BANGOR – Community Health and Counseling Services honored three Bangor-area employees for at least 20 years of service to the agency during its recent annual meeting.

Honored were Joseph H. Pickering Jr., executive director for the past 25 years and Janet Cobb and Charlotte Ladd, staff members with the agency’s adult mental health services department for the last 20 years.

Pickering came to the agency in 1978 from Bellevue, Wash., where he had served as executive director of Eastside Community Mental Health Center. He was cited for his leadership and far-reaching vision. Under his guidance, CHCS achieved unprecedented growth as a provider of home health and mental health care for the residents of central, eastern and northern Maine.

Pickering is an advocate for continued support and funding for services to aid Maine’s most vulnerable residents. In 1998, he was recognized for his advocacy when he was honored with the statewide NAMI-Maine Outstanding Professional Award.

Cobb joined CHCS as a case manager and day program staff person in Washington County in June 1977 and worked there until January 1980. In 1983, she gave up her job to care for her newborn daughter. Cobb began working again in November 1986, first as temporary, part-time staff and then as a permanent, full-time case manager and team leader for the Calais Adult Mental Health Services office. She transferred to the Bangor office in June 2000 where she works as an intensive case manager.

Ladd started her career at CHCS as one of the first aftercare workers in Adult Mental Health Services. She became one of the first case managers to specialize in working with the dually diagnosed population in the agency and was a pioneer in the use of dual-diagnoses treatment when most agencies treated the disorders separately.

Ladd has developed extensive collaborative relationships with community providers in the Bangor area, including group homes, Department of Human Services guardians and Bangor Mental Health Institute staff.