In Our View: Legislature’s Hard Choices

Washington’s Parent-Child Assistance Program can, in many ways, be viewed as an experiment in the typically complicated laboratory of state-funded social services. Equally important, it can be viewed as the crux of an issue facing the Legislature in 2015.

As detailed in a recent article by Columbian reporter Marissa Harshman, the state-funded program teams advocates with high-risk mothers who abuse drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. The goal of the home-visit intervention program is to prevent future alcohol- and drug-exposed births among the women who receive assistance. Advocates work with each mother and her family for three years, beginning during pregnancy or the first six months after a child’s birth. The program is tailored to each woman’s needs, be it substance treatment or education or employment, and the estimated cost is $5,000 per mother per year.

That is where the debate begins — a debate that can be applied to any number of social services provided by the state. For many people, the argument comes down to people who put themselves in difficult situations should be expected to fend for themselves. Many a critic has lamented the expansion of social services that can be viewed as creating dependency upon government assistance. That argument has some validity — yet it appears overly simplistic when children are injected into the equation.

The fact is that mothers who are facing addiction and poverty are more likely to produce children with a lifelong dependence upon services provided by the state. Some investment on the front end — with assistance in the prenatal or early childhood stage — can reduce costs down the road. In 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated the lifetime cost for one individual with fetal alcohol syndrome to be about $2 million. As Colleen Castleberry, a licensed clinical social worker at Legacy Salmon Creek Medical Center, explained about the Parent-Child Assistance Program, “The bigger benefit is, as we can meet these moms’ needs, they’re better able to meet the needs of their children.”

Yet questions remain, as taxpayers increasingly demand accountability and measurements that demonstrate the effectiveness of state programs. From 2007 to 2012, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families was the primary source of income for 61 percent of women entering the parent-child program, compared with 31 percent upon exit from the program. During that same time, employment was the primary source of income for 3 percent of women entering the program, compared with 27 percent at exit. Whether that effectiveness provides a long-term reduction in costs to the state will require further study and will provide the ultimate answers about the worthiness of the program.

Either way, those are the kind of numbers that will need to be weighed by legislators as they convene for the 2015 session. The state is facing a bill of about $3 billion to adequately fund K-12 public education, and the quest to unearth such money likely will devolve into a battle between education funding and social services. Republicans in the Legislature have adopted a “fund education first” mantra, but are reluctant to articulate which services will face funding cuts if taxes are not increased.

The Parent-Child Assistance Program, which is coordinated by the University of Washington but is funded by the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, is exactly the type of program that will need to be assessed. And that assessment will yield no simple answers.