Governor Gregoire's Budget for Human Services
“Washington is like a family, and strong families take care of their most vulnerable.”
Protects vulnerable people
Cares for foster children. Provides monthly caseworker visits for children in foster care to monitor their safety and well-being and to ensure that case plans are progressing as expected. Improves reimbursements to foster parents and providers of specialized behavioral rehabilitation services. Increases funding to meet the mental health treatment needs of foster children. Provides resources to purchase clothing for foster children. $22.5 million GF-State, $7.5 million federal funds
Keeps families together. Conducts more thorough searches for extended family members who might care for children who cannot safely remain in their parents’ home and increases the number of relative placements. Helps relative caregivers with more support to meet the needs of children in their care. $2.3 million GF-State
Improves the child welfare system. Trains social work staff to use evidence-based clinical practices to improve family functioning and reduce child maltreatment. Establishes outcome-based contracts to help tribes provide services to an increasing number of children and families. Ensures continued oversight of the state’s child welfare system. $13.8 million GF-State, $10.5 million federal funds
Meets immediate needs of people with developmental disabilities. Ensures that funding continues to be available for appropriate services as the state’s new, more rigorous needs-assessment tool identifies additional needs among people served by the Medicaid community services program. Provides additional residential capacity to support people who are leaving hospitals and detention facilities, who are aging out of the children’s foster care system, or whose caregivers are aging and are finding it difficult to continue to provide adequate care. Enhances payment rates to community residential service providers to assure access and quality services. $42.9 million GF-State, $58.7 million federal funds
Improves staff and client safety. Increases staff at Western State Psychiatric Hospital during meal times to reduce the risk of patient assaults on other patients and staff. Trains staff in state mental institutions on intervention techniques to manage patient behavior. Increases the number of case workers for people with developmental disabilities who have behaviors that might present a significant risk to themselves or other members of the community. $3.5 million GF-State, $1.4 million federal funds
Supports community-based services for mental health or chemical dependency treatment needs. Expands community-based outpatient and inpatient mental health treatment services for people who do not meet the financial eligibility requirements for the state and federal Medicaid program. Increases payment rates to providers of community-based drug and alcohol treatment services. $20.1 million GF-State, $2.1 million federal funds
Ensures quality and access in long-term care. Protects our most vulnerable from abuse by requiring frequent communication with vendors about their compliance with licensing standards. Increased staff will conduct unannounced visits to newly licensed facilities, follow-up more frequently with vendors receiving enforcement actions and investigate allegations of mistreatment. Offers choices in residential settings for the elderly, by providing a rate increase for boarding homes and adult family homes of 3.2 percent in the first year of the biennium and 2 percent in the second year. $10.6 million GF-State, $10.3 million federal funds
Increases wages for home care workers. Increases home care workers wages as a result of a collectively bargained contract. Also provides differential pay when home care workers serve as mentors or trainers and reimburses workers for client-related travel and other benefits. Agency providers are provided parity with the increase given to individual home care workers. $50.2 million GF-State, $52.8 million federal funds
Helps people become more self-sufficient
Provides community-based supports for families. Expands flexible support funding for families to help them get the respite care, specialized equipment or other services that enable their developmentally disabled family member to live at home. Helps people with developmental disabilities get and keep jobs so that they are more self-sufficient. Expands supports to people caring for their elderly family members. $9.6 million GF-State, $2.8 million federal funds
Promotes self-sufficiency for low-income families. Establishes a post-TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) program to help families get off and stay off welfare. Helps families stay employed, move into higher paying jobs, increase family stability and improve child outcomes. Allows more of the state-collected child support dollars to go directly to families to help them get out of poverty. $13.2 million GF-State, $4.9 million federal funds
Increases affordable housing to prevent homelessness. Expands the successful Housing Trust Fund program, increasing the number of affordable housing units available to families transitioning from being homeless or escaping domestic violence situations. The program also assists disabled individuals and seniors who do not have the resources to rent housing. $140 million Capital
Helps families affected by closures of manufactured home parks. Expands the Mobile Home Relocation Assistance program to help low-income people who must move their mobile homes due to park closure. $4 million GF-State
Collects child support. The federal Deficit Reduction Act reduced funding for mandatory programs and increased reporting requirements with no new funding. Among the programs the state must now directly fund is the collection of child support for about 380,000 families in Washington. $16.1 million GF-State