Human service centers report steady hiring but persistent gaps in licensed staff and addiction counselors

Regional directors for North Dakota's human service centers told lawmakers they have had measurable hiring and retention wins over the past year but still face persistent shortages of licensed clinicians and addiction counselors that constrain services.

Directors from Badlands, Southeast, Northeast and West Central human service centers said they are using recruitment and retention bonuses, tuition reimbursement, internships and internal career ladders to "grow our own" staff while relying on partnerships with UND and other training programs to expand candidate pools.

Badlands Regional Director Jessica Oderman said Badlands is funded for "71½ positions overall" and had 13 vacancies as of Dec. 1, but recently reduced that to "about 6" as hires came on. She highlighted a turnover rate that fell to 11.29 percent and said the center used tuition incentives, recruitment bonuses and internship hiring to retain staff.

Elena Zeller, interim regional director for Southeast Human Service Center, said the region increased staff from 134.8 FTE in 2021 to 167.9 FTE in 2024, but still listed 36.9 vacancies. Southeast described active internship pipelines (including 51 nursing students since July 2023 and participation in the North Dakota Training Academy for Addiction Professionals) and said it is using loan-repayment and tuition reimbursement to recruit.

Northeast Regional Director Jeff McKinnon said his region has made recent recruiting gains, filling satellite-clinic positions and hiring two of three Functional Family Therapy slots; he noted continuing difficulty recruiting addiction counselors and said pay differentials across state lines are one factor. West Central interim director Linden Ring gave similar examples of hires from UND training programs and said some candidates are returning to North Dakota when positions are available.

Speakers described administrative steps aimed at retaining newly licensed staff: Badlands requires clinicians who receive supervision to become independently licensed to stay two years after licensure; other centers said they use prorated payback terms for tuition assistance and multi-year retention bonuses.

Committee accounting staff also answered questions about how much of the centers' growth was funded by federal block grants versus state general fund appropriations, and Southeast staff said some previously budgeted federal funding helped reduce a large general-fund request.

Why it matters: workforce shortages directly limit the centers' capacity to reduce wait lists and stand up crisis and residential services; directors said sustaining recruitment incentives and training partnerships will be needed to keep service expansions viable.

Looking ahead, centers asked lawmakers to sustain funding for recruitment, provider inflation adjustments for contracted residential vendors, and training pipelines that produce locally rooted clinicians.