(Year in Review, Part 1)

By Melanie Dallas, LPC

At the end of each year, I usually write an article that highlights some of the many things Highland Rivers Behavioral Health has done that year, a Year in Review. But we actually have two years – as many agencies do – a fiscal year that runs from July 1 of one year (in this case 2024) to June 30 of the next (2025), as well as the January-December calendar year.

So this year I want to do a two-part year in review – with this first part focusing on the fiscal year (FY), and more specifically, the Highland Rivers FY25 annual report that documents it. I believe our new annual report, available on the Highland Rivers website, is one of the best we’ve done. QR codes throughout the report link to videos about several of the programs and individuals featured.

The theme of our FY25 report is “It Matters” – which we chose not only because what we do matters in so many ways to so many people, but also because how we do it matters too. A lot.

Naturally, the annual report includes a snapshot of our finances – between 88 and 90 cents of every dollar we earn goes directly into the healthcare services we deliver. As a publicly-funded agency, fiscal responsibility matters a lot, to us, to our lawmakers, and to Georgia’s citizens. We not only strive to provide a good value to our funders, but also a good return on investment – because that matters too. And every time we help an individual achieve a life in recovery, to be able to hold a job, raise a family and contribute to their community, that’s a return on investment.

Access to care matters too. As a safety-net agency, we serve individuals and families who might otherwise not be able to receive the behavioral healthcare they need – those who may have limited financial resources, are uninsured or have Medicaid or Medicare. In FY25 Highland Rivers served nearly 17,000 unique individuals.

For the past three years, our annual reports have also included profiles of each of the 13 counties we serve. These profiles include a demographic summary of each county – including prevalence estimates of behavioral health conditions in the population – as well as a list of programs and Findhelp searches in each. We know this information matters because I receive requests for these profiles frequently from county leaders, healthcare providers and lawmakers.

New this year there are also service summaries for each county that list the addresses of Highland Rivers clinics, the Open Access hours for each, and the services available there. Taken together, these profiles and service summaries show how every county we serve is unique, and how we align our services to meet the unique needs of each.

But by far the most compelling part of Highland Rivers’ FY25 annual report are the four recovery stories – personal stories of individuals and families that have received services from us, and how those services mattered to them. These stories show how our services matter to different people in different circumstances. One of the stories shows how our co-response programs helped a family, while another is the story of how our youth services impacted an entire family. Two of the stories feature individuals living in long-term recovery who work for Highland Rivers.

It is one of those I find most moving – the story of Avery, a young woman who received treatment at our Women’s Outreach residential substance use program, and who now works for that program to help other women facing the same challenges she did. It is stories like these that show how what we do matters – to individuals, to families and to our communities.

If you’d like to read Highland Rivers FY25 annual report – and I hope you will – you can find it on our website by clicking the “About Us’ drop-down menu, or visiting https://highlandrivers.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/FY25-annual-report-.pdf.

Melanie Dallas is a licensed professional counselor and CEO of Highland Rivers Behavioral Health, which provides treatment and recovery services for individuals with mental illness, substance use disorders, and intellectual and developmental disabilities in a 13-county region of northwest Georgia that includes Bartow, Cherokee, Cobb, Floyd, Fannin, Gilmer, Gordon, Haralson, Murray, Paulding, Pickens, Polk and Whitfield counties.