- In 1975, a young man in Central Wyoming had the idea to create a non-profit firm dedicated to the idea of improving access and opportunity for Wyoming residents with developmental and intellectual disabilities and those who are recovering from closed brain injuries.

Now, 50 years later, CES is the biggest organization of its type in the state.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is Wyoming Chronicle.

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- Welcome to Wyoming Chronicle.

I'm joined today by Sean Griffin, the CEO of CES, a lot of abbreviations there, but we'll get into what that means.

And Hal Herron, who's the director of the board of directors for CES.

All right, Sean, you're on an airplane.

You're sitting next to someone you've never met before.

And that person learns that you are on CES in Wyoming.

And he says, she says, what's that?

Do you have a 15 second answer for who and what CES is?

- Quick answer is that we are a Wyoming not-for-profit corporation serving adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, as well as those that have an acquired brain injury.

Services include, we'll get into those later, I think, but we support them in pretty much every fashion of their life.

- It stands for Community Entry Services.

And years ago, the name was Dignity.

- I remember that.

- Yeah, there became a conflict with that name, so we changed it to Community Entry Services.

- CES is about to mark its 50th anniversary.

Must be quite an accomplishment for you, huh?

- You know, we're pretty excited about the 50th coming up.

We've been around for a long time.

Got a lot of great communities, and we've got a lot of great services going on.

A lot of families we support, so yeah, we're really looking forward to recognizing all the support that we've had and the people that support us as well during this 50 years.

- Over the 50 years, because of the quality of services that we provide, it's, we've become one of the largest service providers in the state of Wyoming.

- Everything starts small.

- Sure.

- We were just up at the Teton Raptor Center in Wilson, which is now a big, elaborate organization with dozens of people and buildings and campus.

One bird, one guy, one roll of tape in his garage.

How did CES begin?

What do you know about that?

- CES started in 1975 as a non-profit corporation, and it was, started as a grassroots push to really start supporting people with developmental disabilities out in the communities where they live.

- And there's a particular guy who's associated very strongly with the origins of the organization.

That's Gary Hudson, right?

- Anybody that's been around this system or our state for a long time probably knows Gary Hudson and how instrumental he was in getting these services started.

CES is one of the oldest programs, too.

There are just a couple programs that might be older than us but they're in the southern part of the state, so CES has been around for a long time, and that was Gary's vision, to support people in the communities they live in and the communities of choice.

- What do you remember about him?

You both knew him?

- Oh yes, what a wonderful man.

What I remember most was his passion and his vision for helping people with disabilities.

And he took that, I mean it was infectious, he took that and he lobbied the legislature to improve funding for this segment of the population that a lot of people don't wanna talk about.

And that's the beauty of CES, the professional staff that we have, the quality of service that we provide.

- So we're headquartered in Riverton, that's where Gary began his enterprise.

Now it's bigger and it's not just focused in Fremont County anymore, is it?

- We've been in Fremont County like we talked about for almost 50 years now, but we've also been up in Jackson Hole for 43 years now.

So we saw the need up in Jackson Hole and we expanded up to there.

Also during our lifespan, at one time we provided services in Sublette County, Sweetwater County, Campbell County, Natrona County.

I did a quick history search and we provided a lot of different services over the years to help get other service providers stabilized and up and going.

- Is there a typical CES client or is the range so diverse?

- The range is so diverse.

We serve individuals that have quite different needs on this thing.

So we serve somebody that might be total care, meaning that they can't position themselves, they can't feed themselves, all the way up to people who are tube fed.

And then the other end of it is we support people that you might not know that we support, because we try to stay behind the scenes.

So there's people that we support that own their own homes in the community and work.

And we just deliver a few hours of services a week maybe to keep them as independent as possible.

- Before CES, what options were there for someone who had say, fallen off his bicycle and had a brain injury and needed assistance?

Was it just catch as catch can, so to speak?

- It was with the brain injury and just the wording of the disability.

So if that had that exact same person fell off their bike and got a pretty severe brain injury prior to the age of 21, they could be considered by funding needs, intellectually disabled, and receive support through institutional care back in the day.

