Hello world, welcome to WFHR's Rapids Report, probably brought to you by Crockett Sceptic
for this Wednesday, October 22, 2025. Have your host James here, or join right now by
our friends from the ODC, and we're have joined in with us right now, Aaron Smith. She
is the president and CEO of the ODC, and this is the first time joining us, Aaron, good
to meet you.
Hello, yes, thank you, thank you for having me today.
I was telling Aaron in our pre-game, I've heard nothing but good things about you, it's great
to put a face to the name and all of that, and for the community to put a voice to the
name, if you will, appreciate how have you been enjoying things, how have you, how have
things been going your first time here with us?
Yes, it's been fantastic, I started in May, so I've got about six months under my belt
now. I've been very familiar with ODC for decades in prior areas of my work in long-term
care and home and community-based services, but it is my first time being on the provider
side. So it's been really exciting, I have a fantastic team, it's an amazing community
the community is so supportive of us in all the different areas that we are located
in, so it's been really fun getting to know people and just appreciate this opportunity
to share a little bit about myself and what we're doing at ODC now.
Yeah, let's just, if you don't mind, just a little bit more about you, you from this
area, your background, you mentioned a little bit of your work background.
Yeah, absolutely, so I am from Wapaka, I do not live in the Rapids area, but I've worked
with in Stevens Point Rapids Marshfield for a number of years, I worked in long-term care
on the managed care side for over a decade, I've worked within the provider association
space for a while, also ran my own independent consulting business for some time working
directly with providers who were doing transformational kinds of projects and work, so kind of
skated all around the provider land and now just really happy to be back kind of closer
to where the action is really happening and getting to support folks every day that need
help, like, the kind of help that ODC provides people.
You've got a very impressive background and we're lucky to have you at the ODC and somebody
with your background in that spot and everything, it does seem a little bit different than what
you're doing now.
It was there something in you that you wanted to work in a nonprofit industry, you wanted
to work in with some company like the ODC.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean, I started my career in long-term care as a social worker and
so I was working directly with clients with intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities
and mental health diagnoses and as I kind of progressed through different areas of leadership
and management and different organizations, I really felt that I was missing being back
closer to the work again and so I was really happy when I had the opportunity to come work
at ODC to feel like I was a little bit closer to the community and back closer to the work
again.
I hear it in your voice, that's awesome, that's really cool to hear.
I am excited for the ODC in our community as I am for you, I love when that happens.
I get really spoiled in this job and tucking the new people and for the most part that's
how it happens where I'm passionate about this and this is so emotionally and emotionally
rewarding as well.
You're seeing more and more people doing that, that's great to hear and happy for you and
that's good to hear and thank you very much for the rundown there, appreciate it.
Now we got to get to work, but it's still fun because we're rewinding before we go forward
and I wanted to talk about the haunted house and how that went.
Yeah, absolutely, so I know one Ann joined you last time, she gave you a preview of what
was to come and our haunted house was just last weekend and it was amazing.
It was my first time seeing it from beginning to end.
I had toured it while they were setting it up a year ago and so I understood how vast
of a project it was, but to actually see it from behind the scenes from beginning to end
was absolutely remarkable.
We have a handful of staff and community volunteers, which is just incredible who literally
transformed our building to be almost like a haunted maze, although it was really just
a path through our entire warehouse.
It was incredible, all these different scenes of creativity and design that they did to
really create quite a spooky experience through our building, fully accessible.
I know Ann shared all of that with you last month.
It was a great success.
We had over 2100 people that came through our doors over Friday and Saturday evening,
many, many families, all ages, individuals that were really happy to be able to have
a space where you could bring a stroller through or a wheelchair through.
It was fully accessible.
So it was a really cool opportunity.
You got to meet so many great folks from the community and really cool to just see how
many people showed up.
We had food trucks out in the parking lot.
It was a really a full experience event and really kind of a nice kick off pre-Halloween
to get people in the Halloween spirit.
It's becoming more and more popular every year and just as much as that the work and the
creativity they're putting into it is getting more and more impressive every year.
It's a fun event and that alone is well worth it, but there's a couple of other layers
to it that I've talked about with Ann before and I've talked about with people in the community
about and I was talking to a listener the other day about this and they had just heard
that the ODC had did this.
This is last month but it feels like it was the other day and we're talking about it
and they were saying, wow, I didn't know the ODC would do something like that or that's
really cool they're doing that and it got me thinking more and more about it and you
might not think of it but if you know the ODC, this is actually right up the ODC's alley
really in many ways, not so much a haunted Halloween event but just something that can
event that thinks of things that we don't always think about.
