Roadmap 2031

Dane County Department of Human Services kicked off our 5-year strategic planning process in March of 2026. The process for Roadmap 2031 will be different than what we did to create the priorities articulated in Vision: Next in 2021. The Vision: Next process started with internal work to re-do our Vision, Mission, and Value statements and simultaneously interview a wide variety of stakeholders to help us identify our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Roadmap 2031 has kicked off by asking DCDHS employees for their input into our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. We will then survey staff about our mission, vision, and values; we don’t expect that these will need to change much. 
Director John Schlueter joined the department in 2025 and has spent much of his time since starting developing relationships with and hearing from our many community partners. Because of this significant time our partners have already spent telling John about human services in Dane County, DCDHS is not doing any targeted outreach to our partners as we identify our priorities and articulate them in Roadmap 2031. We expect to share that report in the fall or early winter of 2026. 
In the meantime, we are excited to share and celebrate the many things we achieved as a result of the priorities we identified and worked towards in Vision: Next. We had identified 5 priorities and accomplished 100’s of initiates or projects to make meaningful progress in achieving those priorities. We still have work to do, but we are incredibly proud of what we have achieved. 

Vision: Next Reflection Report

DCDHS is working on a full reflection report that will provide staff information about how he have achieved the priorities and initiatives identified in the Vision: Next strategic plan. That report will be available here as soon as possible. 

In the mean-time please check out our: 
High-Level Achievements document that provides a short overview of the major things DCDHS has achieved over the past 5 years. 
List of Achievements document that provides a list of the department-wide tactics and many division-level projects achieved over the past 5 years.

Introduction to Human Services

Dane County Department of Human Services provides a range of human services to the citizens of Dane County. The Department operates a nursing home and administers over a dozen separate human service systems, which meet the needs of over 100,000 Dane County citizens annually. The Department’s annual budget is about $234 million, of which 61 percent is outside revenue that is primarily made up of state and federal funds.
The Department provides services to some of Dane County’s highest need citizens, who rely on the Department’s services because of disability, poverty, substance abuse, maltreatment, mental health concerns, and frailties due to aging. The Department employs nearly 700 full-time staff, but approximately half of the Department’s budget is used to support contracted services in the community typically provided by private, nonprofit organizations. In 2020, the Department will contract with over 200 organizations in Dane County to provide services to consumers with physical and developmental disabilities, the elderly, children and adults with mental health concerns, homeless families, low-income adults seeking employment, and children and youth with support needs stemming from child maltreatment or juvenile delinquency.
Every five years, the Department develops a strategic plan that guides the Department’s work and priorities over the subsequent five years, and beyond. The five-year strategic priorities form the foundation for the Department to improve outcomes for those we serve and strengthen the core competencies of the Department. The Department kicked off its strategic planning process for the 2027-2031 period, Roadmap 2031, in March 2026.