let's see. I finished C, so next on our list is public health. I've learned probably the most in the department because this was the newest area for me as I took over as director as public health. Probably the place where the most money is also coming in at this point in time. Numerous services, school health services, WIC, which is Women, Infant and Children that I referred to earlier. Maternal child and health, environmental health, which is our hotel restaurant inspection program. And the expansion this summer to testing the waters, both at Terri Andrew and the north side bathing beaches. So it's really an area where we see a lot of growth in the environmental health. We also have to focus on communicable disease that would be sexually transmitted disease, tuberculosis, hepatitis. When I look at the numbers that come out in the public health reports, the work that goes on in order to keep the community safe in terms of communicable disease is just tremendous. And then, of course, we talked a little bit before about your flu shots. And if you haven't gotten one vaccine is decreasing, but we strongly recommend that people do get their flu shot this year, especially if you are immune compromised. It's very, very important. And I don't know if you've heard, but the pertussis, of course, in Fond du Lac County, so we're monitoring that. And pertussis is more commonly known as hooping cough. We so far as of today have no confirmed cases in Sheboygan County. But when you have a neighboring county with a major outbreak, you are always a little bit more cautious in watching what's happening throughout the county. And then last but not least, kind of my home base within the Department of Social Services. We really there are seeing an increase once again in our child protective services referrals. We never have a good reason for why we see an increase in that. Holiday time, additional stressors, teachers are concerned, students are going to be off for a period of time. So at this time of the year, we typically do see an increase in those child abuse neglect referrals. Our job there is to do the assessment. And if there is actually abuse neglect, provide services to intervene to protect that child and keep that child safe. The other major part there is our juvenile justice. And like many communities, we do have youth who tend to get into trouble, some more serious than others. And our job legally then is to work with them and their families to ensure that the community is safe and that they get appropriate services to change their lives around. So five divisions and obviously a great breadth of services. How do people access these services in general? Some come voluntary where they can call up and within the phone book under the business section actually in Sheboyton County, there are specific numbers for the various types of services. And when I say voluntary, it usually is those people seeking long term support services or mental health services or our aging division and economic support. Unfortunately, we also deal with involuntary clients, those individuals who are referred because of abuse neglect, who may be referred by the law enforcement agencies throughout the county through a juvenile referral and sometimes through the commitment process at the hospital. So we have both our voluntary clients and involuntary clients that we do work with. Now if there's someone watching and is aware of an elderly person that maybe they're concerned with with paying heating bills or perhaps meals on wheels and making sure that they're getting taken care of, who would they check in with at your department to get some follow up? I would recommend two places and I'm going to give a general number which will then direct them to the two different places. And that's 459-6400 which is our main number and our main directory. I would recommend definitely the division on aging because Pat Haferman is our benefit specialist and she would take a look at the resources the family may have access to in terms of homestead and different things that they might want to look at really helping them sort through that. Secondly, we are in the energy assistance season and it's called WEAP now, Wisconsin Home Energy Assistance Program and those benefits are being issued to low income people and many of our senior citizens do fall in that category and that would be accessed through the Job Center and Economic Support. I know your department recently received some nice recognition and wasn't it Pat, if I recall correctly, who was the number one benefit specialist in the state? Absolutely and I believe it was the summer. I was trying to remember back too because there's so many things that go on in the department and as Pat said, it's always nice when the peers recognize you and she was very, very surprised and Pat does a real nice job in terms of not only advocating on behalf of the elderly but really seeking out resources. Most recently one of the projects she's working on is identifying attorneys throughout the community that might be willing to provide some small degree of free legal assistance to seniors to really help them through some tough spots. Great, well it reflects well on everyone and I know you don't have time to mention everyone by name and I know how strongly you feel and the pride you share and the staff and the work they do but why don't you mention just who your division managers are because obviously they work so closely with you. Now you didn't put this question on so you're going to test if I can do this. I know you can do it. Jim McCabe or James McCabe is the aging division manager and Jim has been with the county much longer than I have and has a real good grasp on what happens in those aging programs. Joan Ketterman is the division manager for community programs and she started out in that division as a line worker and moved her way up to supervisor and to division manager. In public health we have Dale Hippenstiel and Dale will be starting his fourth year in March with the county and comes to us from Michigan with a great deal of experience in public health. Liz Malek is our division manager in economic support. Again started out as an economic support specialist back in the income maintenance days and was a supervisor and now division manager and Marty Bonk who started out as a social worker and supervisor and now as division manager in social services. And I can't forget Amy Haman our clerical supervisor and Joel Bastion our accounting manager, our part of the management team. Very good, very good, thank you. Can I interrupt you one? Sure. One of the things that I've often thought about and maybe we can think about in the future is it would be nice to maybe bring in a public health nurse and a social worker because the department is more than an wonder gem director sitting here. It truly is the line staff that are out in the community providing the services. Oh no, I'd certainly be up for that. We'd have to talk to Chairman Gehring but I'm sure that'd be fine. Approximately how many people does your department serve annually? I wish we had one database so I could say for sure it's this number. My best guess is about 30,000 people and when we've talked about this in the past one of the things I've done and I have to look at my notes because I want to make sure I do this accurately I took a look at about six different information systems and then made some accommodations for duplication because somebody could be receiving services from pat and aging and one of the social workers in long-term support but if I look just at our food stamp recipients through this point in time we had 3,000. If I look at my aging information and referral statistics we had over 5,000 individuals at this point in time. Now would that be 5,000 individuals? 