That are gray areas in our minds and our society sometimes that we don't always think about
people that are maybe sensory issues or some other things that just aren't in our brains
always a right away and part of the ODC's purpose and mission is to do that, is to remind
us of these gray areas, these things that we don't always see in our blind spots.
Why not with a holiday like this and what a great way to not only bring the community
together, give people something to look forward to, like you said, celebrate Halloween
a little bit early, I'm okay with that, I love Halloween.
But also bring some attention and awareness and some people into the physically, into
the building and really understanding it, you know, we're just meeting ourselves and
getting to know each other, Aaron, this community has heard me ramble for years about the ODC
and my family like many out there were really impacted by the ODC and helped by the ODC.
For every family like that, there's people out there that may have never been to the building
or something so you bring them in, bring a more attention to it, it's just such a win-win
for everybody.
Yeah, absolutely and I can say, you know, we had some folks, I was kind of in the greeting
crew and had families ask, well, you know, what's the fee or where's the fundraiser part
of this and this really was an opportunity for us to just give back and, you know, people
wanted to leave a donation, they absolutely could, but it was by no means a requirement,
there was no search urge, it was really just open the doors and come and have a good
time and we felt really good about being able to do that and we're really happy to see
that people were taking up on that opportunity to have a free event for the family.
It's a fun one, we're already looking forward to the next year and I have no doubt that
there are already planning and putting little, you know, making mental notes and everything
for next year, it'll be a lot of fun, but looking forward to it.
Also looking forward, I was looking forward to talking about this with you, the launch
of the New Mental Health and Children's Services in Marshfield and we touch on that for
a moment.
Yeah, absolutely.
So we've been providing children's services and our mental health clinic, our opportunity
for hope is our clinic here in Rapids and we are looking at expanding our reach there.
So we can serve anyone in the mental health services through telehealth.
However, there's a lot of folks that would rather see their therapist in person, you know,
for outpatient therapy.
So we're using our existing space in the Marshfield area, but there's some transformation
we need to do to make it a more inviting therapeutic environment for folks.
So we're working on that right now, we're certified and ready to go.
It's just a matter of getting that space ready and making some investment there to make
sure that it is, it feels like a therapeutic environment.
But we're really excited for that.
We know there's a lot of need and all of our communities for mental health resources
and options there.
So we're excited to get that going recruitment, you know, always takes a little, a little
while to make sure you're finding the right fit, getting the word out, really going through
that interview process.
So that's also an investment of time and resources that will be, will be starting here soon.
And similarly with the children's services, we have some space in our Marshfield area,
but it needs some work to really make it an inviting space for children's services.
We do after school supports in the summertime, we do daytime supports when the children
are not in school.
We do respite services either at our facility in the community or even in the family's
home, if they're wanting to work on some skills that we can help work on with the parents
as well.
And that is really just an exciting area for us because we know from the work that we do
within the school districts, we know that there's just a growing need for, there's a lot
more early diagnoses of children that might have some kind of special needs or some kind
of extra support.
And the family sometimes just don't know where to go or don't even know what's out there
as an option to help them.
So we're really happy to be able to fill that need.
We know what's a growing need.
We're getting outreach from our surrounding communities to say, hey, can you, can you help
us out with this?
So we're really trying to be able to respond to those needs and grow in the areas where,
where we know that there's the need for supports like ODC can provide.
This is a society, let alone individual communities.
It's been less than 15 years.
We've really brought mental health to the forefront.
We talk about it more, we're more aware of it that we've ever been as a society.
And it's something we talk about in a raised voice now, not hushed voices and some of
those things.
But while we're there now with as a society, the ODC has been on this topic long time
ago for many, many, many years, mental health has been important.
It's integral to the work that you guys do over there in individuals mental health.
In fact, sometimes it's the main focus of the work that's being done with a client
or something like that.
So it makes sense and it's, it's so encouraging to hear of like the expansion of these things
or the addition of these things, you know, adults certainly, you know, need help in everything.
But focusing on kids or, or, you know, other people that might not be have services available
to them.
Otherwise, it's such a great thing to be able to see that the, the ODC seeing these
gray areas, these blind spots again, that really could be benefited in our community.
And the neat thing about it is you're absolutely right.
It's been identified for years that this was, these were service areas that ODC wanted
to grow and develop.
And it took a while for that to kick off, you know, it was, it was there and the structure
was there for it.
And now we're really seeing the referrals coming through and the need and sometimes it
just takes a while to get the word out that, hey, this isn't offering and, and help
is there.
