City Council - Public Health, Safety, Justice, and Equity Committee

okay I'll bring us order here it is uh 1:00 on August 12th 2024 and this is the um Bellingham city council meeting and these are standing committee meetings our first one today is public health uh safety and Justice and equity and that is chaired by council member Holly huthman thank you council president uh today we have one agenda item and I will be joined by council members cotton Anderson today uh for this committee um we have a presentation from the wcom county health and Community Services Department on the progress of the healthy Children's Fund an Beck Community Health and Human Services manager for wcom County will give a presentation on the healthy Children's Fund and I will go ahead and turn it over to you Miss Beck thank you so much and Beck Community Health and Human Services manager at wcom County Health and Community Services I love saying the whole thing it's always fun um and lucky for you I'm not actually going to give much of the presentation you've got one of my fabulous colleagues Sarah Simpson here to do it and she is just uh so great at this and so I'm so grateful that she's here to share some of the good things I do like to do an introduction whenever we do um our presentations to kind of give you a a base foundation for our work and what we do um we now put these slides at the start of every health and Community Services presentation we do because we like to remind folks of the five PS and what it is that we in public health do and then in the case of

healthy Children's Fund uh work and Children and Families work we're spending a lot of time focusing on the promote prevent and Preserve of our peace um we're preventing disease and injury in the forms of that the trauma early on that could lead to some um challenging behaviors and life life situations down the road the preserving we're creating an environment where children have a chance to thrive and grow whether it's in the care that they're receiving in child care whether it's they're receiving it in their homes whatever it might be that's where the preserve is coming place and promote we're looking at making sure that our systems are improving across the board that we're trying to make sure that children zero to five have a chance and their families to really thrive in our community um my my boss Erica lenbach often talks about patient zero when we talk about the way back in the days of covid because we're a whole lot more than covid I think that's how people got to know us there for a while um but it's we like to find patient zero and for the children in this community they are the patient zero for the current crisis that we're looking at right now so whether it's homelessness fentanyl whatever it might be and all of these things live very much in my division and the work we do we do a work across the Spectrum it's those early traumas those early experiences that really started to impact those children into adulthood and then the decisions in the life of where they're

living now is often tied to that so this work that we're doing we're really proud of because this is that Upstream work this is that tackling patient zero but before they have a chance to get down the road to where we need so I'm going to kick it off to Sarah because she's just um she's wonderful and she's got all sorts of wonderful things to say hi everyone thanks so much for having us um like Ann said my name is Sarah Simpson and I'm the supervisor for the children's and Family Programs um Team under ANS Division and here to chat more with you about the healthy Children's Fund just to give you a little bit of taste about how I am and how I run my team every week I pick a child that I've seen in the community to be my boss because I think I spend all day serving the community and really solving adult problems that really impact the lives of Our Lives of our youngest residents and because it's Monday I haven't come across many children besides my own um but I wanted to share with you one of my favorite bosses from earlier last spring um my son goes to Sunnyland Elementary and I was on the playground with him in the morning and there was this kid walking around with a hood on huge sunglasses and a drawn on beard and just like Stone Cold walking around smiling at everybody but also like I dare you to check in with me and what I loved about that like the spirit of that child was that there're really I felt like being their true selves but also felt like they're in a safe

Community to do that um and you have to have a lot of your basic needs managed in order to I think like take risks in those ways and so that was a child that really for several weeks that he that he was my boss and so I'll say he's my boss today too so as you know um there are a multitude of reasons to um invest in early childhood this slide just illustrates a few of those things um as you know Aces which is adverse childhood experiences are overwhelmingly represented among people with substance use order people who suffer from mental illness and people currently in our jail um our failure to support our youngest residents really results in a lifetime of suffering Community expense and poor outcomes for those children when they become adults this last bullet on the slide um summarizes Dr heckman's seminal work and those seeking to reduce deficits and strengthen the economy should make significant investments in early childhood education you know Dr heckman's um groundbreaking work with Consortium of economists psychologists statisticians and neuroscientists really shows us that early childhood development directly influences our economic our Health and Social outcomes for individuals and our society I really continue to go back to his work all the time because it just really illustrates just this monumental impact that supporting our youngest residents has on the lifetime of our community so I'm sure as many of you are familiar the healthy Children's Fund focuses on Upstream

