Longtime Norwich administrator retires after 34 years

Norwich — During her more than three decades working for Norwich Human Services, Janice Thompson has had programs and labels come and go, but the one constant instilled by former Director Beverly Goulet is to help Norwich families get through hard times and on their way.

“We help families in need,” said Thompson, 63, who officially retired this past week but will work part-time in her position as administrative coordinator until a successor is chosen. “If we don’t have the resources they

need, we refer them to other agencies. People can come in and talk to a social worker.”

During the 2016-17 fiscal year, the Norwich Human Services office saw 3,068 visits by city residents, including 811 new clients.

Thompson’s job title has changed over the years, but essentially, she has been responsible for the complex finances of the now four divisions of Norwich Human Services: adult and family services, youth and family service, the Rose City Senior Center and now the city Recreation Department. Thompson writes and manages the numerous grants that keep all four divisions operating.

In the current fiscal year, the department’s budgeted revenues total $3,647,530 for all four divisions. Of that, grants total $1,403,214, covering 38 percent of the combined four divisions’ budgets.

Helping families

Many clients are working families struggling to make ends meet, Thompson said. When a car breaks down and they need to use the rent money to fix it to get to work, they might need one-time rental assistance, or a grocery gift card.

Most of those small onetime assistance funds come from grants in what the department calls safety net programs. Thompson helped establish such programs as the pharmacy fund, the “golden wishes” fund to assist low-income Norwich seniors, a utility assistance fund, a school uniform fund, a job-related assistance fund and the backpack-to-school program.

Norwich Human Services also receives half the parking fee revenue from the Connecticut Tigers for its food pantry program, including grocery gift cards, which Thompson also has managed.

Some residents need job training, a successful program funded through the city’s federal community development block grant, or housing assistance through the rapid rehousing homeless prevention program, also funded through a community development grant.

“She really took the lead writing a ton of grants for us,” Norwich Human Services Director Lee Ann Gomes said. “It has to be in the millions of dollars that she brought to the city.”

Gomes has worked with Thompson for the past 32 years.

“We supported each other for so long,” Gomes said. “We both served under Bev, which was the biggest honor for both of us.”

Humble beginnings

Thompson started working for Norwich Human Services part time in November 1983 as what was then called “workfare clerk” in the Department of Social Services. She started working full time there about a year later. The staff mostly handed out checks to clients and confirmed that they were meeting the federally required work provisions, Thompson said, until Goulet became director in 1984.

Goulet changed the entire philosophy of the service, Thompson said. She wanted staff to ask “why” a family or individual was on state assistance, and what did they need to get on their own. Goulet established the concept of case management — now a staple term in human services — with social workers meeting with families, defining their needs and trying to meet those needs.

“Sometimes it was putting a lot more pressure on work sites to hire the people,” Thompson said of the workfare program. “‘You like their work, so hire them.’”

Signature program

Thompson helped establish and chaired one of the signature programs at Norwich Human Services, the Safety Net Committee, which oversees the many small grant programs and one-time assistance offerings. In 2001, she received the city’s Distinguished Services Award for that effort.

Thompson ran the backpack program for 14 years before city budget and Human Services staffing cuts forced the department to give up the program after obtaining grants and donations to fill some 10,000 backpacks for Norwich schoolchildren. Norwich Free Academy’s Project Outreach now runs the program.

Thompson, who lives in Norwich with her husband, Benny, a retired pipe layer, said she plans to take some time off and then find a part-time position in the region. She most looks forward to spending more time with her two young granddaughters, ages 3 and 9 months, the children of her son, James Thompson and his wife, Kayla, who live in Preston.

Thompson also has a son living in Branford. She’s grateful that her family is in the local area and said if the grandchildren lived elsewhere, “that’s where I’d be going.”