Al Vario is the new CEO and president of the J. Arthur Trudeau Memorial Center in Warwick. The center offers support and services to those who are intellectually or developmentally disabled.
Vario spoke with Providence Business News about his new role, how the pandemic and inflation have impacted the organization and how the Trudeau Center has responded through the crises.
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PBN: What led you more than three decades ago to want to work in social services?
VARIO: I am unsure exactly why, but from a young age, I always saw myself landing in a profession that helped others – medicine, education, social work, psychology and so on.
I’m still not completely sure what I wanted to do in life. I ended up at Rhode Island College in a health education/community health degree program. While the health education part of the program trained me to be an educator, the community health aspect of the program really resonated with me and exposed me to human service.
It was completing my community health practicum that drew me into the realm of social services, and eventually working with adults with developmental disabilities. Thirty years later, I still find the work as enjoyable and rewarding as I did back when I was student at RIC, and I know this is how I will end my career.
PBN: What are some of your goals for the organization as Trudeau Center’s CEO and president?
VARIO: I am pleased to say that the Trudeau Center has emerged very strong from the pandemic and that I am taking over at a time when the agency is positioned well for the future. That being said, the COVID-19 pandemic stole nearly three years from us, and we need to make up for some lost time.
Also, there is always room for reflection and the need to improve. In the months ahead, we hope to do a deep dive into each of our programs, assessing both for quality and fiscal performance. Recruitment and retention of a well-trained and well-compensated workforce will also be a top priority.
Finally, a new, post-pandemic strategic plan will be on our horizon to help guide our organization for the coming years.
PBN: How has the organization managed both the pandemic and now inflation? Have there been any hurdles along the way and how has Trudeau Center responded?
VARIO: We fared very well overall during the pandemic – [we were] laser focused [on] the health and wellness of our employees and of the many children and adults that our agency supports.
However, staffing of our programs, including our group homes that run 24/7, became a primary concern. Fortunately, we came through COVID-19 largely unscathed, but our overall staffing has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. Like many other businesses and organizations, recruitment and retention of our employees remains an ongoing challenge, despite our best attempts to offer sign-on bonuses, raise pay levels and improve our benefits.
Inflation has also been a significant issue for us, with the cost of virtually everything going up, from utilities and gas for our vehicles to office supplies and health insurance … everything is so much more expensive. Also, we have had to increase employee pay to help them keep pace with inflation.
To counter the skyrocketing prices, we are reviewing and renegotiating all of our contracts, cutting costs where possible and trying to operate more efficiently across the board. At present, we are implementing a new agencywide purchasing program to help keep costs contained and to make our dollars go further.
PBN: What, if any, sort of programming that was developed due to the COVID-19 pandemic at Trudeau Center has become permanent?
VARIO: We operated some rather large, congregated programs prior to COVID-19, including an early learning center for children and a large day program for adults with developmental disabilities. Both were closed early into the pandemic for health and safety reasons.
As COVID continued, however, we came to realize that the early learning center, which primarily catered to children without disabilities, was really no longer consistent with our organization’s mission, which is “to promote an enhanced quality of life for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.” In its place, we have opened an Applied Behavior Analysis Center that primarily serves young children on the autism spectrum, which has become very successful in its own right.
As for the adult day program, we chose to not reopen it in that format but instead have focused on individualized, person-centered services, which really is best practice.
PBN: Are there any new initiatives that Trudeau Center is looking to launch to further help those with intellectual and developmental disabilities?
VARIO: As we continue to emerge from the pandemic, our focus has been to stabilize our current program offerings, however we are always looking to fill a need in the community if it is something that aligns with our organization’s mission.
The Trudeau Center today provides services to as many children as it does adults. We constantly hear that many of the children we work with are in dire need of behavioral health services – particularly psychiatry and counseling – but that there are too few providers in the state and wait lists for services are long.
Although we are always open to new possibilities, exploring children’s behavioral health likely in the form of an outpatient clinic is a current ambition and priority of ours.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
