Although his educational pursuits and military service took him away from Martinsville, Virginia, Greg Preston always wanted to return to his hometown and give back to his community. At first, Greg worked at the local Department of Social Services as a counselor, and soon after, he began working part-time at Piedmont Community Services, a behavioral health service provider based in Martinsville. Eventually, that turned into a full-time position, and 25 years later, Greg is the organization’s executive director. “It’s a really rewarding job,” Greg said. “Working here isn’t just a good opportunity to have a good career, but it’s a way to be able to give back to the community.”
Since 1972, Piedmont Community Services has provided a range of behavioral health services to residents of the City of Martinsville and the counties of Henry, Franklin, and Patrick. Those clinical services include mental health, substance abuse, and intellectual disability services and support. The organization has approximately 450 employees, and it oversees 28 different facilities across its geographic footprint. Each year, Piedmont Community Services provides services to more than 7,500 individuals, including adults, children, and youth.
Greg Preston, Executive Director of Piedmont Community Services
One of Piedmont Community Services’ internal mottos is that if the community has a service need that the organization isn’t offering, it’ll build it. For example, Henry County is one of the nation’s epicenters for the opioid epidemic. According to a recent lawsuit, in 2015, Martinsville had more opioid doses prescribed per person than in any other locality in the country. Alarmingly, this statistic is accompanied by increasing cases of Hepatitis C, opioid overdoses, emergency room visits, and child protective placement services.
Given these realities, Piedmont Community Services is continuously creating new services and evolving its existing programmatic offerings to tackle its community’s biggest challenges head on. For example, Piedmont Community Services recently started a mobile unit, which is a vehicle that’s equipped with prescribers, counselors, and nurses. The mobile unit travels around Martinsville and the surrounding area to provide services. Greg and his team are excited about the mobile unit for numerous reasons, one of which is because there aren’t many public transportation options for community members outside of Martinsville, and therefore, this new service will better allow the organization to meet people where they are.
Furthermore, a large component of Piedmont Community Services’ work is educational. The organization has strong partnerships with the local school systems, where it provides prevention and recovery services to youth and young adults. Similarly, Piedmont Community Services works closely with community partners to educate parents and adults in the area so that residents are better equipped to identify and refer friends and family members who might benefit from behavioral health services to reach out to the organization. “Our role is to make sure we take care of our community,” said Greg. “It’s our job to be accessible and to have solid services available that can make a difference in people’s lives.”
A Community Bank “That Understands Our Mission”
Piedmont Community Services relies on a diverse network of local partners, including hospitals, first responders, community colleges, and law enforcement officials. In fact, Piedmont Community Services recently organized a coalition of these community partners, which is now working closely with Piedmont’s prevention department. The coalition’s aim is to provide input on what types of additional behavioral health services are needed in the area.
An important member of that coalition, and one of Piedmont Community Services’ most important and long-standing partners, is Carter Bank. Headquartered in Martinsville, Carter Bank is a state-chartered community bank with $4.4 billion in total assets and locations throughout Virginia and North Carolina. Carter Bank is also a CNote Impact Cash® Partner. CNote helps clients drive Impact Cash deposits to mission-driven and FDIC- and NCUA-insured partners like Carter Bank, generating returns on institutional investors’ cash deposits while supporting financially underserved communities across the country.
Tyler Carter, Community Reinvestment Administrator at Carter Bank, and Caroline Pilson, CFO at Piedmont Community Services
Caroline Pilson was hired by Piedmont Community Services in 1988. Since then, she’s grown with the organization, and today, she’s the organization’s CFO. According to her, Piedmont Community Services first connected with Carter Bank roughly 30 years ago. At the time, Piedmont Community Services was renovating one of its buildings, and Carter Bank provided it with a low-interest loan. More recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Carter Bank helped Piedmont Community Services to secure forgivable Payroll Protection Program loans. “We tried working with several other banks and they weren’t able to make anything happen,” Caroline said. “Carter Bank allowed us to maintain our operations and programs during a difficult time.”
That’s not all that Carter Bank has done for Piedmont Community Services over the years. In 2021, the bank donated $42,000 to Piedmont’s job grant program, which is part of the organization’s community recovery program. Additionally, last year, the bank named Piedmont Community Services the recipient of its Carter’s Care Program. Whenever a new member joined Carter Bank, they paid a $10 fee, which was collected on behalf of Piedmont Community Services. That campaign ultimately resulted in nearly $30,000 being donated by Carter Bank’s members to Piedmont Community Services. According to Caroline, such donations help to show Piedmont’s regulators that its community supports and believes in its services.
Team members from Carter Bank and Piedmont Community Services outside PCS facility
Today, Piedmont Community Services maintains a $10,000, fee-free line of credit with Carter Bank, which is required of them to meet specific standards set by the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health Services. The bank also works with Piedmont Community Services to integrate financial literacy classes into some of its programmatic offerings, not to mention helping to set up payee accounts for individuals in some of Piedmont Community Services’ residential programs. “It really means a lot to have a partner like them that understands our mission,” said Caroline. “They’ve never let us down on anything that we’ve needed.”
“The Sky’s The Limit”
Unsurprisingly, Greg, Caroline, and their team at Piedmont Community Services aren’t slowing down anytime soon. Currently, the organization is growing its Peer Recovery Services Program, as well as its Community Recovery Program, which is geared toward assisting individuals in recovery with finding employment opportunities. Additionally, Piedmont Community Services is developing a 24-hour urgent care program that would allow clients in crisis or possible crisis to come to a safe location for an evaluation rather than having to go to the emergency room and potentially being hospitalized in a psychiatric unit. Greg and Caroline hope that by creating such a program alongside local law enforcement officials, Piedmont Community Services can prevent clients from having to experience the trauma of being admitted to a hospital during a time of crisis.
The organization also plans to continue to develop and deepen partnerships within the surrounding community, particularly through its Prevention Division, which has tripled in size over the last couple of years. The division’s educational work is just one example of the many ways that Piedmont Community Services is continuing to find ways to iterate and best serve its community.
“We’ll continue to look at our community and the surrounding areas and figure out how to provide a better service, and when we do, we’ll build it,” Greg said. “The sky’s the limit for us.”
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