Gift from Microsoft CEO starts child-welfare group

Connie Ballmer and her husband, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, are donating $10 million to found an agency that aims to bring state government, college experts and private money together for the first time to improve the state child-welfare system.

Partners for Our Children will be based at the University of Washington's School of Social Work, with a chair endowed by the Ballmers and help from UW faculty.

Scores of private groups are dedicated to child welfare, but none with the money and connections to government of the new group, said Connie Ballmer, its co-founder and board chairwoman.

"There's no one doing this," she said at the group's public launch in Seattle on Wednesday. "Unless you have the state [government] at the table, you can only get so far."

Ballmer said she'd been looking at improving the child-welfare system for three years, and then connected with the group's co-founders, Edwina Uehara, the dean of UW's social-work school, and Robin Arnold-Williams, head of the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS).

Mark Courtney, a professor at the University of Chicago and a national leader on child-welfare issues, was hired as the group's executive director. He will move to Seattle in July and also will serve as a UW professor in the Ballmer-endowed chair.

For the first time, DSHS will give its records to a private group on an ongoing basis, allowing the new agency to highlight trends and problems in the state's system of foster and group care. About 19,000 children received foster or group care from DSHS last year.

DSHS has been in the spotlight for years, stung by several high-profile deaths of children, a poor federal audit and the 2004 settlement of a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of foster children. As part of the settlement, a group of experts known as the Braam Panel recommended dozens of changes, some of which haven't been implemented.

Courtney said Partners for Our Children will have the money and expertise not just to examine the system, but also to complete projects fixing problems and to spread the word about the child-welfare system to the public.

Partners for Our Children has $12 million in investment so far, with the Ballmers' donation, $1 million in Gov. Christine Gregoire's proposed supplementary state budget this year and $1 million from UW in salaries and other contributions.

Ashley Bach: 206-464-2567 or abach@seattletimes.com