State cuts funds to local programs

The state’s child welfare administration plans to cut spending on two prominent programs that serve hundreds of neglected and abused children and their families in Spokane.

The Children’s Administration plans to cut $142,000 from a contract held by Partners with Families and Children, a respected Spokane agency that has operated since 1988, as well as eliminate funding for the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center.

“It would effectively wipe us out,” said Mary Ann Murphy, executive director of Partners with Families and Children. “Our board really considers that this is life-threatening to our program.”

The nonprofit organization said it had been given six weeks to determine how to handle the 54 percent reduction in funding.

A top official in Eastern Washington said the agency was forced to make the cuts because its regional budget has been reduced $3.1 million this year. It had been reduced by $2.8 million the previous year.

“We simply do not have the dollars to continue to do business as we have,” said Ken Kraft, regional administrator for the Department of Children and Family Services. “We would be denying very basic services to children in other programs.”

The cuts come amidst a statewide review of thousands of contracts held by the fiscally troubled agency, which overspent its budget last year by an estimated $12 million. Gov. Christine Gregoire sharply criticized the agency last spring, and its director was forced to resign.

The cuts also come just weeks after the state’s chief revenue forecaster estimated the state government will collect $305 million more in taxes than previously predicted.

Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, said she is drafting a letter to the agency voicing her support for the programs and questioning the timing of the cuts.

“I think they are both valuable services in our community,” Brown said. She said the cuts, which will be implemented on Jan. 1, did not provide “adequate time for the programs to respond.”

In a Nov. 21 letter to Spokane providers, Kraft said the agency faced “extraordinary pressure to achieve efficiencies.” He emphasized the cuts were a fiscal issue rather than a quality issue.

At Partners with Families and Children, the proposed cut comes just weeks after Spokane County’s public mental health system eliminated $10,000 a month in funding because of its own budget woes. Child welfare advocates say the cumulative effect has been to gradually chip away at established programs such as Partners and the King Center.

“If there’s anything that ought not to be cut, it’s this,” said Roy Harrington, a former state administrator now with the Child and Family Research Institute at Washington State University in Spokane. The services provided by the agencies are “indispensable and irreplaceable,” Harrington said.

Murphy said her agency had been able to leverage the state dollars – which represent about 40 percent of its budget – to garner matching money from federal and local sources. For each 41 cents invested by the state, the agency provides $1 in service, Murphy said.

The center, which is currently treating 400 children and 235 parents, provides a variety of services, including specialized care of children exposed to drugs and domestic violence.

“It’s probably the highest quality program in town. Period,” said Marilee Roloff, executive director of Volunteers of America, a local nonprofit. “Its work has been evaluated and researched. It’s just a crying shame.”

In a 2002 national study of 12 centers, Partners’ clients showed decreased levels of severe physical violence, reduced child behavioral problems, and higher levels of satisfaction with the services they received.

“I don’t know of any program in the state that has subjected itself to more rigorous evaluation than we have,” Murphy said.

Last spring, the state’s Department of Social and Health Services recognized Murphy with the Lee Ann Miller Award for her “profound impact in promoting the safety, protection and well-being of children.”

At the Martin Luther King Jr. Family Outreach Center, set in a low-income southeast Spokane neighborhood, executive director Austin DePaolo said he had not received any concerns from the state agency about the effectiveness of the center’s programs.

The nonprofit, which serves 1,200 families and children each year, will lose about $72,000 a year, DePaolo said. The 35-year-old center, formerly the Southeast Youth Center, provides preschool and after-school programs for children, as well as educational programs for adults.

“We’re not sure where these families are going to be able to go for long-term help,” he said.

Jennifer Starkweather, 30, credits the center – and counselor Sherri Louis – with helping her turn her life around after years of struggling with alcohol. Once homeless, Starkweather has been sober for a year and a half, secured a full-time job, and regained custody of her four children.

“I thought I was never going to beat this,” Starkweather said. “I really don’t believe that I would have made it on my own.”