But if they had that brain injury after the age of 21, you're exactly right.

And it was mostly the families that supported them, different agencies would kind of piecemeal services together to support those individuals.

- Hal Herron, you've been the chairman of the board of directors that helps guide CES.

What drew you to it a long time ago?

- Gary Hudson was renting from an organization that I worked for, that we had several buildings.

And he came over and he was always late on his rent.

It was half of a house that was across the street from this place I worked.

And I was in charge of all the real estate.

So he came over and he's always late.

And he goes, "Hal, do you think you, "would you mind serving on the board?"

I said, "I don't know anything about what you do."

But he said, "That's not what I need.

"I need somebody, you'll learn what we do, "but I need somebody to help us with the finance."

- 'Cause that's what he didn't know how to do.

- That's correct.

So it became a symbiotic relationship.

I grew to understand the services that they provide.

And became committed to that.

- Oh yes, man, I'm gonna call it the A-team.

The A-team of the CES employees and staff that care so passionately about taking care of this disenfranchised population.

Let me give you an example.

We're always looking for employees, just like everybody else is in the state.

So when you become an employee here, you have to go through training.

This is the policies and procedures handbook that they have to learn.

That's policies and procedures.

We have other notebooks about the training, about the med, distribution of meds and keeping track of 'em.

And these books stack up to about here.

That's the level of training that our professional staff has to go through to adequately take care and professionally take care of our clients.

- So we're talking about professional services.

You're not counting on an army of volunteers, and there are a lot of volunteers that help CES, but your people who are clients of CES are getting top-of-the-line assistance across the board for all the types of work that you do.

- Most of the services that people get are provided through our direct support professionals.

And those are individuals that undergo a massive amount of training.

They are involved in behavioral interventions.

They are involved in some pretty intimate assistance with daily living skills.

They are teachers.

They administer medications, and they have to go through all that training.

And so we're really focused on, that's one of our big things in the future we're looking at.

We're working with a lot of different groups around the state of Wyoming as well as national agencies to get that position professionalized and get it as part of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because of the amount of training that has to go into that and the amount of care that they have to provide and how diverse it is.

Because they are, in a sense, they're the ones that make the difference.

- A situation, I suppose, where you could look at some sort of, what would you call it, an evaluator, an accreditor, or someone and say, "Listen, here's what we do.

"Look at all of this, it deserves to have "a level of, what, certification, "at least it's recognition."

- Yeah, you're spot on.

- When I look at your public materials, you focus on four elements of service.

Living, vocational opportunity, I think is the word you used, adult day services, community integration.

Let's go through those.

Living, I think you're just talking about someone who needs assistance in just getting through the day.

- Exactly, and again, it varies on their disability level because we serve people with varying needs of disabilities.

When we talk about the community living or our housing programs is we provide, in many cases, 24-hour support for people.

And that includes taking care of daily living skills, being involved in the community on weekends and evenings, doing things along those lines, like you or I would.

- And you also mentioned another aspect of it, and that was one of the things that we're charged with doing is helping clients ingratiate themselves in the community, either through volunteer work or through a job.

So part of what our staff does is help get a client a job.

- So this would be the vocational opportunity aspect of it.

I know in the business that I used to be involved with, we had two memorable cases of CES clients, both very positive experiences, excellent employees, worked one workforce for a long time.

And part of, I'm sure, the work you have to do is get the business community, in this case, accustomed to that idea, comfortable with that idea.

And I think, I would imagine that most people who become comfortable with that idea and have given it a try find it's a pretty satisfying arrangement.

- I think as we've progressed as an organization and as a system throughout, so has the different communities as far as acceptance and understanding the needs of these folks, but also understanding the important contributions they can make to businesses.

And so that's been a hurdle that I think we've overcome.

Of course, there's always going to be barriers in the road, but most employers, especially in the areas that we serve, are very in tune with that, and that's part of our success in helping those people become more independent and be more productive members of the community.

