Westmoreland County launches human services expansion

Officials with Westmoreland County’s burgeoning human services department said an expansion of services launched this month will improve the quality of care for many of its 35,000 clients.

A newly formed six-member complex care unit will oversee the consolidation of services administered by the county’s separate human services departments including behavioral health, children’s bureau, veterans affairs, aging and drug and alcohol addiction.

Human Services Director Rob Hamilton said the expansion will enable county team leaders to branch out and initiate and coordinate services for all clients regardless of which program in which they initially participate.

“We were doing this just in behavioral health, and now we will be able to do it throughout all our human services departments,” Hamilton said. “This will ultimately allow us to use less resources, increase outcomes and serve more people and serve them better.”

The expansion was identified as part of long-term goals set by county commissioners when they formed the human services department in 2021 by consolidating individual programs into one joint agency administered by Hamilton.

About a third of the county’s $456 million budget is allocated toward human services.

Many of the department clients receive services from multiple agencies at the same time, Hamilton said. The expanded service will allow a team of case managers to review needs and initiate services for clients throughout the county’s human service network.

“We were getting pulled in when a case was already complex, and we were putting out fires,” said Jessica Lesniewski, the county’s complex case director. “With this coordination, we can now be more proactive and we can prevent the fire from starting.”

In prior years, because each social services department was a separate entity and had autonomy over the services they provided, there was little coordination among the different programs, officials said.

Consolidation is expected to allow better communications among staff, and the expansion is designed to enhance services to ensure clients receive needed help from a variety of programs no matter where a recipient is first enrolled, officials said.

In 2022, Lesniewski’s team conducted more than 580 sessions to link behavioral health clients with multiple services. That number jumped more than 40% last year, and, with the expansion, another 30% to 40% increase is expected, she said.

“Nothing has ever been done like this before in Westmoreland County,” Lesniew­ski said.