Information Beans: Southern Illinois Regional Social Services

One person’s dreams of helping others have been put on hold because of something out of her hands: a struggling economy and a corrupt governor.

Karen Freitag, the executive director of the Southern Illinois Regional Social Services, has been helping people throughout the community of Carbondale for the last decade.

“At the time, the organization had dived into a hole,” said Freitag,. “I had to rebuild it.”

Freitag did rebuild the SIRSS, but the last few years have been hard financially. As a non-profit organization, the SIRSS relies on the state for almost all of its funding.

“It’s hard when the state doesn’t pay in a timely fashion,” Freitag said.

Getting less money from the state has meant budget cuts, lay-offs bank loans. None of this has been easy on Freitag, who graduated from Southern Illinois University and got her master’s in social work at Arizona State University.

Freitag spent 16 years in Arizona putting others before herself. This meant lots of non-profit work and caring for the mentally disabled.

Although Freitag enjoyed working directly with those less fortunate, she found her real passion on the administrative side.. She found herself better suited for policy-making and dealing with budgets within her non-profit organization.

In 1999, Freitag brought her leadership skills to the SIRSS, along with her drive to make a difference.

“Our top concern, which is our motto, is being ‘the best we can be,’” Freitag said, who feels that her organization can always do better.

Recently this motto has been put to the test: the country’s economic downturn has taken a toll on Freitag, who has had to lay-off 13 employees in the past year.

Although it may not seem like a huge number, it has taken a toll on those who depend upon the SIRSS get better. This includes mental health patients, substance and drug abusers, and children who have grown up in abusive environments.

Some of the lost employees happened to be counselors, which is a big blow to the organization. “Losing counselors makes it harder to help,” Freitag said.

Being a non-profit organization, the SIRSS looks to volunteers for help with such activities as its Big Brothers Big Sisters program. But volunteers can do only so much with patients due to confidentiality problems, and experts are needed for certain situations.

The maximum number of patients a counselor can see in a week is somewhere between 26 and 30. This means, with each counselor lost, the SIRSS is forced to turn away patients..

“Those who can’t get our service have to go somewhere else,” Freitag said.

But don’t other non-profit organizations rely on state funding? Will they have to turn away these patients as well?

The state of Illinois makes up for 90 percent of the organization’s budget. Since the economy has taken a turn for the worse, the state has been delaying payments and the SIRSS has been forced to explore new options.

As for its financial problems, the organization has looked to banks for loans. Unfortunately, during these hard economic problems, banks are less willing to provide them . The SIRSS organization also has to worry about paying interest to these banks when money is not coming in.

Freitag and her service have looked for other solutions, such as going to the media to get the word out. By doing this, they hope to put pressure on the new governor, Pat Quinn, to help with their funding issues. Not much is known of Quinn’s agenda, but Freitag says she sees no immediate end in sight.

“It’s frustrating, but it creates drive,” Freitag said. “We will fight hard.”

Freitag will not only fight hard to keep the organization together for her patients, but for her community as well.