Washington Gov. Jay Inslee’s office posted a job opening in October: children and youth multisystem care coordinator.
It’s a wonky title, but this brand-new position represents a sea change for children and families in desperate need. The state is finally designating someone to take responsibility for helping kids who have been stuck in hospital emergency rooms with nowhere else to go.
Seattle Times reporter Hannah Furfaro first brought this crisis to light last year. Hannah is a member of the Mental Health Project, a four-person team focused on behavioral and mental health in Washington state. The Mental Health Project has highlighted issues ranging from why it’s so hard to find a therapist to backlogs that have left devastatingly sick people languishing in jails waiting for mental health services.
Early on, Hannah started hearing from doctors and others about kids with complex, severe behavioral needs living in hospital emergency departments. These kids need to be admitted for psychiatric care but there are not enough mental health beds available. Because they are a threat to themselves or others, they can’t go home. Instead of getting appropriate care, these children are being warehoused, sometimes in windowless emergency department rooms with no opportunities to go outside for weeks or even months.
Less opportunity than a prisoner
The father of one of the boys, who spent 33 days in a small windowless room, told Hannah that his son Dylan “had less opportunity than a person who is incarcerated.” Dylan spent his days watching TV. Staff pacified him with chocolate milk. He was so lonely that he’d ask if security guards could come talk to him.
In a series of articles, Hannah introduced Seattle Times readers to teens like Dylan. And Charlie, whose mom badly wanted to bring him home but needed support from the state to do so. And Jack, who spent over a year at a local children’s hospital, his family scrambling to find him somewhere to go as he turned 18 and the hospital threatened to discharge him.
The stories were emotional, and reporting presented significant challenges. Hannah’s ability to meet or interview the children affected was restricted: They remained hospitalized and, in some cases, had only limited verbal communication. She also had to gain the trust of their families, who revealed immensely painful parts of their lives.
Hannah analyzed tens of thousands of hospital records to demonstrate the scope of the problem. She found that psychiatric hospitalizations among youth doubled over the course of six years, from about 3,000 youth in 2015 to about 6,000 in 2021.
The families hoped that sharing their stories would help the broader public understand their struggles. They hoped there could be change – for their children and themselves, and for other families.
And it worked.
New funding and new help for kids
Some of the teens were able to get into more appropriate care after The Mental Health Project shared their stories. The stories helped spur new laws and funding that will help kids stuck in hospitals.
Youth mental health care was a key topic in the 2023 legislative session.
Most notably, House Bill 1580 proposed a crucial change: It would centralize responsibility for these youth warehoused in hospitals, rather than have multiple state agencies stepping in with no one truly at the wheel. It created the new care coordinator position – a person tasked with developing a team and organizing resources to help each of these children. And it placed this person on the governor’s staff.
Lawmakers cited the Mental Health Project’s work as the legislation moved through the process.
“You just have to pick up a headline — The Seattle Times has done a huge series on this work — to know that we do not have enough behavioral health resources for our children along the continuum of care,” Rep. Lisa Callan, D-Issaquah, said just before a House floor vote. “As a result, we are sending more and more of our children to emergency departments.”
Finally, a change in the law
Callan’s bill passed unanimously, and the state is moving forward on implementing the new programs her legislation outlined. Other measures passed during the legislative session will dedicate more resources to the issue, such as funding to support children’s long-term inpatient beds, and funding for youth inpatient navigators to help families identify temporary solutions when those beds are not available.
The Mental Health Project’s “reporting has been exceptionally helpful for this effort,” said Seattle Children’s senior state and federal government affairs director Hugh Ewart.
Today, there are still kids with complex needs staying too long in hospital emergency departments, but there is hope for progress. The Mental Health Project will continue tracking the changes made by the state and health care system, and the impact of this year’s new legislation.
More people than ever are talking about mental health. There are ads for therapists on seemingly every podcast, celebrities and political leaders openly discuss their struggles, and the collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic led many more of us to understand what supporting mental health really means.
But stigma is persistent. The Seattle Times Mental Health Project shows how media can keep the community conversation at the forefront. The project aims to explain and question the mental health system, help the community find care, and inform and educate about mental health conditions.
One key approach is amplifying the voices of people who have dealt with mental health struggles. In a regular column called Mental Health Perspectives, people in our community write about their own experiences with conditions such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Thanks to their bravery, others know they’re not alone. Whether they’re a parent struggling to find appropriate care for a child with a serious mental illness, or someone who has spent hours battling an insurance company to get their therapy covered, the Mental Health Project is often the first time they’ve seen their experiences reflected in a newspaper. It’s both validating and reduces stigma for our readers.
As our first column author wrote, “My hope is that we can share these stories to better understand and work toward a brighter future for everyone.”