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Counseling Services Director steers ship after previous director fired
NEWPORT - Shannon Holifield took over Pend Oreille County Counseling Services last June, a county agency that had been upended by the firing of the previous director.
The previous director, Nicole Vangrimbergen, had been fired in December 2023 after the county found, according to a Factual Findings document released in response to a public records request by The Miner, that she had engaged in sexual harassment, unethical behavior, fraud and management by fear and intimidation.
Holifield has background fitted to handling a troubled agency.
A Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker, Holifield spent many years providing therapy to individuals, families, and groups with specialization in working with children and people impacted by trauma, she said.
“In 2019, I transitioned into work with larger systems supporting culture change and helping organizations refocus on the values and missions that originally drove them,” she said. She wants to do that here. “Guided by our organizational values of compassion, integrity, and hope, our mission for Pend Oreille County Counseling Services is to foster hope, healing, and resilience in our community.”
She speaks highly of her staff. “We’ve got a great organization,” she said. “We have great people working here who did amazing things for our community, even under really difficult leadership.”
She said her role is bringing everyone back together and making sure the agency moves forward.
“From the top, too,” she said. Holifield, 44, comes to Counseling Services from Kaniksu Community Health in Sandpoint, where she was Director of Behavioral Health.
She signed a contract with Pend Oreille County in March, giving Kanisksu three months’ notice before leaving.
Holifield, who earns $105,000 annually as director, is head of a department that has a budget of $4.8 million in expenditures in 2004, mostly grant funded. Counseling Services has put a $4.34 million budget for 2025 before county commissioners. While it hasn’t been approved yet, Holifield is confident Counseling Services has a solid financial base.
“The finances are in great shape,” she said. “That has been the least of my concerns.”
She said finances are overseen both internally and by the county.
Counseling Services has a staff or 27, including 14 counselors, both master degree-level clinicians and bachelor degree counselors. Counseling Services also contracts with a psychiatric nurse practitioner who sees clients.
“We use telehealth for her,” Holifield said. “She works with our clients once a week and meets with them via telehealth and they can do that from their home, or they can do that from our office.”
She says it is difficult to attract credentialed people to work at Counseling Services. She currently has positions open for a child and family specialist and a clinical supervisor.
Providing mental health care and evaluations to Pend Oreille County Jail inmates is something Counseling Services does.
“We have weekly walk in evaluations for individuals with concerns regarding their mental, emotional, social, or behavioral health as well as for substance use concerns,” she said.
Counselors, including Designated Crisis Responders, see people in jail. When there is an urgent need, the DCR can respond within a couple hours. There are four Designated Crisis Responders on staff.
Counseling Services collaborates with the court system, law enforcement and a regional crisis line to engage in co-responding and crisis responding in the community as well as providing timely evaluations in the jails, Holifield said.
“Within the jail, we can provide evaluations to determine if an individual would benefit from mental health or substance use treatment and are also able to provide that treatment while they are incarcerated,” she said. “We can also respond to crisis in the jail to identify interventions or resources necessary to maintain a person’s safety.”
Counseling Services doesn’t perform competency evaluations, which are done at Eastern State Hospital.
Holifield said the Pend Oreille County courts have done a good job of communicating with her agency. They have a liaison who works with Counseling Services.
Counseling Services is also able to connect people leaving jail to support them in a more successful transition back into the community.
Counseling Services sees prisoners and court ordered clients, but those people are just a portion of the clients staff sees. In the last three months, Counseling Service saw 247 clients. Holifield said they see a lot of children and other people needing services.
While prisoner and court ordered treatment is part of what Counseling Services does, it isn’t the largest part. Holifield wants people to know that, to know that people outside the criminal justice system comprise most of the clients the department sees. She said sometimes fear of being stigmatized keeps people from seeking mental health services.
“We’re a pretty conservative community and a pretty stoic community,” she said. “A lot of people suffer unnecessarily.”
There is treatment available for a variety of mental health concerns, from depression to loneliness. She said they accept most insurances and have a sliding fee scale for services for others.
“We work well with people. We want to see them get help,” she said. She said Counseling Service provides some help that doesn’t cost anything. For instance, there is a Community Behavioral Health Rental Assistance Program that doesn’t cost anything.
“There is no cost associated with that at all,” she said. The program helped six families last year, she said.
Holifield grew up in Alaska, moving to Newport with her husband, John Holifield, two years ago.
“We moved to this area to be closer to our family and are working on rooting in deeper with our community here,” she said. “I was born and raised in Alaska and despite many years living in the lower 48, I still find summers hot, winters short, and the variety of foliage magnificent. Newport has been my home coming up on two years and my husband and I find the area beautiful and the people welcoming, kind, and direct.”
