 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Tom Wagner and we're pleased to see you again. I think it's been a couple of months since we've been here and talked about one of our 19 departments and today we are very pleased to introduce you to our, I guess not our newest department head anymore because we'll have Todd Rector, our Veteran Service Officer next month but today we're very pleased to introduce you to Matt Stripmoder. Welcome Matt. Thank you, thank you. Matt started as our Health and Human Services Director in November so it's just been over four months now. He's hit the ground running, had a lot thrown at him in a short period of time and and we're very pleased that he's here. So Matt please begin by just sharing a little bit about your your background professionally, personally. Okay well thank you, thank you. I think I would probably start by saying part of me is surprised that I'm even sitting here today. I grew up in the La Crosse area and spent about 26, 27 years in mostly the county system as contracted provider of service as a county social worker inside behavioral health programs. Grew up in that area, have four children who are still mostly in college in that area. I have parents in that area who are still active and then my wife has five sisters in that area. So loved it and pretty much thought I was going to be there for for most of my career and when I was there I had about 12 years of experience and then the direct service side on a variety of different types of services and then about 15 years now of administrative type experience in the county system and was active in the National Alliance for Mental Illness, active with the County Association Behavioral Health Policy Advisory Committee, active at the state level with the Wisconsin Council of Mental Health. So had a chance to travel across the state and see other systems and hear about other systems and then saw an application or a job advertisement for this position in Sheboygan. I actually saw it because my wife said, hey look that's Sheboygan. She's like my wife loves to move and loves change and she said how about that? Knowing that I wasn't somebody who was looking necessarily to be leaving and I've been coming to this area for probably 12 to 15 years fishing with my father and then more recently my daughter's eye in the Sheboygan River for salmon and steel had. So never talking to people, never meeting people, but being here and seeing the beautiful area and the river and so I took a chance and I took an interview, met some great people when I had that interview and it felt for the first time in many years like I think it's time for a move. I think it's time to actually pack up and leave what I've known for most of my life and start a new journey which brought me over here and it's just been great. It's been fantastic from day one. Well that's wonderful and and I can assure you we're not surprised you're here because though we had I think we had over 40 candidates for the Health and Human Services Director position and we have to narrow that down to a half dozen or so and then we hold interviews and that's a very collaborative process and and Matt certainly you just shined during the interview process and your background was so impressive and of course it didn't hurt that you fished and you had a feel for the area but we're just very pleased you're here. Matt has hit the ground running and he's responsible for the largest department of the 19 and Dillton Human Services Department has over a $35 million budget. 44 programs a lot going on there so tremendous responsibility and what I wasn't aware of when we hired Matt but just recently became aware of he touched on or you just touched on you know some of the things you were involved in not only locally but at a statewide level and you were recently awarded the Relentless Badger Award the Relentless Badger Award and I thought how cool is that because in Sheboygan County we pride ourselves on and working in collaboration and helping make good things happen and and not being afraid to roll up our sleeves and problem solve and it sounds like you did your share of that in La Crosse County so we're just real pleased you're here. Yes thank you thank you. So you mentioned so far so good as you've gotten a flavor for things here the last four months what have been some of your impressions of of the of the department and the team you're working with. Well before I answer that what I should have said is that's so I've relocated but a relocated with my wife and our dog Max and our three cats and I've just loved the area a chance to the outdoor activities just a chance coming from the La Crosse area I mean it's just beautiful and the bluffs and the river system sure is coming over here and being minutes away from multiple state parks in the county parks our dog has been exhausted as we take him and and he sees all the wildlife and everything so it's just beautiful beautiful place. So do you repeat the question? Sure no problem impressions of the department your team of course every county is a little different what have been some of the impressions that you formed thus far you know of the department your co-workers the programs and services that we have here. Okay so I've I've had this question many times as I've talked to former co-workers or gone back to the La Crosse area or meeting people so many people have asked me and it is just and not not making this up for for today's show it has been an absolute pleasure I think I sent you Adam the very first day after that interview before I was offered the job sent you a message that was like legitimate it was a pleasure that day to spend like an hour or two with people that just felt good invested kind I don't know can't explain it but felt good and then since coming here it has just been a warm welcome 200 or so individuals that I have inside my own department so many friendly faces so many people welcoming I had baskets of Sheboygan area manufactured I had brats and plants and all kinds of things just waiting for me all other department heads board members just kind and friendly and welcoming in a way that just felt real as I met more and more community players of nonprofits or the school system or law enforcement I'm has just been one person after the other I'm sure somebody's got something they're frustrated about and is really hoping I'll make a difference but everybody has just been so kind in talking about the history of