East Side kids take brunt of cuts

The Children’s Administration has quietly severed millions of dollars in contracts to provide support services to children and families across Washington state in an effort to bridge a looming budget shortfall.

The cuts have disproportionately targeted programs in Eastern Washington, according to a spending plan released by the Children’s Administration.

The agency cut $955,000 in Region 1, which includes Spokane, by ending contracts with local agencies and shaving administrative costs, such as employee travel and equipment purchases. That’s more than twice the amount cut in Region 4, which includes Seattle, according to the state plan.

“In many regions, it has been an absolute disaster for community-based services,” said Jon Gould, deputy director of the Children’s Alliance, a nonprofit advocacy group. “The capacity to serve children and families is at risk.”

The contracts range from state-paid orthodontics to programs that provide mental health care and behavioral therapy to foster children considered among the state’s most troubled wards.

State officials said regional administrators – not officials at headquarters in Olympia – determined which programs would be cut.

“When asked about what Region 1 could reasonably contribute to the (agency’s) deficit, we stepped up with this figure,” said Ken Kraft, the agency’s regional administrator in Spokane. “I can’t account for the thinking on that disparity. I was not involved in any discussion with headquarters and other regions.”

The announcements came as a surprise to several Spokane nonprofits that had provided support services to the state’s foster care system.

One day last month, Suzie Toews learned that within eight hours the agency would sever a contract with the Foster Parent Association of Spokane, which for 25 years has provided services to families caring for troubled children in the state’s child welfare system.

By telephone, the agency informed Toews at 4 p.m. that she and her co-worker had to cease services to more than 50 families by midnight. The agency severed the agreement with nine months and $83,000 left on the contract.

“Once again, the families and children are the ones left in the lurch,” a frustrated Toews said last week, as she made final plans to close the office. “It would sure be nice to know where this money went.”

State leaders are projecting a $12 million budget shortfall for the troubled agency, which has been plagued by mismanagement and a string of high-profile deaths. In April, agency head Uma Ahluwalia, who held the job just 19 months, resigned after the budget problem became widely known.

In March, the state announced plans to curtail travel for employees, freeze new hires and sever contracts across Washington. The state’s Central Budget Office, which has been tasked with bringing in line the agency’s budget by July 1, slated nearly $3.4 million in cuts to contracts. That included $520,000 in Region 1, which has its headquarters in Spokane.

Some of the contracts may be reinstated when the new fiscal year begins in July, according to state officials.

In addition to the cuts, the agency received $4.2 million from the Legislature to ease the budget problems and identified another $3 million in federal child welfare funds, according to the budget office.

In Western Washington, the state cut back on a program to recruit foster parents. In Spokane, Sally’s House, a center for foster children, lost $62,000 in funding. The center, which is operated in conjunction with the Salvation Army, reduced the number of beds in the center from 18 to 14. The center has frequently been full, a Salvation Army spokeswoman.

Charlotte Booth, director of the Institute for Family Development, a nonprofit with offices across the state, said her agency expects to lose $193,000 by July 1. The nonprofit would have to end services to about 65 high-risk families as a result of the cuts, Booth said.

“In some of these regions, there is a crisis going on,” Booth said. “I’m very concerned that these cuts will damage the capacity of these agencies to respond to children.”

Kraft said the region targeted programs that had underperformed or were not operating at capacity.

“If we eliminate the contracts where we aren’t getting good services, that frees up dollars,” Kraft said.

Stan Marshman, chief financial officer at the budget office, said the shortfall resulted from ongoing increases in costs to contract for services and administrative costs that included hiring more employees than the agency’s budget permitted.

In Seattle, the agency had to relocate 120 employees after the building where they worked was scheduled for demolition, Marshman said. Those relocation costs included new phone lines, furniture and other moving expenses.

“That was actually hundreds of thousands of dollars, and that was not in the budget,” Marshman said.

The agency said it is reviewing all discretionary spending. Robin Arnold-Williams, secretary of the Department of Social and Health Services, has called for a “back to basics” approach, with child safety firmly established as it highest priority, according to the agency.