Solutions one of the reasons I was really attracted to this work is I spent most of my career supporting teenagers in Downstream Solutions and when the healthy Children's Fund came to be I was like this is the solution the community of teenagers I've been working with in County high schools here in w County needed when they were little and I know that lots of them have younger siblings at home and our community has over 2,000 births a year like this is really what our community needs and I feel really grateful and honored to be a part of this work um so as we said you know this is Upstream Solutions those that present prevent and disrupt the cycles and patterns that lead to inequities within our community and really getting back to maximizing our investment because also our work in government is thinking about the dollar spent right how can we most maximize the Investments that we're making in our community and so doing that in the early years of our youngest residents is a really really smart investment that we can all make it's intended to expand the support and resources for children prenatal to age five and their parents and caregivers to increase the overall Early Childhood well-being I don't know all about all of you but I'm a parent I have two kids I know if things are wild are feeling challenging for me that also impacts our children and so that's why there's also a focus on supporting those parents um during those early years as well so within each of these areas

we're addressing the inequities being experienced by children and families in early learning and Care the affordability the accessibility the quality and the stability of the workforce as well as to expand mental and Behavioral Health Services prevent and reduce homelessness and housing instability which I know is a topic on everyone's agendas constantly in the work that we all do um and provide support for parents and caregivers to have the resources that they need most so I am going to chat for just a moment about arpa because these there are a lot of things that are kind of interconnected here so the County Council voted to direct a third of the arpa dollars to child care in our community this work will culminate in about 600 slots created here in watcom County um and the healthy Children's Fund asks that we braid funding to maximize the investment that our community is making and while the council decision to designate the funding happened before the levy was passed since we've been really really thoughtful about how we're using those Monies to focus on capital projects that take extended time and and great deal of resources I'm as I'm sure you're all familiar with and that the healthy Children's Fund dollars are really working to come around and fill those spaces with quality affordable um and accessible Child Care programs um a contract with the state nonprofit the Imagine Institute actually was signed just a bit ago and this contract specifically focuses on getting

homebased Child Care Centers established in our rural communities and we're super excited about that work so just want to give you a little taste of the kinds of projects that were just approved maybe about six months ago um with the last round of arpa the um like I mentioned the Imagine Institute contract with 15 Home Centers developed in our County um Ferndale School District is starting a ton of ecap slots which is a state preschool program in addition to revamping their Early Childhood Program that had been closed for several years and we are providing um resources for them to build an accessible playground in equipment in Ferndale so it'll be the first in their school district that kids who use wheelchairs on a daily basis can play with kids who don't and we're really excited about that opportunity for the community and what that means some other things that we did is that one of the applications was actually from a child care facility in watcom County who wanted to move one of their empty rooms into an infant space and we actually thought that was a really great use for healthy Children's Fund dollars based on the price a point it was um only about $60,000 and was typically funding much larger projects and so the healthy Children's Fund is actually going to pay for the transition of a classroom that's unused to an infant room which is huge as we know infant slots are really a valuable asset here in our community and then one of the other projects I want to share with

you that I'm extremely excited about is that one of our low-income housing facilities has ground floor build they're building it out or saved it for child care and there's a local provider um that is currently serving Mount Vernon who applied that specifically supports migrant and Spanish work ERS and they are um folks that we accepted their ARA application to build out that space to continue to Target that population of residents here in wam County so we're really really thrilled to have them so as you um I'm sure you're also familiar with is that Council approved quite some time ago a implementation plan with some funding priorities and so early learning in care includes small capital projects like the one I just mentioned where we're transferring an unused room into an infant room professional development opportunities which I'll dig into a little bit more in my presentation subsidies which I'll also share a little bit more about our work on that some Workforce expansion and retention a hubs program in our school district and catchman areas and some Innovative strategies all in the early learning and care and then the vulnerable children's Focus areas were really around behavioral and mental health housing early parenting supports and resource navigation so we were given a really clear map of what was important in our community and where we need to focus our Energies all right okay so what's happening now so I will say having provided Direct Services for many years of my

