PARIS, IL — Most weeks, Johanna Westin sits at a desk in Paris doing one of the harder jobs in behavioral health: translating. She converts the very wordy, very technical language of compliance — what state agencies, federal regulations, and accrediting bodies require — into something HRC clinicians can actually use. And every day she turns the work those clinicians do, in offices in Paris and at the Forsythe Center in Marshall, into something national surveyors can recognize. This spring, that work mattered more than usual.
The Human Resources Center of Edgar and Clark Counties (HRC) — the region’s nonprofit human services agency since 1968 — was preparing for its triennial survey by the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). The survey took place April 22 through 24. HRC came out of it with a three-year accreditation, CARF’s top tier, with just four recommendations — all of them focused on tightening procedural language, rather than the quality of care HRC provides.
Employee of the Month
Westin, who carries the title Clinical Information Coordinator/Therapist and the credentials MSW, LCSW, is HRC’s Employee of the Month for May 2026 — a recognition that points to her central role in earning the agency’s top-tier result.
Johanna has worked twelve years at HRC. Nine and a half of them as the agency’s Clinical Director, from March 2014 through October 2023. Today, Westin works a compressed schedule — four ten-hour days a week. One of those days she sees clients. The other three, she administers HRC’s electronic healthcare record system: managing documentation, updating procedures and forms, fielding compliance questions, and overseeing the billing and coding standards that pay for the services HRC delivers across both counties. It’s the translation work between those two roles, she said, that her clinical experience makes possible.
“I feel like knowing the clinical side, and what the providers are actually going through in a session, is really helpful when I’m trying to translate into what that looks like from a compliance standpoint. Knowing how an auditor would view it, I can help figure out how to document it better.”
Turning Standards Into Care
HRC’s outpatient procedures are not one document; they are dozens. Substance use treatment in Paris and Marshall with mental health counseling in both offices. The Living Room Program — HRC’s free 24/7 walk-in crisis support service, available at 217-712-9766. Recovery support, assessments, treatment plans, and an employment services program that has earned HRC the second-highest IPS fidelity score in Illinois. The CARF manual is around four hundred pages, and HRC’s procedures touch most of it.
Of the procedures Westin reviewed in preparation for the survey, thirty to forty needed at least minor revision. Four or five needed significant rewrites to bring HRC’s documentation in line with the latest CARF expectations — most of those in the area of telehealth, where the standards had grown.
For the six months leading up to the survey, she added the procedures review on top of her regular four-day schedule. Some weeks, she set aside one of her work days as what she called a “CARF day” — sometimes at a local restaurant, away from her phone and her laptop, with a stack of binders, a pile of highlighters, and a coffee. The regular work piled up; an email backlog she is still catching up on now. Ask her why she did it that way, and she answers without ceremony.
“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything halfway. I’m either all or nothing — and if I’m going to have my name attached to something, I want the product to be something I can be proud of.”
The Work Behind the Accreditation
Ask Westin what the hard part of the work actually was, and she won’t talk about page counts. She’ll talk about what the procedures protect — the chain from a standard on a page to a procedure on a shelf, to a clinician’s daily practice to a person’s experience in HRC’s office in Marshall or Paris.
“I think the goal is that you don’t even necessarily know these standards exist — but it’s the feeling that you get and the growth that you’re experiencing. Because those are the standards in action.”
That chain is what CARF’s framework exists to protect. Westin said HRC builds its day-to-day work around that framework intentionally. “Every time we talk about changing something or adding something or doing something, somebody asks, ‘What does CARF say about that?’ The fact that we’re always thinking about meeting CARF standards means we’re always thinking about how we help people grow, recover, and get back out into the community to live the lives they want to live.”
Why CARF Accreditation Matters
CARF accreditation is what allows HRC to bill Medicaid for many of its services and to apply for grants that sustain the nonprofit’s work across both counties. But for Westin, the bigger value is what the standards demand — recovery, person-centered care, and meeting people based on their strengths and preferences. The alignment with HRC’s own mission, helping people help themselves, is not a coincidence. “It’s almost like CARF was made for us.”
HRC’s outpatient providers — therapists, recovery support specialists, employment specialists, case managers — work in Paris, Marshall, and across schools in both counties. Westin said the survey result is mostly theirs. “I took the good work that outpatient does and I just presented it in an easy-to-read format. Outpatient definitely did a lot of work on it too.”
Asked what keeps her at HRC after twelve years and several different roles, she didn’t reach for anything lofty. “I like the people I work with. My coworkers are funny and smart and compassionate and friendly and good at what they do — whether they’re licensed master’s-level therapists or recovery support specialists who just got their CRSS. They’re the kind of people I’d send family or friends to.”
Asked to finish the sentence, “I do this work because I believe…” she did without pausing.
“I believe in other people. I believe in the community. I believe in HRC. I believe in my coworkers. I believe this work is important.”
For information about HRC’s services in Edgar and Clark Counties, including the free 24/7 Living Room Program (217-712-9766) and HRC’s Marshall office at the Forsythe Center (406 N. 2nd St, Marshall), visit their website or call 217-465-4118. The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text, 24/7.
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