And, and we want to be able to meet those needs of the folks in our communities.
And, you know, to, to the point of what you're saying before about where we need to get
these buildings right, we need to get them set up right and everything, I, I, I'm encouraged
by that too.
It's so much of a, this is where I, my love of nonprofits really kicks in where yes,
we need to keep the lights on.
That's important.
But our job is about people, not money and, and so getting it right instead of done
quickly.
And that's, that's really encouraging to hear.
It's all the better for these communities and our communities as a whole.
That's great.
Kind of piggybacking off of that going into the well pack expansion a little bit.
How is that going?
Yeah.
So we've really been talking about how do we continue to grow to ensure that we can reach
the folks that need help the most, meet the needs of our surrounding communities.
It's a lot easier to expand when you're talking about a, a neighboring, you know, a neighboring
county or a neighboring community.
And we've been getting outreach from, from folks and we'll pack a saying, hey, we could
really use some extra help when it comes to community supported living, when it comes
to supported employment types of services.
And that's a neighboring community of ours.
And so it kind of was a natural space to look at growing into.
And we found a beautiful office space there.
It's great location and gives us really just the right amount of space that we need to
kind of get things going in that area.
And we really believe that when we can be physically present in an area, have staff that
live there or are living within a relatively close proximity, that that really helps our
ability to build the relationships that are critical for us to be successful for employment
services.
For example, when our staff can really get to know the businesses in the community, they're
able to help make really good employment matches with our clients who want to get a job
in the community.
And if we don't know the community well and we don't know the business partners, it's
a lot harder to find the right match for someone who's going to then be successful in their
job.
So we really want to make sure that we can have that local presence.
And we're really excited that we're going to be able to have that in Wapaka and start
to get the word out there as well.
And again, a neighboring community.
There might be folks that live in Rapids or Stevens Point that commute and work and
will pack a similarly to I work in Wapaka, but I drive here every day for work.
You know, when you live in a small town, you just kind of, I guess, I would say I assume
that there's going to inherently be some commuting when you live in this part of the state
of, you know, someone of a rural area, you're going to have to drive a little bit for work
and, you know, you kind of don't really bad and I at that anymore nowadays.
So again, work's I did to be there to be local and to continue to model what has been
really successful in Rapids and other communities as well.
We talk about it a lot when it comes to business and economics and a community's economics.
And no community survives on just its citizens alone.
Everybody is needed of a point coming here and shopping and us going to point to shop
and Wapaka and these other areas.
This topic is no different.
This topic is just the same.
There are going to be people that not only need these services that live a town over or
something like that, but the one of the major missions of the ODC of serving helping
your clients get fine employment.
Being able to look in other neighboring communities is only going to expand that that much
more and get more people into the workforce and everything.
It's a win-win.
It's also I got a little caught up when you were talking about that Aaron because I know
the history of the ODC and I know how so much of that that finding clients jobs started
here in Rapids and to think that we've expanded that you've expanded that much to other.
That's really cool.
I just wanted to take a second that that's really cool to hear and stuff and that's very
cool.
Again, it's cool, but it's also a positive to our community.
It's a positive to our economics.
It's a positive to getting more people into the workforce, the win-win.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
It's cool to hear.
Also, I wanted to make some time to talk about the self-determination conference that's
coming up.
I don't know much about this.
Can you tell us about it?
Yeah, so this conference actually today is the last day of it.
So I'm missing the final day, but I got to go yesterday.
Actually this was the 18th year that the conference has been up and running.
It is hosted by the BPDD or the board for people with developmental disabilities.
It really and truly is focused on self-determination or self-advocacy.
The primary folks that attend this conference are individuals with disabilities, their caregivers,
their families, folks that are saying, how do I live a self-determined life?
Then you also have a lot of people like ODC, funders that join as well because they're
all committed to helping to ensure that people can live as autonomous of a life, as self-directed
life that they possibly can live in.
So the conference is really designed around advocacy, skill building, independence, and
connecting people to the resources to help them be able to do that.
And it's really cool ODC for years to my knowledge has brought not only staff that go down,
but they go down and bring clients with.
So they get the experience, they do dinners, they did last night, they do a dinner awards
and a dance, they have a DJ, and it's just really cool because sometimes for individuals
was a disability.
It might be the first time that they got to go to the Kalahari in the Wisconsin Dells,
spend the night, go to a dance, I mean just go to the things that are just really some
of the most fun parts of your year, to look forward to an event like that, and then
tap it with, you're getting to learn a lot of skills about how to live more independently,
get connected to tools and resources to do that, give service providers like ODC, our
staff that go down there, they might attend some sessions where they learn a few things
that we can bring back to provide better services as well.