career I feel like it gives me a really unique perspective that I'm I feel really fortunate to hold so when I see all these strategies and dollar amounts on the screen I can see the faces and names but really most importantly I can see the stories of families that I know would have directly benefited in a meaningful way to the programs just like this um the basic needs RFP is really exciting we heard a call for resources throughout our entire County and it was really a reminder of the enormous cost to keep an infant fed and clean it it costs on average $1,000 yearly um just for diapers that doesn't include wipes or other diapering needs and a conservative average for the cost of formula is $22,000 per year for many new families that additional $250 added to their budget could be the difference between maintaining their housing or not or making other really complicated decisions and that doesn't even include the cost of child care and as those of us who are parents the astronomical expense it is just to welcome a new person into the world um we also know that malnutrition affects babies and nutritional support is um needed for newborns to prevent disease and impaired cognition um last week County Council unanimously passed an over $860,000 contract for the Bellingham Food Bank to distribute resources Al along with all the other food banks in our County they partnered with them it's really exciting um and so they're going to do that and then also there are going to be two

smaller contracts coming out in the next month or so for other agencies so we'll have a total of a million dollars of these basic need resources going out in the next 18 months looking at the Doula program we're really excited this is being launched because we know that Medicaid is going to start paying for birthing Doula services in the next 18 months across Washington State and we're really readying our population of douas to start serving that population about 2,000 births in wam County each year occur and half of those are medicate eligible families um it's statistically significant the correlation um between positive delivery outcomes with aulla um with doua support and this goes right back to hekman's research right when we invest early the outcome is long-term and those families with less birth trauma to be managed later in life and fewer negative medical outcomes from labor that would adverse the child is really important and a really small investment that we can make for these families um drop in care also is the last one I want to highlight on this slide it's extremely exciting RFP that we're actually current revie currently reviewing applications for right now families who want to access our states Working Connection program can actually only get that subsidy if they already have a job and it's really hard to get a job if you have your children and you don't have any place that's safe for them to go in order to go interview um and so our drop in CARE program will

actually be able to provide that a family will be able to get online the morning or the day before that they have a job interview and say hey I need a space that find a space that where it's licensed so they know their child will be safe and that there's slot available and at a certain income level it will actually even be paid for by the program and that they'll be able to drop their kid off and have like a breath of confidence and they can focus on their job interview um we also know there are lots of families in our communities that just have one-off appointments that are really important veterans in our communities that have counseling appointments that they can't attend because they don't have a safe person to leave their child with and so this drop in CARE program is really going to open up a lot of opportunities for not only parents and caregivers to enhance their own health and wellness but also expand opportunities for them to go to work so time and time again we've been told by providers that they need a trained Workforce um with the support of the professional development Network that we've been working on um they will not only help recruit and train child care providers but also enrich our own Workforce by supporting residents in our community to connect to full-time reliable employment we've actually already taken some steps and established an interlocal agreement with Bellingham Technical College and their staff came up with a plan for the professional

development Network and after holding sessions across our County to learn from staff and providers about their needs so it's really exciting this Rich plan that they've developed and we're actually in the final stages right now to um finalize our contract for implementation so we're really really thrilled about all the work they're going to be able to do um oh and I also want to share the Innovation fund which is this kind of top bullet childcare Based Services and kindergarten Readiness programs is actually coming out this week and we're really excited for that to get launched yes yeah and celebration um again we're in terms of vulnerable children some things to be coming soon as we're working on embedded community-based social workers for pregnant and parenting families what we know from working with other folks in our community like Rachel Lucy at peace health is that people are coming into the ER on a really regular basis and they've never received any prenatal care and they're not sure what's going on or they might be having an emergency um or they're coming to the birthing center for the very first time to give birth to their baby and haven't received any medical care ahead of time and so a little bit of a mystery about what's going to happen and so really wanting to provide the most care we can um we're going to support having a social worker and then also a community health worker to do to do that work in conjunction the other thing that this will do that's really