- With your business background, is this something that you recall being particularly involved with?

- Perhaps more initially.

I mean, as it stands right now, we've got staff that are trained and they have outreach programs to various community, through the Chamber of Commerce and things of that nature.

And then word of mouth.

So somebody who owns a packaging enterprise, they're at Kiwanis and they tell somebody else that I've got Jimmy Johnson from CES, and God, what a remarkable individual he is.

He's not only productive, but he's engaging.

- These jobs aren't necessarily working with the public kinds of positions, but a lot of times people who encounter the CES client working a job might not know that there's a CES client.

In other words, any sort of cliche or stereotype about what a CES person working in your business is gonna be, forget that.

- Right, some are somewhat obvious, but many of the folks, like I said earlier, we try to be as invisible as we can with the support.

So, you know, they're more integrated in this community.

- Adult day services.

There's a center I know on your headquarters campus here devoted to that.

What does that term mean?

- And we have them at all of our different, in Riverton, Lander, Jackson, adult day habilitation, basically.

And so what that constitutes, adult day habilitation is a variety of things.

And so it includes recreational opportunities, arts and crafts, learning, educational activities, planning community events, tours, you know, going to the museums, you know, setting up arrangements for that, being involved in Special Olympics, going to the practices.

And so it varies based on individual needs and kind of choices, but it offers a wide variety of activities for the person during the day.

Those that aren't working, or even those that might be working, might participate in the adult day habilitation maybe part-time.

So they can have that socialization and work on socialization skills, or just have the friendships that they've developed over the years and keep fostering those.

- Community integration is the fourth one that you list on your own materials.

That's a big part of what a board of directors does.

Community people who are not full-time employees of the entity, but are the liaisons to the community.

I know you've spent a lot of time on that.

- Well, I tell you, and you know, what's interesting about what you just said is what comprises, what types of skill sets comprise our board.

So we like to have a diverse board, which we do.

Physician, lawyer, business person, ex-banker, and- - Family members.

- Family members.

- And, yeah, and family members.

We had a client on the board for a long time until he passed away.

So we get that input.

The board meets once a month.

And we have board committees that do various things that they're tasked to do.

But, so it expands the outreach of, throughout the community.

- Investing in marketing and communication, it is an investment.

What benefit, what payoff do you wanna see, hoping to see?

- What I'd like to see to benefit CES, I'll be CES specific, is being able to continue serving our communities.

And when I say that, it sounds easy, but at the same time, we have to continue to develop housing, not only for individuals with developmental disabilities or brain injuries, but also our staff up in Jackson.

So we're right in the middle of a project now where we're building some staff housing in Jackson.

Because we have to.

But that's part of serving that community.

And we know that, and that's important to us.

So in the future, what I'd like to see is us continue to reduce our reliability on the state Medicaid program, because it can be inconsistent a little bit as to covering the cost.

And hoping that we can develop more private fundraising and marketing and education about CES and the importance of keeping people in the communities that they wanna be in and also how cost-effective it can be.

- But the challenges with the nonprofit, regardless of what the emphasis is, always have to do with, I guess the word is sustainability.

We're here, we wanna keep going, and that work, in addition to the work you do with the clients, that work never ends.

- A lot of people have good ideas, philanthropic ideas, and they form a nonprofit, and we're gonna go do something.

Well, we've delivered.

The proof, we have shown the proof of the quality of work that we do and the influence, positive influence it's had on our client lives.

Now let's go to the next, connect the dots with your question.

So the answer is yes, most nonprofits have a very difficult time year to year.

We're no different.

Then Sean just mentioned about the continuing to remind the Department of Health and specifically the legislature and the governor about the cost of providing these services.

We're not immune to those cost increases.

And part of that dialogue that we had earlier about professional staff and getting that designation through whatever federal department was is because I showed you the book and all the things that these, and there's recurrent training with these people.

So we need to be able to provide them a suitable salary to live on.

And one of the things that we've focused on is being able to provide healthcare.

That's a huge line item cost.

And then the third leg is we increasingly we've had to rely on fundraisers to supplement our annual budget.

