Ron Wood center director retiring after 20 years

The Ron Wood Family Resource Center has been filling essential service gaps for people in crisis for the past 30 years in Carson City.

Now, Executive Director Joyce Buckingham will be retiring after nearly 20 years in social services work, employment training and education. Her job until her replacement is hired is making sure the FRC’s programs and administration continue without snags.

“I love this place, I do,” she said. “I have a wonderful staff. We have great programs. It has been a labor of love, it truly has. I didn’t make this decision lightly, but I have been married 48 years … and I just really want to spend time with my husband and puppies and take care of myself.”

Ron Wood’s programs dedicated to community needs include financial assistance, parenting classes, healthy foods, substance abuse, suicide prevention or incarceration assistance, and foster youth services.

When Buckingham began as director in 2006, the FRC operated on a $500,000 budget and about six grants. Today, that number has increased to $2.5 million and 21 grants.

“We have tried to identify the gaps in services in the community and tried not to duplicate services so that we can fit what the community needs for us,” Buckingham said. “We really try to look at what's needed and fill that void.”

In her role, Buckingham considers herself more of a support member than a director.

“I let the staff know, ‘I’m basically your secretary,’ and I mean it,” she said. “And I make sure they get paid. I make sure that we have the money coming in. I make sure that things are healthy and safe around here.”

Buckingham has been the FRC’s grant writer. The FRC never has seen an increase and will see a reduction of 13% during the next two years. It could mean focusing on more targeted case management for reimbursement from Medicaid, she said.

“Even though we have several grantors and real diverse funding, which is the key to staying alive, you know we’re healthy as far as it goes fiscally, you really have to keep a mindset of, ‘OK, what happens if this goes away or that goes away?’ ” she said.

Staff workers have kept true to the FRC’s mission since it originally had been called the “Ron Wood Project” in 1995. Wood, who died in 1994, worked in juvenile justice and was diagnosed with a terminal disease but envisioned a truancy center in Carson to help youth struggling in school.

Buckingham said the issue still reflects the original concept that ignoring education leads to larger community problems. Local partnerships with the Carson City School District, Carson City Health and Human Services, Friends in Service Helping or other community organizations makes tackling common challenges easier, she said.

“We do still carry that torch for prevention of chronic absenteeism and prevention of truancy by really trying to meet the families where they are and work with them individually and not kind of a blanket process,” she said. “We do have family communication classes. Sometimes the kids and the families, they're at loggerheads. You know how that goes.”

All of the programs that affect adults and children are powered by a team of 26, Buckingham said. Some of its experts began as social work interns from the University of Nevada, Reno and have stayed on throughout the years.

Bilingual services are available to address Carson’s increasing diversity. It also is Section 504 compliant to assist individuals with disabilities. Ron Wood offers access to interpreters or technologies for the sight or hearing impaired.

The growing community brings increasing changes and needs, and it means adjusting the center’s responses.

“I think the only way that we have been as successful as we are is the fact that we do need to adapt,” she said. “We do need to look forward to what the current need is and what the need is in the community.”