This story is part of an ongoing series looking into recent cuts to Washington’s state budget. If there are impacts you think we should be covering, reach out to laurel.demkovich@cascadepbs.org.
When Dr. Brian Knowles entered one of his first job sites as an early- learning mental health consultant, he wasn’t sure how he was going to help the children who needed his support.
One of the preschoolers who was struggling had been previously expelled. The other had a record of suspensions. The early-learning providers didn’t know how to help the children, and a prior mental health consultation hadn’t been successful.
But Knowles started building relationships with the children, their families and their teacher. He helped avoid further expulsions and suspensions, and now, years later, the children, families and teachers are all doing better.
“This work is not only so important, but it works,” Knowles said. “It’s needed.”
Holding Hope, the state’s leading program for infant and early childhood mental health consultation, helps support teachers and caregivers with children in their classrooms who engage in disruptive behaviors.
The early-learning mental health support programs like Holding Hope provide is essential to both caregivers, who are often overworked and burnt out, and young children themselves, who may be at risk of expulsion from preschool programs without proper intervention.
But a multibillion-dollar shortfall forced state budget writers to make cuts to these programs throughout Washington. The Legislature has cut about $3 billion in funding over the next two years.
That means Holding Hope saw 50% of its funding cut last month, forcing it to pause services to some centers – a move advocates say hurts both children and early-learning providers.
“It’s really like a domino effect,” Knowles said. “The providers are still there, the issues are still there, the behaviors are still there, but there’s not as many of us doing the work.”
Program changes
Before its funding was cut, Holding Hope’s consultants all had full caseloads and a waitlist for services. The organization received about $4 million from the state each year, which made it possible to fund about 25 mental health consultant positions across the state.
The 50% cut means the organization is now down to 13 consultants, a reduction that increases each worker’s caseload, as the number of children and caregivers receiving help decreases.
The biggest communities hit will be in King and Pierce County, where a staff of 10 consultants has been cut down to only two, said Janet Fraatz, director of Holding Hope at Child Care Aware of Washington. Knowles is one of the two consultants left in the region – a hit he says hurts both those he serves and his own mental health.
Currently, the program can adequately serve about 80 to 100 open cases in-person at a time, but before the funding cut, it was more than double that amount.
Laurel Demkovich
To make up for a loss in on-site services, Holding Hope is considering virtual options for providers who are waiting for in-person help, Fraatz said. That will likely be a weekly office hour over Zoom, where providers who are struggling with their students can receive advice and group support.
Long wait times sometimes mean children never get the help they need, because by the time a consultant has availability to visit, the children are no longer in a participating program, Fraatz said. She hopes having a weekly virtual option instead will help serve more people.
“It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing,” she said. “It will allow us to give providers who are desperate over a given situation immediate help.”
Preventing expulsions
With fewer mental health supports, Knowles said he worries more children will be removed from classrooms.
Early-learning mental health consultation is proven to reduce preschool expulsions, which increase the likelihood of a child being expelled later in life and can lead to low graduation rates or higher crime rates, Fraatz said.
Sometimes a child’s behavior can be a coping mechanism in response to trauma or a difficult home life, Fraatz said. Early intervention can help a child avoid those outcomes, she said.
“Those things follow them into kindergarten, into high school,” Knowles said. “They continue to be misunderstood.”
Often, systemic differences like race or gender can cause children to be misunderstood by providers, Knowles said.
Knowles said that when a consultant gets a referral, they will usually start by trying to understand the child’s behavior and the provider’s response. Teachers are often dealing with their own challenges – like burnout, understaffing or mental health conditions of their own that can affect how they interact with a child, he said.
He said his job is to try to help those providers communicate their needs better and, in the end, help the children and families who need it most.
Once a provider better understands their own mental health, Knowles said, they can often better understand the children they serve.
“Some of this behavior that can arise may be difficult for some individuals who are not equipped with the right tools to understand,” he said. “To first regulate a little one, you need to be regulated yourself.”
Laurel Demkovich