wonderful is lots of times we become pregnant and there are things that folks are concerned about that might be having you might be having a complicated birth or you might have a child that they already know might have special needs and so those social workers will be able to get those families hooked up with Services immediately so it's not a wait and seee situation but it's a let's get you support now so some things that we're working on that are going to be a little bit more down the road that we want to share with you is and one of the biggest things is addressing the gap between What Child Care Providers need and What Child Care provide and what families can afford is really around our subsidy and so um our goal is really to address that subsidy Cliff so families who may make 65 % of the state medium income which is the very top of our Working Connection scale will pay about $2500 per year for child care but when they make just over 65% I was actually doing a survey at a child care facility last week and this came up for a family she made $100 more than that 65% they have to pay 20 over $221,000 a year for child care that's a pretty enormous difference and we know that $100 raise that they got is not going to cover that piece at all um and so we're hoping to address that Cliff here in wam County um for our families and so some steps that we've taken is that on Monday March 18th the child and family well-being task force uh um healthy Children's Fund subcommittee was

shown our first draft of the subsidy plan and then come May in partnership with the Child Care Coalition we held a three-hour affordability Summit to review the latest iteration of the subsidy policies and programs being recommended and staff received really positive review of the progress and really excellent feed feedback for us to move forward from the community um and to continue to home the strategy and this month we're actually currently surveying families who are enrolled in child care facilities across wcom County and we have the survey both in English and Spanish it's being administered in person and online and really what we're hoping for is to understand fam's preferences of the depth and breadth of the survey of the subsidy so the kind of the the meat of it all is that would we would do families and providers would they rather have a a subsidy for families 0 to three when it's the mo costs the most or would they have a rather have a smaller subsidy when they're during the whole five years that a child could be enrolled in child care so it's been really interesting watching people think through that there's a lot of different opinions about that question but we're excited to continue to get that information and plan to present to our County Council um in September around all the information we've been learning to continue the discussion and hoping to make our final decision by the first week in October so we can put the RFP out for the subsidy so in summary we have

about 600 Child Care slots to be added from infants on up we have funding mechanisms for nearly every single healthy Children's Fund strategy and countywide support for families Early Learning and Care employees and child care businesses some kind of things so what's coming up um as you've seen you know we have a lot of rfps either that have closed or that are on the table um community members have been asked to read and evaluate our r PS which has been really exciting and help make decisions in connection with Community we've expanded our implementation team and community members will work alongside County staff to develop the implementation plan for the next the next cycle and hold the bigger picture of the healthy Children's Fund along with evaluating funding mechanisms we received a grant award to bring the rapid survey project from Stamford Center on early learning to wam County and the rapid survey provides actionable data on the experiences and well-being of the important adults in a young children's life to inform immediate and long-term program and policy decisions I'm extremely excited to be a part of this cohort the data is collected quarterly for two years and the results are reported back to us extremely quickly so we can make decisions based on current experiences the rapid survey if you're not familiar with it I encourage you to check it out but it started during covid to actually inform um like local community practices for families that were de deeply

impacted by covid policies and so the whole thing is funded by Stanford and it will pay families to actually complete the surveys and gives us access to we have access to a senior research coordinators data analysis and project management so really we just get to bring our community members together and decide what we want to survey and they do most of the rest it's pretty amazing the other thing I want to share is that our health information assessment team has also been working on researching and testing Technology Solutions to stream L our data collection from contractors and enabling us to develop data dashboards to track the healthy Children's Fund outcome I was actually just in a several hour meeting this morning with our full-time evaluator with the healthy Children's Fund and I've been doing this kind of work for a really long time and I've never had access to a full-time evaluator it is pretty exciting to see the things that we'll be able to report on in the next couple years because of we have this dedicated position the other things I want to share is that we were accepted to participate in the start early um systems mapping which is a national there start early is a national firm that focuses on program policy and research to optimize and scale work that has the greatest impact on children and families and we applied for one of their latest grants to have a system map of the system for childhood well-being um here in wam County and we are awarded that so we'll be