So what do you wanna see CS in five years?

Everything he just said and one more thing.

I would like to see sooner than later a 10 to $30 million, call it an endowment.

The corpus would stay intact and then the interest earned would allow us to bring people into the program or supplements people that may be on the waiting list to get into the program.

- Waiting list is big, isn't it?

- It's big if there's only one person on it because that family needs those services.

But yeah, my guess, I don't know, this is an opinion is probably in the hundreds right now.

And so anyway, that interest would allow us to bring some of those people in and supplement the wages of our staff.

- I spoke with a local Indian Reservation tribal leader, Wes Martell.

And he'd been doing the kind of work he's been doing for a long time.

I said, "What keeps you motivated?"

And he says, "The potential that we have."

And potential is something that you see in CES, I'm sure with the individuals, with the organization, with the opportunities to serve.

- I think the potential for CES, we've shown our potential, but I think there's a lot more we can do moving forward.

There's a lot more people that we can serve that need to be served.

And again, I think our biggest thing moving forward to increase our potential is going to be professionalizing a position of our direct care staff.

Being able to pay these folks a livable wage, because by golly, they earn it.

They work very hard.

And so our potential is unlimited right now.

And I think they talk about business growth, where you grow and then you start to decline and stuff.

And I think we've never really declined in our history right now.

And I think that shows over our 50 years, because we try to always stay ahead of the game, what's coming next.

- One of the ways that the public interacts frequently with CES is through the little store, I shouldn't say little, the store that is operated called the Neat Repeat.

Tell us a little bit about how that started and what it is.

- Our first Neat Repeat, and I did some history, I believe was in Jackson.

- Was it?

- And that went away a long time ago.

But our Neat Repeats in Riverton and Lander have been around for a good, since I've been here, so over 30, about 40 years or more.

In addition to our Neat Repeat stores, we have the recycling programs that we operate.

And those are basically social enterprises, where we're meeting the needs of our clients through vocational training opportunities.

This helps get some of those folks that might need a little more pre-vocational training before they're ready to go out in the community for an independent job.

So they serve that role as well as our Neat Repeats provide low-cost, either furniture or clothing or other household incomes to people or household needs to people.

And we can't do that again without the donations.

That's all donations there.

- So here's where the community interaction aspect of it hits, the rubber hits the road, so to speak.

I mean, it's a secondhand store.

People can bring merchandise in, and there's more than you can handle always.

- A lot of times, that's the face of our organization.

And that's just a small fraction of what we do.

And the face of CES goes way beyond that, way, way beyond that.

But you're right, that is the face of our company.

Those where they see our folks, that's where they interact.

Also, our recycling, we have a great partnership with the city of Riverton and Fremont County Solid Waste District.

And we're one of the very few communities in Wyoming that still supports curbside recycling.

So it's a great service.

- It's a great service.

It's a do-the-right-thing interaction that the public can have with CES and vice versa.

- And we started that with the premise, basically, to try to create jobs for people with significant disabilities.

And it's kind of, again, our potential.

It keeps expanding some of the options that we have.

- There's some other things that we've taken upon ourselves.

Thank God with supportive people like Rocky Mountain Power, we approached them under the Blue Sky Initiative such that we were able to get solar panels installed on this building.

That covers probably a little over half of the electricity needs of just this building.

So we're trying to do our part.

- CES is an employer itself, of course.

What's your- - We employ about 150 people.

So we're a relatively large employer in Fremont County.

- I participated a couple of times in some fundraising sort of events, fun events in the community.

And you still are doing some of those things, correct?

- We do three major fundraisers, one in each town.

And part of that's to raise the funds, but it's also to raise the awareness and friendship fundraising.

And for example, we have our festival trees.

And last year that drew about 900 people.

And that's just so people can come in and thanks to some sponsors, they don't have to pay a thing for it.

And we do the old fashioned cake walks and they have games.

They get to see all the trees, the decorations and vote on the trees and cotton candy, face painting, soup.

We provide soup for everybody.

