A step back for the disabled

Former Gov. Dan Evans is troubled by news the state has moved 18 children into Fircrest School, a state institution for people with developmental disabilities.

More than 30 years ago, he drove the state's decision that the Shoreline institution and others like it were no place for children.

"It seems to me we're taking a different step than we have been for 30 years," said Evans, whose administration made policy changes that greatly improved the lives of people with disabilities and their families. "... To see it going the other way is really distressing."

The crisis that put children back at the Shoreline institution was a result of the state stepping away from its long-established leadership role. In 2004, Washington ranked 35th among states for its public investment in services to people with disabilities, according to the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities at the University of Colorado, which has tracked trends since 1982. The latest rating is due out this spring.

Though the Legislature recently came up with funding that might solve this problem, a systemic lack of long-term planning will barely stave off a larger crisis as our population grows.

This is not what Evans and others in his administration originally had in mind. During the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, the rights of people with disabilities began to gain some traction.

That's about when a college kid named Ralph Munro began volunteering at Fircrest. He met two children restrained because of their outbursts and began mentoring them. Today, Munro, who retired as Washington's secretary of state in 2000, remains a legal guardian for one of them.

When he worked for Evans, Munro brought one of the Fircrest clients to meet the governor, already troubled by the conditions at Fircrest and similar institutions. Evans became convinced Washington could do better by these children.

"We started working really hard at moving toward community-based programs and getting these children out of institutions," Evans said.

Around the same time, a group of Seattle mothers who refused to send their children to institutions proved their children could learn at the Northwest Center preschool. They worked on the governor, too.

Evans requested and signed the Education for All Act in 1971, giving every child the right to an appropriate education in their local schools. The similarly named federal law passed four years later.

"The community-based programs were meant to work in harness with the Education for All Act," Evans said. That way, families could ensure their children were getting an education and they had other help at home, such as respite care and medical coverage.

"Sure, it was costly and is costly," Evans said. "But the results are remarkable. ... It seems like it is worth it because the alternative is going to cost the state a whole lot more."

The state constitution charges the state with care for people with disabilities. Families still have the right to turn their children, in some cases, over to the state for institutionalization — which costs about $200,000 a year at Fircrest.

Community-based care in smaller, staffed residential-living homes costs less and is preferable — costing even less is the ideal situation of helping families care for children in their homes.

But that is becoming harder to do. Between 8,000 and 10,000 families are on a waiting list for family-support services. Though the Legislature provided an additional $4.9 million to take about 1,300 families off that list, that leaves thousands of families still struggling to find respite care, resources for behavior management training and therapists on their own. Many families forgo vacations or take them separately. Marriages strain or, in some cases, crumple under unrelenting stress.

The Legislature's investment this year is welcome. But it is catch-up effort that is inadequate to meet present needs, let alone the likely increase in demand as our population grows.

Too many families still struggle without the help. And without more-careful, long-term planning on the state's part, there's a chance more and more of them will be driven to make a difficult choice that is much less cost-effective for the state.

Kate Riley's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is kriley@seattletimes.com