working with a team of local experts providers and parents to build out this visual systems map now through January 2025 so you should see that come February you'll be able to see a really amazing map of all like kind of everything from you know maybe imagine like a bridg Collins and um domestic violence supports to early learning programs and what what it looks like here what's available here in wam County um and the LA last couple things I wanted to share um the P3 Center um hosts a yearly Institute and they focus on kind of pre kindergarten everything from Child Care to preschool programs to third grade um they're out of the University of Colorado and they host an Institute yearly it was a application process um they only accept a hundred folks total and you have to create a team from your local community across um different entities in order to participate and so this was really an opportunity for us to bring together a small group of leaders here in wam County um and consider how we can improve the education Continuum of children's experiences birth through third grade we got accepted to do that as well I'm really really thrilled and some of those leaders that we're bringing on our team of eight include Christine minguez the superintendent from Ferndale James Everett the superintendent from Meridian and David Vander yach the superintendent from Lyndon schools along with Jamie desmal who oversees the YMCA healthare centers so we're really thrilled to be able to get to do

some really targeted work together with other local leaders here in our community um you know we have a really rich and deep group of community experts parents and organizations working towards bettering the lives of young children and families um here in wam County and more and more good stuff is just going to continue to come our way from this Mighty group lastly I just want to share before we get to your Rich questions one of my favorite quotes about serving young people it's by Rita Pearson and she said every single child deserves a champion an adult who will never give up on them and I know that all of us in this room um can be that person for a kid we all have really different roles that we serve in in our jobs but I think all the decisions we make really lend them back to like how are our youngest residents served so thank you so much for the work that you do here in Bellingham and looking forward to hearing your questions thank you for that presentation um committee questions or comments Council m Anderson thank you and thank you for this presentation it's um really wonderful to see the good work that is happening in our community um kind of maybe the elephant in the room is um some of the stuff that's going on with um the county having to look to take a citizen's initiative to court um to see whether or not it's valid I'm just with all this good work happening um if something should overturn how much funding do you see for just maybe not all of these initiatives but

to still continue to provide the um the food assistance and then the the established Child Care um expansion that has happened because I'm assuming that's going to be some ongoing work I imagine you're doing some analysis of a plan B um if you're not prepared to share that at this point too I completely understand it's been um worrisome for me because I know the work that you're doing is fabulous and then I'm wondering how do we as um as Community leaders look to backfill that if it's going to be essential thanks thanks Lisa super thoughtful question I can say for everything that I shared with you on the slides and all the contracts that we're developing right now will be able to fulfill all those contract commitments and so any programming that we're investing and now you know depending on what happens we wouldn't be a question as if any no organizations would lose out on those decisions I think moving forward that's a really great question right we have so far collect we have collected by the time the election happens two years worth of funding and So based on that decision we would either have what is left of that two years of funding um or be able to continue and move on I think answering your question about how much do those things cost kind of into the future I could say you know we are spending a million dollars on infant supplies the basic needs over 18 months I know that they probably would have liked more I think one of the things that we're doing are some qu we're

actually providing ta to provide qualitative studies to particularly the food bank to understand if the thing the supplies that we're providing actually are enough so I can't say for sure if it would be more than a million dollars my suspicion is that it would be um kind of a modest amount um when you really understand the depth of family's need um what else would you add an I think the only thing I would add is that it would just mean we are going back to the table to talk about how to best utilize the funds that we have collected up to this point but we are making sure that all the contracts we signed everything that's going out is fully funded and and we'll be able to provide the programs and outcomes that are in there so I think I mean just maybe to close out the question I think you bring up a really great Point Lisa which is that our focus is on Children and Families the health department or Wacom County Health and Community Services deeply cares about our children and families in our community and we'll do everything we can in order to continue to support them okay council member loquist I don't serve in the committee but I'm actually kind of almost feel embarrassed to ask this question because it's a very simple question don't no questions are bad question you've given you've given a very thorough and multi-dimensional and interconnected presentation that's that is one of the messages that I got and I really appreciate that but you cited one number that really had me