working with the county the things that have happened that they hope can continue about how people come together and how we play our part as a county system it just keeps happening so it's been wonderful just wonderful to meet so many different people who all have very favorable impressions of the county and look forward to working together on whatever on whatever it is so it's been great good good to hear thank you Matt Tom last fall your predecessor Tom Aga Brett was here and he talked about the different things that the your agency was involved in with the community etc and challenges that they were facing which is always the case you want to provide a brief overview of your department and the core service areas and also possibly talk about where the location is of these okay okay so as mentioned we have a large department we are spread out across Sheboygan County in multiple areas we have well first I suppose I should try to describe the scope the scope is difficult it doesn't really fit neatly into a few sentences but as I think about it when I'm talking with people we're really responsible as a health and human services for planning and then implementing however however as much of a comprehensive system for safety and community wellness whatever the community might need to be safe and well and healthy is a is a nice general way to look at it we have child welfare and youth justice services where individuals making sure that families and children are safe and if things need to be provided to help guide and hopefully change a path for someone who may not have made good decisions I'm trying to have services in a place that can help those things get better that's part of our human services building at 10011 North 8th and Sheboygan also part of that building is our public health and our behavioral health so public health really is a wide variety of things from communicable communicable disease control to testing of various water and restaurant setups to make sure that the community is is not being put at risk to women and infants and children programming to emergency preparedness as health and human services may be drawn into things like flooding response or other events how is it that we can do our piece well a lot of things come out of public health again that's at the 10011 North 8th behavioral health is really a continuum what can we do as a county system for mental health and substance use everything from the emergency level to the long-term care that's a gigantic world we don't receive a lot of funding in that world so we sure certainly can't meet all the community's needs but what can we do to fill in gaps that other other entities or nonprofits might not be doing so again those were the 10011 North 8th we have our aging and disability resource center and our elderly services which is in Sheboygan Falls at 650 Forest Avenue really information and assistance what is it that's available to individuals with disabilities or as they're aging and may need more assistance free service there to help families plan and find out what loved ones might be eligible for senior dining programs on benefit specialists adult protective services if someone's possibly concerned that someone might be taking advantage of someone in a situation due to a disability or aging then staff that can help look into that make sure that that person's going to be okay those are at the Sheboygan Falls the aging and ADRC economic support is in Sheboygan but at 3620 Wilgus Avenue and that's where we have staff there to help with benefits people might be eligible for such as food share Medicaid energy heating assistance on things like that very busy because lots of need out there and then we also have child support which is at the courthouse at 615 North 6th Street with paternity establishment and then enforcing of child support type of orders so that's just sort of touching the surface I mean to think you mentioned 44 services or programs we could probably define that anywhere from 25 at a high level to 150 perhaps if we really went into details on so much 35 million dollars is an amazing amount of resources to try to work with to meet a community's need but with as many people and as many challenges we sure wish it went farther but very grateful to have what we do to work with that's a lot obviously you know and I think in Wisconsin you know other than Milwaukee County which is set up a little differently with state operations there more the other 71 counties they really are the arm of the state government and do so much of this that I don't know if everybody's always aware of that so thanks for that explanation I know in in the situation like this you need skilled employees to do this could you talk a little bit about the type of workforce you hire and how they're involved sure so you have about 200 employees and it really is a number of different kinds of positions a lot of it is the professional type as we do the skilled type of health or human services type of things we have a lot of social workers a lot of people case managers with their like bachelor's degrees in various human service related programs lots of nurses especially in our public health area up to psychiatrists under contract and psychologists in our behavioral health area a lot of administrative professionals helping with various call centers and support and infrastructure roles we certainly have financial type degrees and individuals with the various billing and revenue systems that we have to support our operations so quite a lot quite a lot of different kinds of of individuals working in the system right and I know we're facing as many all over the state are facing child welfare challenges currently could you talk about that a little bit and how we're trying to meet those needs yeah that's very it's not new and it's very concerning it's very concerning to me as someone who works in the field it's concerning with me as someone who lives in a community and has children themselves in the shabuagan area we have about a thousand calls or so per year that someone is concerned that someone might be experiencing child abuse and or neglect that number has been slowly rising over time as society or whatever is creating pressures economics whatever it might be it seems like there's more and more times we're being called that there are concerns but half of those that happen we screen out meaning that something may or may not be concerning but it isn't really a health or