Cuts hitting kids programs

About a year ago, something extraordinary happened at Sue Fica's house.

Her son, who'd spent the past five years in a dozen group homes and psychiatric hospitals, came back home. And he stayed.

But in May, a budget crisis suddenly hit the state child-welfare system. A small, nationally lauded program that had allowed the 12-year-old boy to be treated at home — at a cost of $5,000 a month — was cut without notice.

Four days after the support ended, Fica's son's mental problems led to a crisis in the household and he was forced to leave for a group home, which cost the state about $11,000 a month.

Fica, a cash-strapped single mother in Lake Stevens, budgets down to the penny. What kind of financial sense does that make? she wondered about the change.

A budget crisis last spring in the state's Children's Administration — a $12 million "overspend" caused by financial mismanagement — has forced a fundamental shift in a safety net responsible for more than 10,000 young lives on any given day.

Administrators, determined to avoid past mistakes, say they are going "back to the basics" of ensuring child safety and quicker child-abuse investigations.

It also has meant a bottom-line focus to contain the rising cost of foster care and an unusual review of the one-third of the Children's Administration's budget devoted to contracts with nonprofit agencies.

The green-eyeshade approach is triggering alarms at social-service agencies across the state. What, specifically, has been cut from the child-welfare system is still unknown, and the Children's Administration could not provide that information.

But services to help prevent children from entering foster care — such as those provided to Sue Fica — are suddenly disappearing. And for children already in foster care, the most specialized and expensive options also are shrinking.

"I haven't seen anything like this in all the years I've been doing this work," said Tom Rembiesa, chief executive of Ruth Dykman Children's Center, a Seattle nonprofit group providing care for foster children. "It is having a real impact on children and families."

Cheryl Stephani, head of the Children's Administration within the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), said her agency would have rung up another deficit this year without a new approach.

"We are getting our business practices in line so we don't ever have to do the drastic, immediate cuts to bring our expenditures down," said Stephani. "You can't spend money you don't have. We have to be a predictable business partner."

Crisis follows overhaul

The root of the budget crisis began last winter, when the state child-welfare system was involved in one of the most comprehensive overhauls in its 40-year history.

The agency had settled a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of foster children — the so-called Braam settlement — and had been stung by a critical federal audit. The then-Children's Administration director, Uma Ahluwalia, had laid out 1,180 separate tasks to comply with the lawsuit settlement, the audit and her own reform vision. The vision included more-frequent social-worker visits with foster children, better mental-health care and more consultation with troubled families.

Her plan to hire 30 new employees to fulfill the plan halted in March when DSHS announced that the Children's Administration was $12 million over budget. She was fired a month later.

There is now little talk about Ahluwalia's plan. That is a shame, said Richard Wexler, executive director of the Virginia-based National Center for Child Protection Reform, because Ahluwalia's changes would have helped children stay out of foster care.

"It doesn't surprise me that in a choice between innovation and same-old, same-old, the choice is same-old, same-old," said Wexler. "That's the story of Washington state."

The ensuing $8.7 million in cuts hit everything from psychological services to orthodontics to tutoring for foster children.

Nonprofits that contract with the Children's Administration hoped the money would flow again with the new fiscal year. When that didn't happen in some cases, the Children's Alliance, an umbrella advocacy group representing 128 organizations, requested information on those contracts that were cut and those that were restarted.

The Children's Alliance got no response, said assistant director Jon Gould.

"We've always told the department that we may not agree with you, but at least tell us what you're doing," said Gould. "We're not even getting that."

Stan Marshburn, DSHS budget director, said nonprofit agencies may have to get used to a new reality.

"Vendors may have been accustomed to a high level of spending that was not sustainable," he said.

In a landmark ruling in 2003, the state Supreme Court found that a lack of money was not an excuse for violating the constitutional right of foster children to safe and adequate care.

That ruling led to the Braam settlement, which involved children who'd been moved at least three times while in state custody, and required widespread improvements estimated to cost $50 million.

That settlement may already be unraveling, said Casey Trupin, an attorney for the foster children. The Children's Administration is making decisions "based not on the needs of kids, but on financial considerations," Trupin said.

If DSHS does not start complying, the Braam lawsuit could be revived and return to court, Trupin said.

"Sad for all of us"

Before her son was out of the second grade, Sue Fica was forced to put kitchen knives under triple lock and put a jackscrew through her son's window to keep him from sneaking out his window to set fires.

He had no malice but also no impulse control, she said. After he threw his 5-year-old brother down the stairs, her son was admitted to an Eastside psychiatric hospital. He bounced among hospitals and group homes, collecting diagnoses for bipolar disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Fica's private insurance quickly ran out and, like many parents with mentally ill children, she voluntarily gave up custody to have DSHS pay for his care.

His return home last summer was made possible by a program called the Blended Funding Project.

The project, started in 1998, used flexible rules and multiple money sources to help 32 severely mentally ill children in King County avoid the most-expensive institutional care, said project director Bob Jones.

Since the program was cut, at least four of the children have landed in institutions, Jones said. "As you listen to what these families have done, it's hard for me to believe someone would want to kill the program," he said. "It's been sad for all of us."

Stephani, the Children's Administration director, said the cut was made before she started. "My understanding was that the kids in Blended Funding continued with the same services," she said.

Fica said the project paid for an in-home aide, allowing her to work. It also paid for psychiatric services and a mentor, who took her son to the Boys & Girls Club.

The loss of the mentor triggered her son's final eruption, she said, when he threatened to kill her in late May.

She now sees him twice a week for lunch at a Seattle-area group home but has been told her son will be moved to a specialized program in North Idaho soon.

"I had to remove my son once before, and we almost didn't make it emotionally," she said. "Doing it a second time, I think it's doing damage to him that cannot be repaired."

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605 or jmartin@seattletimes.com