And so that's a fundraiser.

The next night when we do the gala and the auction and stuff, but it's also a fundraiser to get people.

- What you're doing, you have these incredible sort of themed decorated trees and they're auctioned off.

- Yes.

- And it's different from anything you do at home with your Christmas tree.

And just think about that number, 900 people turning out for something in really almost any size town these days when there's so much more distracting, diverting kind of entertainment to do.

Maybe a football game brings 900 people out, but that's a real success for you.

- It is and it's fun.

We meet new people every year.

- Sure.

- And then in addition to that, we do the Dancing with the Stars is our biggest fundraiser over in the Lander community.

And then up in Jackson, we do, we have what we could call the art of love.

We've been running that where we have artists contribute paintings on bases or plates.

We have an auction and a theme party for that.

We've kind of held off on that for this year, focused a lot more on the Old Bills.

- Elaborate on that for a bit.

- The Old Bills Fund Run is a fundraiser for nonprofit organizations that provide services in Jackson Hole.

And the money we raise stays in Jackson Hole.

And you have Old Bill, who's the primary sponsor that he donates.

They have sponsors behind the scenes and the monies that they donate, then become matched monies.

Then we go out and privately raise our own monies.

And then that money gets matched up to a certain amount, up to $30,000.

- One of the things that he does so well is if there's a sickness at one of our group homes, they call him at two in the morning, said, "Cheryl didn't show up.

"Can you come down?"

Shawn goes.

- The boss goes.

- The boss goes.

I'll be up at a grocery store here in town.

Shawn will walk in with one of our clients that wanted to get a salted nut roll.

And it just, man, I just dig that hands-on work at work.

I mean, it's just remarkable.

And it's not just Shawn.

Our other employees do that too.

I keep stressing it.

I'm a big advocate.

This is a five-star firm.

And it just, I'm so proud to be associated with it.

But we're at critical mass.

We have the infrastructure.

We've proven that we can do the job.

And now we're looking to expand it.

We're not top-heavy, but we have the A-team.

I mean, and so there's very few people at the, quote, management level.

It's pretty flat organization.

And so with that, A, we can bring in more clients.

We can expand the service area, do more work out on the Wind River Indian Reservation.

- Not out of ideas yet.

You're seeing- - Not yet.

- Things you can continue- - I see some exciting stuff coming.

I'm not out of ideas, and Hal's never out of ideas.

But I do see some excitement coming for CES.

50 years in, we still have a lot to do.

A lot of service needs to be met.

Like I said, we're developing housing up in Jackson Hole, which is a big undertaking.

But we would not be able to do that without the support of private donors.

And we appreciate that very much.

But that'll help us continue to, Jackson's a really expanding community as far as the people that need services and supports from CES.

And so that's a priority for us, to be able to have our staff be able to have affordable housing.

And affordable housing in Jackson is almost an oxymoron.

But we've certainly worked with the kindness of some people to get that done, and we're right in the process of that.

And again, we've just been able to talk about our potential, our potential from the very start of this organization.

A few people want to really recognize what's going on and get people more independent and working all the way up to where we're at now with the number of people we serve and also all the different types of services we provide.

And our potential just keeps increasing.

I think we just keep and keep and keep increasing the potentials there.

- And you're not in the no saying business.

- We're not.

And I take this pretty personal.

As a nonprofit organization, our charge is to support our communities regardless of the person's level of disability, level of behavioral intervention needs or the medical needs that they might have.

And so we always try to develop those services around that individual so we can keep them where they want to live and keep their families intact.

- Still a reason to get out of bed in the morning, it sounds like.

- Is for me.

I've worked here almost 36 years, and I can honestly say I've never dreaded having to get out of bed and come to work.

I just haven't.

I'm surrounded by great people.

And when I say great people, it's not just the staff, it's the people I support.

And I've never had a bad day here.

- Shawn Griffin, Hal Herring, congratulations on the big anniversary, half a century with more to come.

And thanks for being with us on Wyoming Chronicle.

- [Hal] Thank you.