safety risk for that child or that family we have some services we will try to connect those people with because something probably happened that made somebody else nervous so we really want to try to help in those situations but about the other half something of concern has happened and you know 300 400 500 600 times in a county in a year that's that feels that feels like something we all wouldn't want when things happen we have to decide is it safe for a child to stay with a family situation and at any given year recently we have about 200 or so children that were removed from their family and they're in some other type of situation perhaps with another family member but perhaps in a treatment setting or some other setting because of challenges that they're bringing but 200 people are 200 children in a year not being with family members due to safety concerns that has to have long-term possible effects for for for those children and families that they will have someday and and gets very expensive for a county system the number has been rising over the past 10 or 15 years besides the number of cases we respond to the number of cases with concerns that relate to needing to have a child removed addiction is one of the main drivers of the increase 70 percent of the open cases that we are working with have addiction that's either driving that referral or complicating that case it results in cases being more complicated and taking longer to resolve and either have a child go back safely or have a permanent safe situation the opioids more and more the methamphetamine use it's a it's a player it's a driver for more and more of these cases I believe there was a day not not long ago a month or two ago there was a day where law enforcement made multiple raids and we had approximately 14 children that we weren't expecting that needed a safe place to be on one given day as not an average day but on one given day to be safe to find that many places concerning what are we trying to do related to those we obviously have a lot of staff we have about 24 social workers in that child protection area once cases have been screened in to be working with families we have a lot of contracted services to try to bring some skills have supervised visits where parents have a chance to work on those skills use those skills demonstrate that things can be safe and okay for their families to be together more and more we're trying to find whatever we can do so the family doesn't get pulled apart as long as there's a path for safety so just this year we had a new grant for in-home safety services which was another one or two hundred thousand dollars of service that we're hoping to be able to have inside homes to provide whatever level of support a family might need so they don't get pulled apart and hopefully can break some of those cycles I can talk about that for a long time but I'll take a breath right now in case that leads for other questions 200 because when I talk to people and use that number of 200 children not being in the average person is just kind of shocked by that number in all honesty and that used to be more like 40 or 50 going back 10 or 15 years and now it's 200 it's been a slow rise it's not stopping and it probably won't stop quickly because no one knows what it will take to stop it that definitely shocks people they're just very surprised at that number and you said to talk about a little bit about the opioid and I know the math is increasing and I keep hearing that when I go to different meetings and conferences and so on can you talk about what we're attempting to do in Sherbrooke County to meet those challenges yeah I've been proud when I came here to see county systems it's been it's very difficult for county systems specifically in my opinion to deal with addiction issues there's a very small amount of dedicated funding from states which are used towards the addictions counties then need to decide with all the mandates of things you have to do there's not much you have to do in the addiction area so a lot of counties really don't put a lot toward that because of the challenges of all the other things Sherbrooke County it's not like we're able to meet the community's needs but compared to some other counties it feels really good that there's a bit more than what we have to do recognizing how it's a driver of family issues and crime in the community and things like that so we have a pretty solid continuum of services not trying to replace what might be available in the community so many times what a county's role is is trying to make sure that as much of a continuum can be present what's missing that others can't do and then we can try to fill that gap so we might be doing things like drug treatment courts here if an individual looks like a good candidate that their addiction is a large driver of their behavior then can we treat the addiction if they're willing as a way and give them a bit of a break on the correctional side because that thing that's causing the behavior is truly being addressed so we have some of those court programs here and they've been expanded through some additional grants we've been able to find we have an array of group type treatment services at the county that people can come to during the days to stay focused on treatment we have sober living arrangements where if someone has been receiving treatment and needs to stay away from their old patterns they can for a short term stay for one month two months maybe three months be in a place with others who are focusing on staying away from bad habits just to build some strength in that area we have some more former brick and mortar residential treatments will contract with for somebody who's really struggling and doesn't have the skills to go get those it can take people seven attempts at trying to address things like the opioid addiction maybe seven times of going to treatment before they're successful and that may not last a long time these addictions are very strong very powerful and then we have a community case management programs we can go out into the community and work with people with addictions in a way that hospital systems can't and others can't there's some designs in the state programs that we offer that allow us to to get out there with people if someone's really struggling with addiction and they come into an office for an hour that's a different person than if you meet them in the community at a coffee shop at their home