paused that had to do with the child care Cliff oh yes where it went up from $2,500 to year to maybe 20,000 a year and you said it was 65% of oh Ami very median income and what is the number in wam County that that matches 6,000 Ami say sh for a family of three is around I don't know it off the top of my head I could quickly look it up but uh I don't off the top of my head I'm sorry I was just looking at this table on Friday so I wish I knew okay thank you I think it is close to like $2500 a month I don't want you to quote me I'll look it up but if I'm remembering correctly I think like a family of 365 is like that basically double their monthly expenses if they had to pay yeah it's pretty extraordinary we'll find a follow up on that who's whose crazy idea is that to make this Cliff whose rules set that the state the state runs the Working Connections program State's Working Connections program do they know they they created a CL oh I think they yeah I'm pretty sure sure they're aware of that okay thank you yeah but if you want to call them I would welcome that they are moving I will say to give the state a little bit of credit is they are moving up to 75% Ami so we're actually kind of coming in ahead of them so their plan is in the next year to move it to 75% Ami and then we'll be able to continue to move our subsidy up as well counc member hamilc thank you um I think we could all share time but um with this uh with the inome child care and this is going back a little ways I

I'm Chief GED examiner and I had um the state had made some changes to their license here maybe 10 15 years ago and I had multiple people who had inhome Child Care Facilities um who did not have their GED or high school diploma some came they might have had a high school diploma in another country that wasn't recognized and for some of these individuals um it was quite a struggle to pass that type of testing since English was not their native language um I'm wondering has the state made things easier for inhome uh Child Care Facilities or is there um I I I'd like to thank some kind of false uh ceilings that get put in based on having to um The lure that can be unobtainable for some people um who might be more of the Immigrant um population I'm just kind of wondering is it getting a little bit easier are you finding some areas that are hard to maneuver in order to get these uh newer facilities licensed that's a really great question um I know that we so we've hired The imagin Institute to do that work for us my assumption and I'll have to look into that specific question I know that to be a Lead Teacher in a childcare facility you have to have a certain number of college credits so um and then to you know certain benchmarks different positions you have to have to continue your education um in a highered highered institution like you know watcom runs those programs so my assumption based on that knowledge is that yes you still have to have a GED in order to open an inhome Child

Care Center I don't know if they've loosened that but I wrote that question down and I'll get back to you yeah absolutely yeah great question that's a great addition and so with the professional development Network at BTC one of the things they'll be doing is working with like providers like they will develop aou with the Bellingham YMCA and they'll make sure that folks are getting both the individual trainings they need in order to be successful but also if people want to advance their career kind of different tracks they'll be able to do that same thing with the Imagine Institute and inhome providers is say hey are you interest if someone wanted to be an inhome provider and didn't have that they could go to the professional development Network in order to get the support to meet those licensure expectations in order to open up those centers so they would have the one-on-one kind of case management and support that they currently don't have now in order to do that thank you um do you mind if I do a follow um I do know these two individuals that were more County based did eventually lose their license and they had been um providing daycare for over 15 years so painful and it it was because they were good at what they did they just weren't able to U meet that requirement I'm wondering if there is because of the Lead Teacher aspect has there been any dialogue of sharing like a Lead Teacher or two that could go to multiple um homebased daycare in order to be able to meet that

requirement has that been something that has been looked at or would that be going through the consultant I think of like visiting nursing totally like visiting Lead Teacher assistance that can come in a certain amount of hours per day and then maybe split a couple of sites yeah I mean honestly when you ask that question that was something that went through my head I was like oh I wonder if we could do that um and I think we have you have to be so creative Within These Early Learning and Care Systems because there are so many rules that do make it really difficult to to meet some of the expectations and so one of the things we're doing is building these hubs which are going to be in school district and catchman areas that will provide administrative services to the focus is inh home care providers and so that could absolutely be something that could come from that every Community will have the opportunity to build out their own Hub to meet their own Community need and so I think that's a really wonderful idea if there is a particular area where there's a you know a um stronger concentration of folks who might not be able to maintain their lure they would be able to do that thank you I'm just fast I love a little problem solve can ium thank you so these questions have me thinking too about the one of the most exciting things about this funding is the fact that it's so locally focused we're working with those leaders in the community who see what the challenges are you think

