WHAT WE LEARNED FROM COMMUNITY PARTNERS IN BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WALLA WALLA, AND GRANDVIEW

The Children’s Alliance policy team has made it a priority this year to connect with community partners in many different areas of Washington. In a previous blog post, we recapped our visit to Bellingham and Vancouver. The latter recently led to a collaborative feature in The Columbian with partners at Carelon focusing on youth mental health in Southwest Washington. Our more recent travels took us to Bainbridge Island, Walla Walla, and Grandview. 

A map highlighting all of our visits over the summer of 2024.

Bainbridge Island 

What does the ideal model for delivering youth behavioral health care look like? This question prompted our visit to Bainbridge Island, home of Bainbridge Youth Services (BYS), an independently funded organization offering behavioral health care, education, and support services to young people aged 13-21. BYS is similar to a school-based health center, but it is a private practice and is funded through grants and donations. This allows the freedom to offer unlimited, confidential, and zero-cost visits to young people in Kitsap County and to tailor the care they offer to the needs of their community.  

So why isn’t this care model being used more widely?  

BYS is a well-established organization with a 60-year history of providing care and a high level of trust within their community. It is also based in an affluent community with many donors who are able to help fund the organization. Many other communities do not have the resources to fund an independently-run health center. Instead, they must rely on state and local funding for school-based health centers, which come with increased regulatory burdens, as well as limitations on privacy and confidentiality for students. As a result, many students do not receive the level of care they need or the type of care they want.  

Walla Walla 

In Walla Walla County, there are spots at licensed day cares for only around 20% of kids with working parents. During our visit we met with one of the few licensed providers in the area, and we spoke to her about some of the challenges that she and her colleagues are facing. 

The provider shared that one of the biggest challenges is navigating the desire and need to pay her staff well and maintain a good quality of care while also keeping costs down for families. She recognizes that, while caring for our children is critically important work, it is extremely undervalued. The lack of funding for child care across the state, and in Walla Walla in particular, make it difficult for her to retain teachers and meet her other expenses. 

Regulations regarding child care facilities and infrastructure can also be frustrating for providers. For example, the provider we met with talked about one requirement related to the rules around plumbing in child care centers. Specifically, she recounted her experience of having to demolish and rebuild part of her center, which she had just finished renovating, in order to align with state licensing requirements when it was discovered that a toilet was six inches off from where it needed to be. With little funding available to carry out necessary adjustments to meet such regulations, there is often a high cost burden placed upon child care providers. 

In order to fill some funding gaps, providers in the area work with nonprofits like United Way of Blue Mountains (UWBM) to get help finding resources and applying for grants. When we met with staff at UWBM, they reiterated much of what providers told us about the challenges of being a child care provider in Walla Walla. One solution they are working on is aimed at increasing the number of people in the child care workforce by getting young people interested in the field of early education. Through their Elevate program, they provide career resources to students in the area and hope that this will help to fill the need for more early childhood educators in the area.  

From left to right: Emily (Early Learning Policy & Coalition Manager) , Anni (Senior Policy Director), and Max (Health & Economic Justice Policy Manager) in Walla Walla.

Grandview 

Grandview was by far the smallest community we visited. It is home to just over 11,000 people, a large portion of whom are migrant agricultural workers. The area is extremely under-resourced, and many families are living below the poverty line. Grandview is where a lot of our state’s (and nation’s) food supply is grown, yet many of the people living there cannot afford to buy the food they work to produce. 

The lack of resources in the area also impacts early education. There are very few opportunities for families to get support with preparing their children for school or integrating into the school community. Save the Children is working to address that. Through the Early Steps to School Success (ESSS) program and kindergarten readiness activities in partnership with the Grandview School District, they offer services to children and families including home visiting, play groups and story times, and educational opportunities for parents. Without this program, many families would have no support in navigating the school system or helping their children get ready for kindergarten. 

How these visits will inform our work in the legislative session 

The time we have spent engaging with community members throughout the state this summer and fall has been critical to our advocacy work. Effective policy advocacy demands that we hear directly from impacted communities. Firsthand accounts provide critical insights into the lived experiences of those most affected by systemic inequities and disparities. So, by prioritizing these voices, we can ensure that our advocacy, and the policies that result from it, are more responsive, equitable, and grounded in real-world needs. Advocating with, and not for, community members is the only way to truly address the root causes of societal issues, and the only way to lead to sustainable, meaningful change.  

As we count down to the start of the 2025 legislative session, we look forward to applying the information we learned and continuing our work to help people tap into their personal political power so they can advocate for change in their communities.