5,000 individuals. Not contacts but 5,000 individuals. Right, the contacts would be higher. Of 112,000 people. Correct. So that's pretty significant. And I gave you food stamps because if I included food stamps and then said medical assistance there'd be some duplication. So some of the people receiving food stamps will also get medical assistance. We had public health nursing visits in home of 963 so far. Clinic visits to our public health clinics of 5,738 and then we did 8,580 individual vision screens out in the schools of children. And then as I talked about earlier we had 685 people to date either with a developmental disability or some type of disability or because of being elderly that are receiving community-based services in their home that could be in need of nursing home care and in fact out of some of those about 68 were in institutions and placed back in the community. Wow. So it's 30,000 is significant and it could be a low estimate. It certainly is. One of the things I'm sure our viewers have heard about or read about from time to time is there's been a lot more emphasis on bioterrorism and law enforcement, public health and I know that's an area that you've become more and more active in. What's happening in that area in our department? Fortunately with bioterrorism nothing which is really good news but we are planning. The money that's coming in allowed us to become part of what we call a quad-county effort. So we're working with Fond du Lac, Washington and Ozaki County in terms of bioterrorism planning. Much of it has been tabletop exercises around different case scenarios that could come up. In addition we've done one situation in Washington County at the fairgrounds where we've had staff participate with staff from those counties in terms of dealing with an actual exercise. To me the key has been when we plan for bioterrorism it also allows us to plan for less drastic situations. So if we end up with some type of foodborne outbreak many of the same things that would occur during a bioterrorism type exercise would also occur if we actually had a foodborne poisoning outbreak. And when you say bioterrorism some folks might be wondering like what? Your water supply. And I don't want to say a lot because of course you often think well is somebody out there listening and hopefully they aren't. It could be where somebody would intentionally poison a food supply. So it has to do with more of the anthrax that occurred with the mail. We had a couple of those calls last year too where somebody noticed an unusual substance and thought it might be anthrax. So it's more chemical in nature. Something that would attempt to impact the Japan a number of years ago with the gas that was put into the subway system. You mentioned the flu earlier and I'm sure viewers have heard about the flu and how important it is to get your shot and be on guard. What other types of public health activities has the department been involved with? A couple of things. The one that's probably near and dear to my heart is WINS which is the Wisconsin Tobacco Project that goes on. It's near and dear to my heart for two reasons. One is Wisconsin loses money if we don't cooperate with WINS for actual treatment in AODA, Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse Services so that impacts on community programs. This summer we had a group of high school students some from Falls, Plymouth, Sheboygan and I think those were the three maybe Elkhart Lake participate in an educational sting operation of a variety of places throughout the county and I did bring along to share with both you and Bill and now I won't find it the information from basically your two areas of the county to see what happened. You're from the Plymouth area and out in Plymouth they conducted a total of 31 checks places where tobacco or alcohol would be sold and out of those 31 checks four places were willing to sell to minors. What happened then is actually the police officer that was with the student waiting out in the car or the adult from public health would then go in with the individual and explain you can't do this and it was more educational in nature for those businesses that cooperated and didn't sell to minors they were given a small token of appreciation through the Wisconsin WINS program so that was one of the major ones and we have the data for the different places in Sheboygan County where that has occurred. We also talked a little bit earlier about the medical disease and we're constantly monitoring that Dale Hibbenstiel and the two supervisors always provide me with some regular updates on a weekly basis through Wisconsin in terms of what's occurring. We did see an increase in tuberculosis this last year and that requires extensive monitoring at least during the active period making sure that medication is being taken and all precautions are out there to protect people You're busy. Very, very busy. Last year we talked about some new initiatives in every budget process we like to see new initiatives and creative thinking although as our viewers know and certainly as we know there's been more and more pressure on government at all levels to do more with less in fact it's difficult to maintain at present and I know your department had some reductions that we may get into in a second here but that was a drop in center. First, what is it in? How has it worked? Our open door drop in center was in the planning for five years and it is a drop in center for people with mental illness who may not be employed but need a place that they can call their own. We did find a location we're renting some space and it really showed cooperation between the community and a number of our divisions within the department we've got links money which is start up money that we could use to renovate the space and pay the rent in addition we worked using some of the Institute for Mental Disease Relocation funds in terms