and have the same conversation you see a different person and you're working on a different set of things so pretty proud of that continuum it's not enough but it feels good to have various kinds of things we do not have waiting lists at the moment it doesn't mean we don't have unlimited capacity but we are able when people hear about our services and come asking for them if they're eligible we're able to serve them fairly quickly which feels really good and you referred to the drug court we also the veterans court and unfortunately some of those former servicemen and women are suffering in that area too and we attempt to do that and frankly we're looking at trying to expand some of those situations within our court system to to help those people and and we'll see how that goes I'm cautiously optimistic on that so I think we could do it any other initiatives that you can see that in 2019 your department is going to be involved in yeah we have some things it's a kind of fun and exciting to talk about today there was a vision we know that there's a number of children in the area schools that struggle somebody notices that something's going on maybe behavior changes maybe grades slip maybe some traumas have some things happening and they notice a change in schools are not staffed very heavily to dig into the social dynamics or offer treatment we have a crisis program and had a vision this year of a therapist and a social worker that would be available when referrals happen either from our own system of like child protection or juvenile justice or just from law enforcement or the school asking us will you come in for one or two months with the family's permission but get to know this child see if you can help understand why something has happened if it's related to mental health what might be the eligible for providing some treatment in that month or two but then getting them set up somewhere so we called that the child assessment team and that began this year and there's been nine referrals so far and Adam I haven't even shared this but the state asked us if we were interested in expanding that they have a grant that they'll be sending us information about that they weren't able to award to anyone yet and so they we may have a chance to make that a little bit stronger so that's exciting we also have healthy Sheboygan County 2020 is really a large it's not just ours as a county it is us trying to facilitate primarily through the health department the community looking at wellness as a whole in the community and focusing on various areas a lot of needs assessment and a lot of planning has been done recently and new groups were kicking in this year to be looking at things such as where are the weaknesses and access points for substance abuse and mental health what else can we do as a community related to addictions in general but probably opioid or meth in particular even though there's other addictions as well just making sure that we're looking at that as a group so new initiatives new working teams have started we added a child protection supervisor thanks to the support from our board members this past year with the complexity of cases and the number of cases workers face tough decisions and need to have adequate access to be able to problem-solving process cases and we looked a little bit weaker in that area than we wanted to to be able to serve the community well so someone recently in the past month started there and then two more things I want to talk about today one is the in-home safety services mentioned that already but that's a new grant and new contracts to have more services that go in to try to keep families together rather than splitting them apart that's begun within the last two months and soon hopefully in the next month or two one of our previous supervisors Dale Deterding who isn't with us anymore unfortunately did a lot of work to look for additional resources for rural transportation which can be so difficult and was able to secure funding for two more mini buses that can serve rural areas and those are on-site and protocols being developed so that hopefully somewhere in April or May they can start complimenting other transportation services to make things a little bit easier in rural communities to get to good for Dale these work lives on yes I think they were talking about perhaps a sticker or a name or something on those buses well deserved yeah yeah thank you Matt glad you're here and Matt wonderful overview covered a lot of ground and and that 30 minutes flew by covered a lot of ground and again we're glad you're here we appreciate that you're you're feeling good about what you're seeing and the people you're interacting with and a lot going on and just to just to sum up in the last minute we have remating you know tis the season it's budget season here in Sheboygan County and in the state and the health and human services department as as Tom mentioned earlier most of what we do is state mandated yet in many cases there aren't the funds there adequate funds to really meet the needs of the community so it's a combination of state funds county funds and we do the best we can with the limited resources here and I think our staff at the health and human services department are second to none wonderful hard-working caring people doing the best they can to serve this community I think we're so fortunate in Sheboygan County so I hope that you got a little bit more of a flavor appreciation of your health and human services department critical safety net services to our community if you have further questions or suggestions for improvement or aware of someone in need or need some help please reach out please take action and Matt is there preferred approach that you have for people to reach out if they have a question or concern is there a number of the website well we do have the website the Sheboygan County website definitely has a health and human services area that's that works well for people comfortable with technology that are able to give us messages through that telephone works that's listed on there too and it's listed to all right well thank you so much for joining us as I mentioned next month another new department head Todd Richter is going to be joining us veteran service officer he's co-located now with the aging and disability resource center which provides wonderful collaboration opportunities so until then thanks for joining us have a good spring and we'll see you soon