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Trempealeau County Human Services summarizes 2024 operations, flags funding and staffing pressures
Summary
At the June 16 Trempealeau County Board meeting, a Human Services presenter summarized 2024 program outcomes, staffing challenges, funding sources and specific service metrics, and asked supervisors to continue legislative advocacy on mandated funding.
Jay Hein, presenting the Trempealeau County Human Services annual report for 2024, told the County Board on June 16 that the department delivered multiple services while managing staffing shortages and complex funding streams.
Hein said the department’s budget is financed largely by state, federal and grant dollars and that “roughly 20% of the health and human services budget, or the human services budget, was from levy.” He warned mandated services sometimes receive less funding than voluntary services, requiring creative staffing and use of grant-funded positions.
The department highlighted child welfare, behavioral health, economic support and aging services. Hein said child welfare has had staffing challenges but is “almost fully staffed” while noting the difficulty of measuring success in protective services. Behavioral health noted an increase in adult protective services cases and more referrals to the Trempealeau County Healthcare Center’s Institute for Mental Disease: in 2023 the county referred two people for a combined 160 days; in 2024 five people were referred for a total of 439 days, counted by daily placement rates.
Hein described Recovery Court outcomes as four graduations in 2024, compared with one or two in some prior years. In economic support he said Trempealeau is part of an eight-county consortium that exceeded statewide benchmarks; staff workload rose substantially during the Medicaid eligibility “unwinding” after the pandemic-era pause.
Public health and human services remain in a merger transition; Hein and staff are working on ordinance and policy updates and on syncing HIPAA and other operational procedures. He introduced new Trempealeau County health officer Nani Ruiz and praised early integration work.
On aging and long-term services, the county eliminated the wait list for children with special needs and is working to eliminate the CCS wait list for adults and children with mental health support needs, aiming for resolution by late 2025 or early 2026. Hein said the ADRC relied heavily on volunteers: more than 60 volunteers provided over 4,000 hours of service in 2024.
Hein asked the board to continue advocacy with the state legislature for adequate funding for mandated services. He also noted the department is tracking proposed health funding changes at the state and federal level but had not yet seen direct local impacts at the time of the report.
Questions from supervisors focused on any immediate fiscal impacts, the Medicaid unwinding and timing for changes to ordinances and fee schedules that the merger requires.