of some funding to provide some ongoing support and some supervision to the program and then lastly we received some community donations both from our staff internally Omni and a bunch of other organizations throughout the community it has exceeded the staff expectations it's just unbelievable we were hoping for anywhere from 15 to 20 at any point in time when we were open they had a Halloween open house and the last person to sign in was number 62 we're averaging over 32 35 when we're open and now the staff is struggling with how can we expand the hours we're open three afternoons a week and Saturday morning a real good resource and consumer driven the actual board has some staff on it some vendors from the community but consumers of the service that are actually directing that program so we're very very pleased and what's the benefit the benefit is you see a decrease in institutionalization you have a place where an individual can go there's activities there's a pool table there's foosball there's staff available to talk to and it's a supportive nurturing environment in terms of not having to sit at a lunch counter or enter let's say the health and human services building where there might be more of a stigma associated with it earlier and we've got about seven minutes or so remaining so we're going to have to move along but earlier you mentioned the job center and one of the activities out there services is W2 and folks may have read recently or heard that there might be some change there and how that's administered then again not necessarily but what's happening with W2 the state really supported consortium development and they wanted vendors whether they be private or public sector vendors and contractors in W2 to look at consortium as part of our proposal process for 2004-2005 we have joined with Manitowoc County in terms of providing W2 services to our customers nothing significant will change for people in Sheboygan or Manitowoc will continue to staff their job center will continue to staff the Sheboygan job center but some of the savings will come in contracting with one provider for life skills and job training and development and that vendor is ACS in fact ACS and some of our staff are up in Manitowoc today to begin some of the initial training and transition to that we hope in the long run we'll see other consolidation and hopefully cost savings but initially I don't think anybody will see that much of a change well the temperatures are dropping in fact as we're taping this program there's a winter storm advisory in effect and hopefully this evening we won't have too much trouble from our highway department standpoint maintaining the roads and salting and folks will get home safely but every time this type of time of year there are some special activities that your department is involved in I think above and beyond what perhaps some Health and Human Services departments do and why don't you touch a little bit on some of those special programs I think the one right now that I'd like to talk the most about is Share the Spirit which Division on Aging does in conjunction with Sheboygan Press and in fact yesterday I was talking to one of our staff people and they said their unit the last few years instead of doing a gift exchange now all puts money in and they actually participate and contribute to Share the Spirit we have people who live in the community who are elderly or have a disability or even in nursing homes that have needs it might be they want bathrooms and a slipper they would like a new small stereo system they would like a certificate for a haircut or to get a perm just the needs vary and you'll see little descriptions in the paper and individuals or groups can sign up and actually purchase the item or they can donate money so that item our dress down day last week was for Share the Spirit so our staff contributed also to that cause last weekend I had the opportunity and a number of staff did to volunteer at Festival of Trees and our Child Abuse Neglect Fund is a recipient so we are more than happy to participate in that and it's a wonderful event and we'll find out within the next couple of weeks how much we'll receive from that particular function internally we have families with the economy the way it is and unemployment that aren't going to have a very happy Christmas and we have community organizations and staff that bring in new toys, clothing and food and then our social workers our public health staff Pat Haferman and Chris Jeske anybody in our department can come in and gather up a package of toys, food clothing to take to our families so we are doing a dress down day this Friday for that particular cause in addition I did bring a couple things for you Adam this is the Sheboyton County Health and Human Services department needs list and I'll give that to you so you can post it in your office at the admin building and it just shows some of the things throughout the course of the year sippy cups, baby quilts, baby hats gum, breath mints, bus tokens, alarm clocks school supplies you can always use on an ongoing basis in terms of working with our clients during the course of the year and then I wanted to share with you the 2003 Sheboyton County Smoke Free Dining Guide and as we go out and work with our restaurants one of the things we do is we encourage them to look at considering going smoke free and when they decide to do that we publish the brochure and they get added in there and this is also updated on the website at the county level so I'll give you that in the puddle as I was walking in we only have a minute and I want to make sure we hit this point well you mentioned some very important programs especially this type of time of year if any of our viewers want to help, want to make a donation who would they contact, how would they get involved they would contact Pat Priggy who is our volunteer coordinator and she can be reached by calling 459-6418 which is our fourth floor receptionist because she will make sure Pat is notified and I don't know Judy Linesie's phone number off the top of my head but by calling that main number 459-6400 Judy Linesie coordinates to share the spirit program 459-6400 is a main line that folks can call and then you mentioned one other line 459-6418 18, very good 8-5 we certainly want to thank Ann our guest today and for you joining us this afternoon and until next time I hope you have a wonderful holiday certainly a safe and wonderful holiday next month our guest will be Joe DiCecco the new district attorney for Sheboygan County who's been doing some very very important work and it will be his first time on the program so he's going to be able to share with us some of his roles and responsibilities and some of the changes he's made in the district attorney's office so until then again happy holidays and thank you for joining us