So it's just really a holistic kind of approach from the folks who receive services to the
individuals that are providing services to kind of come together and figure out how
can we all do this better together.
And again, 18 years that they're providing this conference, I don't have the final number,
but I heard yesterday that there were perhaps around 700 people that joined this conference.
So it's a big reach and it was really cool to be able to be a part of it and really
cool for ODC to be able to send some, not only our staff, but a number of clients down
there as well to get the full experience.
Can see so much of what you're saying and along with all of that, the fellowship that
can only happen when you're with people that know a little bit of what your life is
like, that the relatability that's there, that they don't have that often, whether it's
the people working this, you know, or the clients, either or, that's a really cool part
of that too.
That's great to hear.
And I want to go to next year's.
Sounds awesome.
It sounds like a lot of time.
Absolutely.
Anybody should, anyone that's interested in whether it touches you to one degree or another
with self-advocacy is so important and it's just a really fun time.
You know, the energy there is kind of like nothing else.
It seems like it.
You should check it out.
Speaking with Aaron Smith, President and CEO of the ODC, and Aaron, just a one last thing
I wanted to get into with you, the Project Search 2526 school year.
Touching on that a little bit.
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's the, you know, we're kind of kicking off the beginning of this school year.
And for those that don't know a lot about Project Search, it's a really incredible program.
It finds individuals who are kind of transitioning out of school wanting to experience work.
It really needs some assistance to be able to do that.
So ODC is one of the partners where you are, we are a provider, obviously in this space
where we partner with locations in Wasos, Stevens Point, Wisconsin Rapids and Marshfield.
We'll work with places like Aspirus, the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, the Riverside
Hospital, Marshfield Medical Center.
And we will pair our staff with the interns who are students.
And there's adult interns as well who have maybe had a hard time finding the right employment
match.
And so we have these amazing partners through Project Search that give our interns their
actual space at their place of employment.
So for example, at Aspirus, and they will spend every time, every morning together working
with different skills, learning different specific roles within the clinic or within
the university or whatever the setting might be that we have the Project Search work with.
And they'll get to learn that job and they'll spend the entire school year mastering that,
learning the skills sets, it's social skills, it's confidence, it's the specific job skills.
So whether you're working within, you're working within the filing or you might be doing
some of the work within Laundry, for example, or within the kitchens, a wide variety of
different types of work you can get.
And then they go through a formal graduation.
They may be offered a job at the end of it at that specific location.
Or they may now have something on their resume that says, I got to have this work experience
for an entire school year.
This is everything I've learned.
I got to work directly with the folks at the clinic or at the university, for example.
And then directly with the ODC staff that specifically helped coach them throughout the
year and helped them through that skill building.
They go through an actual graduation ceremony, which is incredible to see.
And then either, like I said, they may end up with a job at that space.
Or now they can move on to find a different job in the community using those skill sets
that they have been working on throughout the school year.
So we have almost 30 interns this year that we'll be working with.
That's awesome.
Again, across those locations between Los Al Point Rapids and Marshfield, and it's just
a really neat opportunity.
One of the other things I wanted to highlight, there's a rotary winter wonderland that we
have been doing in the Marshfield area.
That show opens up the day after Thanksgiving.
And then it runs every night from 5 until 9 p.m. until December 31.
We sign up and we have volunteers who collect donations at the gates.
And this is something that is just a really cool opportunity.
And if you haven't ever seen it yet, it is definitely worthwhile to check it out.
And again, you can probably Google the Marshfield rotary winter wonderland and find out more
information on that.
But that will be starting again over this holiday season.
You have to check that out.
Make plans, bookmark that or mark it on your calendar for that one, everybody, especially
if you haven't gotten the chance to take it in before.
Aaron, it's been great talking with you, getting to know you, looking forward to talking
again real soon.
If people have follow-up questions, they want to know more about some of what we talked
about today, or just the ODC in general.
What's the best way to get in touch with you, send them to the website?
Is that the best there?
Yeah, absolutely.
You can check out our website.
You can reach me directly at eSmith at odcinc.com.
Happy to chat again, being new to the rapids area.
I'm really looking forward to meeting new individuals.
I've been having a lot of great conversations with folks that have been long time supporters
of ODC and just excited to get to know more people in the community.
So please reach out.
And for the audience to be aware, Aaron hasn't done anything like this before.
You nailed this.
Well done.
Great job.
Thank you so much for having me.
And thank you everybody for joining us for another edition of WFHR's Rapids Report.
