A new chapter

The year was 1981.

A young woman had just been hired as a part-time caseworker at Youth Service Bureau and had agreed to start work that same day.

She waited that afternoon until the school bus dropped off students at the residential facility on Arch Street, then greeted the kids as they came in the door.

“Hi,” she told them, “my name is Reda. R-E-D-A.”

One of the girls looked at her and responded, “Did you just get placed?”

She thought the new caseworker was one of the kids.

It was an easy mistake to make.

Petite and looking younger than her years, she could have passed for a high school student.

Reda Theurer-Miller still laughs when she tells the story.

In fact, she laughs a lot and believes it’s been an important part of her career in social work.

“It’s important to have the ability to be caring and compassionate, while recognizing that we still have to find that place to giggle and laugh,” she said last week.

After more than 40 years in social work and nearly 38 at Youth Service Bureau, Theurer-Miller is now looking forward to retirement.

She has formally stepped down as the organization’s chief executive officer but is continuing on a part-time basis to help her successor, Nate Lingo, during a period of transition. And she’ll continue to be hands-on with some YSB projects in 2019.

“I always knew that I wanted to work with people,” Theurer-Miller said as she looked back on her career.

A 1974 graduate of Portland High School, she attended Findlay College in Findlay, Ohio, for a year then transferred to Ball State University, where she graduated in 1978 with her bachelor’s degree in social work.

“I had the opportunity to shadow my aunt,” she said.

Ruth Evelyn Mote, now deceased, was a caseworker for Randolph County Department of Public Welfare. “The director of the department allowed me to go with her on home visits,” Reda said.

There were some important restrictions: She couldn’t speak during the visits and she was prohibited from using any of the names or family situations in her papers as a student. But the lessons she learned while shadowing her aunt made an enormous impression.

“It was a very positive thing for me,” she said.

Her aunt focused on helping those on welfare achieve independence and keep families intact.

“She would always celebrate with her clients. There was always a celebration when they were no longer a recipient of services. … I learned how to stand firm while at the same time helping establish goals that would help the family stay intact. … I got to see all of it,” Theurer-Miller said. That was during 1976 and 1977 when she was still an undergraduate.

After an internship in the social services department at St. Joseph Hospital in Fort Wayne, she landed a job at what was then Community Hospital in Coldwater, Ohio.

“The only person in the social services department was me,” she said. “But I was more than willing to listen and learn.”

Meanwhile, Youth Service Bureau was beginning to take shape in Jay County. Then circuit court judge Dale Hunt took the lead role in establishing what was then known as the Jay County Shelter Care Center at the Arch Street location in 1978.

By 1981, when the young caseworker was mistaken for a high schooler, the organization had been renamed Youth Service Bureau and Paul Whittington was serving as executive director.

In 1983, though she was working full-time, Theurer-Miller decided to go back to school for her master’s degree. She was a full-time student at St. Francis College in Fort Wayne while continuing as a full-time caseworker at the YSB.

All that work paid off with a master’s degree in counseling psychology in 1985. And when Ruth Ann Widman, who had succeeded Whittington, left YSB to join Jay-Randolph Developmental Services, Theurer-Miller was the obvious choice to take the helm.

Today, the organization in some ways is strikingly different from its early years. The number of employees has grown from about 10 to roughly 60, and the array of services has multiplied. YSB today provides home visitation, therapy, case management, supervised visitation, assessment and more to a seven-county area.

But one thing hasn’t changed: Its focus on the kids.

“There were so many fun moments,” Theurer-Miller said. “A lot of quiet moments sitting on the landing with young people, just sitting, listening, sometimes consoling, but a lot of laughter.”

The transition from caseworker to executive director and later chief executive officer came with a price, she admitted.

“I became less and less involved with the young people,” she said. “That was hard for me. But I’ve always maintained an open door.”

And young people still stop by regularly.

In recent years, she has also had to deal much more with state bureaucracy.

“One of the most challenging things was when the funding went from local to state,” she said. “The demands were different. … It became much more about meeting the demands of the state” rather than building local relationships and partnerships.

If there are regrets, they are few.

“I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to go to work at a place I believe in and I feel is vital to the health of this community,” Theurer-Miller said. “Now there are so many things that are out there that I want to do. … There was a realization that I really want to focus on family and friends.”