Human Support Services is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, with a recent 1970s-themed trivia night celebrating the agency’s history and an upcoming Shine Your Light Gala set to highlight the milestone even further.

HSS Executive Director Anne Riley offered her thoughts on the organization’s five decades of service assisting with the mental health, disability and other needs of Monroe County.

Riley joined the nonprofit in 2014 with over 25 years of experience in human services. She was later named executive director in 2017.

She spoke on HSS’s humble beginnings in 1973.

“When HSS was first founded in 1973, there was really a singular goal: to help adults in Monroe County living with mental health concerns,” Riley said.

She credited the several founders of the organization for pushing to get HSS set up in the first place, among them current Columbia Chamber of Commerce Secretary John Conrad.

Conrad also recounted how HSS got started. It was all thanks to a state grant, he said, that the organization then known as Monroe County Mental Health was able to get off the ground at all.

The group was then based in the old Waterloo Milk Company building, working in only a handful of offices and rooms to meet with clients and gathering in a circle for meetings wherever they could find the room.

“Over time, the idea was to begin to develop this agency into a self-sustaining local department, which is what happened,” Conrad said.

In regard to the organization’s growth and success over the years, he specifically pointed to HSS’s first executive director James Poschel for his exceptional leadership.

“We were fortunate enough to have our executive director in those early days, Jim Poschel, stay there for decades, who had the knowledge, experience and vision to take the organization to different levels by expanding services and adding capable staff and generally continually improving the organization,” Conrad said.

A major factor in HSS achieving the growth that it has over the years has been its success with clients.

Conrad said this success helped familiarize folks in the community with the nonprofit – though word of mouth wasn’t easy to get due to the sensitive nature of its work.

“One of the things about HSS, especially in the initial stages, was that it was difficult to gauge the importance and effect we had with people because of confidentiality, because we were dealing with people who had issues, emotional, psychological and family-wise, so it wasn’t something that could really be discussed in public,” Conrad said. “So it took some time for the population in the county to understand what we did until we started touching more and more families.”

Riley echoed this sentiment, saying that though its work has garnered attention from many in the county, HSS’s place in the community has long been a concern for the organization.

In particular, public perception and understanding has been a big issue, with Riley saying that many seem to mistake HSS as a government agency – a big issue for an organization that doesn’t directly receive government funds beyond grants and relies heavily on donations and community support.

A big marketing push back in 2018 to rebrand the organization from Human Support Services to, specifically, HSS was meant to help with this misunderstanding, but improving public awareness of the nonprofit’s inner workings and goal continues to be a struggle as it always has.

“The difference now is that as we approached our 50th anniversary, we made it part of our strategic plan to be more intentional about our presence in the community,” Riley said. “Despite our long history and our active role in the community, we find there are still many who don’t know we’re here – and don’t understand what we do.”

Another major challenge for HSS has been the subject of mental health in general, as mental illness has seemingly always held some degree of stigma.

Conrad expressed as much when it came to having conversations in the community about mental health and HSS’s services, though he also said the perception of mental health treatment has substantially improved over the years.

“It has in the country as a whole,” Conrad said. “Now it’s more accepted to admit that you have psychological issues or mental health issues, and 50 years ago it wasn’t something that was disclosed too readily.”

The subject of mental health stigma has and continues to be a big concern for Riley, though she too noted a shift in the societal understanding of mental illness over the years.

She described how, just five years ago, the agency struggled to discuss its history and services as clients were simply too afraid to share experiences for fear of public shame.

Riley contrasted this with a success at last year’s gala where one man shared his personal recovery story with nearly 300 other individuals present.

This change, she said, has come as HSS and many similar organizations around the world have pushed campaigns specifically aimed at reducing stigma.

Locally, this has involved HSS working with schools, law enforcement and other organizations to discuss their work and educate about mental illness. Riley mentioned the agency’s Crisis Intervention Team training, which is meant to help first responders recognize the signs of mental illness and substance use in order to safely defuse situations.

Riley added that personal experience has also played a large role in addressing stigma, as nearly 20 percent of the American population has experienced some sort of mental illness.

“As a society and as a community, we have made great strides in recent years to educate people about mental illness and substance use recovery,” Riley said. “While we are still a long way from truly erasing stigma, people have begun to look at an individual with a mental illness as just that – a person who is living with a disease. The understanding that mental illness and substance use concerns can and do happen to any family, anywhere, has taken root. We have also seen many people recover from very challenging situations, evidence that recovery is possible and treatment works.”

In regard to more recent progress, Riley spoke about HSS’s work assisting those in the community with disabilities.

Following the organization’s past expansion at its current location – formerly the Knights of Columbus Hall – one of its biggest services in this area has been the work center, which has provided those in the community with gainful employment for many years.

HSS has since placed an even greater focus on helping clients find a place in the community beyond the HSS office, from settling into their own homes to working with a number of businesses in the area.

As Riley said, thanks to the help of job coaches providing on-the-job support, many clients are able to make minimum wage or more rather than the sub-minimum wage available with the lighter work at the HSS work center.

“Before the pandemic we were already working on building on our relationships within the community, partnering with many of our local businesses,” Riley said. “Through these connections, clients with developmental disabilities were able to get jobs in the community.”

Conrad remarked on the progress the agency has had in this part of its operations over the years.

“That’s been really a great thing in that we have the homes available, housing available now,” Conrad said. “Those were all things that were never even conceived 50 years ago. And getting gainful employment within the community is another really great advancement that we’ve seen over time.”

Looking ahead, Riley spoke about her further hopes to address mental health stigma while also improving the agency’s other services.

It’s expected that, sometime in the future, the work center could be phased out given the agency’s emphasis on getting clients involved in the community. 

The space previously saw about 60 individuals work, but currently serves only about 25.

Elsewhere, a recent addition to the HSS main office is a space called the Living Room, a more colorful space with comfortable seating meant to serve as more of an “at home” alternative to more traditional, clinical spaces for those dealing with a crisis situation, support groups and other services.

Riley spoke to her overall experience at HSS so far, commending the agency’s members and staff who came before her and the many individuals she’s worked alongside since she became executive director.

“It has been my great honor and privilege to lead an organization with such talented, committed staff and collaborate with our community partners and board to take our organization to the next level,” Riley said.

For more information on HSS, its services and the Shine Your Light Gala on June 9, visit hss1.org.