Seeing someone close to her struggle to find mental health resources is among the driving forces that keeps Journey Mental Health’s new CEO determined to make sure no one else in Dane County is without care.
“I have felt the despair when someone says there’s nothing that can be done,” said Sarah Valencia, who began her leadership role at the Madison nonprofit in January.
Most recently, Valencia served as assistant deputy secretary at the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. Before that she held leadership positions at Access Community Health Centers and UnityPoint Health-Meriter Hospital.
Journey Mental Health serves more than 50,000 people annually, including more than 40,000 calls each year to its 24-hour crisis line.
The Cap Times recently sat down with Valencia to get her thoughts on her new role leading Journey Mental Health and how she views the challenges and joys of crisis care into the future.
This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What skills from your previous position do you plan to bring to this new position?
I think what I can bring here is understanding and knowing the inner workings of how state agencies work, how the Legislature works, how the governor’s office interplays, how laws actually get made, what actually goes into it, what kind of feedback external partners offer to either the agencies or the Legislature or the governor’s office for feedback on bills, especially when it comes to the budget.
I have a pretty good understanding now of how that budget process works. It’s starting now for the ‘27-’29 budget. …And then, just in general, dealing with major issues at the state has prepared me to be able to help Journey through some of the similar issues at just a local scale. The federal government funding cuts, for example, or the relationships between the state and the county, and the county to the nonprofits, just having that overall understanding of how the ecosystem works for mental health centers in general in the state. I think the experience there at DHS gives me a good perspective on that.
What brings you to Journey at this point in your career?
I have lived in Dane County for 20 years, and wanted to focus on issues that are important to me at the local level. The experience I had before going to the state, working at UnityPoint Health-Meriter Hospital and their addiction services and population health services, and then before that, at Access Community Health Centers — Journey Mental Health Center has been kind of tangential in all of those roles. So, it just kind of made sense when this opportunity came to be available, that I thought that my skill set and experiences and connections in the community, and just overall understanding of how Dane County generally in the health care ecosystem operates, would be a good fit.
What about Journey’s mission to provide mental health and crisis care resonates the most with you?
I’ll speak a little bit on a personal level. …I’ve felt the desperation of trying to find mental health care for a loved one. I have felt the despair when someone says there’s nothing that can be done: “We recognize there’s an issue and there’s no services we can offer.” I have felt the fear and anxiety when law enforcement shows up in a mental health crisis situation. I’ve felt the despair when an insurance company puts up barriers, whatever those barriers might be.
All of that personal experience resonates with Journey’s mission, which is to provide crisis care and the overall continuum of care. I know that people in my community are struggling with those same feelings and issues every day. We know here at Journey, 40,000 people call the crisis line a year, which is over 100 a day. And so having that personal experience and knowing what Journey offers is really what fulfills the mission for me. My personal mission, Journey’s mission really speaks to it.
What makes you passionate about mental health and crisis care?
I think the mental health field is so fragmented and limited, but I know it can get better. I know it can look better. … I think we can be a leader in Dane County when it comes to the mental health services that we offer.
Another piece is that almost 50% of people in the U.S. are going to experience a mental health condition at some point in their lives. We know that we need to build an infrastructure. We need to build a mental health service agency that can offer that support to many different types of people who might need our services during their lifetime. I want the system to work better for our community, ultimately, is really what draws me to it. All of those issues that we know that we have, the access issues, the number of people trying to get services, the way that it’s delivered, I just think it draws me to it. When there’s problems, I like to try to solve them.
What other challenges do you see facing the mental health and crisis care landscape, and how do you hope to address those?
Funding is a big one. Insurance pays for mental health care but generally doesn’t cover what it actually costs to provide quality mental health care. And so Journey, as with many other nonprofits, have to rely on the state and county and philanthropic donations to be able to provide and fill all of those gaps. We know that the federal government, the state, the county, are all experiencing funding challenges right now, and so that is going to continue to be a big challenge for us on the ground here, working when the folks we’ve relied on for funding don’t have the funding to offer.
Another challenge is the acuity. The state of our world right now causes a lot of stress for folks, and it’s showing up, like the number of calls we’ve got in the call center. The problem’s not going away. In fact, it’s probably just going to continue to increase.
And then workforce; there’s not enough mental health practitioners to care for the people who need it. …We need a shift overall in how we support the mental health workforce, how we compensate them, ways we can be more innovative in how we help folks receive their education or their training. We need to make sure there are more opportunities for folks to have the training. If we don’t have clinicians, we’re not going to be able to serve people.
This is not an easy field to be in, so how do you plan to, as the leader of this organization, make sure that the providers are cared for, so that they can care for others?
Journey has done a really good job of focusing on burnout. It’s real, the burnout, the secondary trauma that happens for clinicians and folks who are working in the mental health fields. It takes a toll on folks. Journey’s set up the benefits so that in the first year an employee gets five weeks paid time off, plus holidays, and then it goes up as folks continue their service at Journey. So, encouraging folks to take the time off, to take care of themselves, I think is a really important step that Journey has made.
The other thing that Journey has done that I’m committed to continuing is for our health insurance to access mental health services ourselves as staff. There’s no copay. So from a benefit side, Journey has really taken some big steps that I will continue to support.
Members of CARES team 1, medic Meghan Mason and crisis responder Shane Quella, receive a call at Madison Fire Department Station 3 on Williamson Street in 2023. CARES was created as a partnership between the city and Journey Mental Health to respond to behavioral health crises.
RUTHIE HAUGE
One of the major successes of Journey is the CARES team (the Community Alternative Response Emergency Services team which provides a non-law enforcement response to some local crisis situations). What is your perspective on the importance of that program and what are some ways that you’ll continue to support its ongoing growth?
Absolutely, it is a critical service that Journey has launched. I’m definitely committed to continuing it and keeping it going. Of course, it’ll take the funding and commitment from the various communities here in Dane County to work with us to keep them going. I’m still digging into all of the various programs and what the specific challenges are for them to know exactly what I can help with in order to continue for them to grow. But it is definitely one of our very successful programs that I don’t see changing. I see just growing if possible.
When it comes to funding, some federal support through block grants was delayed this year, which caused some stress. What is your perspective on the volatility of federal funding these days and how you plan to approach that in this position?
I think it definitely is volatile. We’re grateful that the funding came through. But we need to set ourselves up financially so that we’re financially stable to be able to float some of these programs. If we’re relying on money to come in that we need to spend right away, with the volatility that will be very hard. So my goal is to get us and keep us in a stable financial position so that we can weather the volatility, and we aren’t having to make really drastic decisions if funding all of a sudden is changed or reversed or delayed. I want us to have a good base that we can continue programs while we make thoughtful decisions.