about the federal and state when they are sending child care resources down or vulnerable you know resources for vulnerable children's we can't say that that funding is one siiz fits all for every Community we know what our community needs and that is what part of the this launch period has been for us it has been a lot of conversations trying to figure out where the gaps are where the holes are how we can fill them in and what really clever things we can do because this is brand new territory for our community this is brand new territory for a lot of communities not everybody has this kind of thing so we've really enjoyed getting to have those conversations to figure out how to problem solve those things where there's this this hole there and and we don't want to see anybody fall into it president thanks I don't serve on this committee but I definitely have opinions on this um this is going to be more of an editorializing um segment please have a seat and it's going to take a minute um so tomorrow at 2:15 I'll be um on the um parking lot at Cordata um Christ the King um parking lot uh with the food bank and when I get there tomorrow there'll be 50 cars in line and that line will never get reduced it'll it'll be like that until 6:15 tomorrow night and um I talked with Mike Cohen who's the executive director of the Bellingham Food Bank and I asked him what the why is there such an increase in um in people that are needing the the basic uh uh needs and it's the Alice families

that you have cited here uh in this document Alice or Alice's um asset limited income constrained and employed the poverty line has stayed roughly the same but the Alice folks they're getting squeezed on their rents and that directly goes right into their food budget so they end up going to the food bank and then they take whatever um um food stamps or whatever else whatever resources they have and then go to the grocery store to try to figure out how to supplement those things so um I had to buy a new pair of of work gloves over the weekend because I went back to get my my gloves from last year I I spent 16 months on that line uh best volunteer job in the world and every single finger of the gloves were worn through just by taking boxes constantly and and giving them to folks one of the biggest needs was Pampers uh or diapers on their um and then wipes and things for you know kids needs are so incredible and the the numbers that you cite here um they they're they're very accurate when I was I was leaving a grocery store um uh months ago and I walked past a table and there was a signature gatherer and that person said hey um are you a wam County voter I secretly told him I'm from Canada but I'm I'm not I'm a wam County voter um but I said hey what's going on what are you what are you doing here and he said well there's a slush fund that we want to repeal at the county and it was it was this it was this is not a slush fund this is a wellth thought out well-mapped um guide for

what we can do to help our families here in wam County that person was was not he was disingenuous so I think the next time when we we talk about um lowering the the threshold for Signature uh signatures needed to pass an initiative let's think about this because if you lower the bar for one you lower it for all and and this and this um what what could happen in November is something that I don't want to happen in terms of a challenge to this we need this for our families in wam County we need the daycare the quality daycare those kids need those families need relief and so um I 100% will always stand behind this and I think that um you know the W County Health Department is one of my hero departments when it comes to um the work that's being done uh for our most vulnerable uh neighbors so thank you for the work and thanks the presentation I know we're we're past time but I just wanted to put that in thank you just one one teeny question if I may teeny um how many other counties in Washington state have something like a healthy Children's Fund paid for out of tax dollars like this just just one just best starts for kids yeah I I'm sorry King County yeah thank you thanks sorry I just know it so I'm like can't you read my mind yeah thank you um also an looked it up and I was wrong the Ami for a family of three is $4,700 a month but that is their pre-tax income something to remind us about oh yeah 60% Ami okay and I'll do some final editorializing as well um so again thank you

for the presentation I as you were talking with each bullet point it I felt so excited about what's happening every every bullet point was more or as exciting as the last I can't believe how much work has gone into this in such a short amount of time um the the the spectrum of needs that are being met here is pretty astounding um there's a lot of need I'm one of those people that has had to navigate the child care crisis in watom County um luckily found a really wonderful inhome daycare that we can't live without and uh you know if if there was nothing else to take from this I think the one the one point I wish everybody in Wacom County knew was for every dollar invested in early childhood programs between 7 and 13 are saved through benefits like lower incarceration rates and lower health care costs cost s even the scrooges of scrooges scrooges would have a hard time uh denying that that that is a good thing um so will uh one question will we get a report like this every year I think it would be wonderful I think so absolutely yes we man yes we can um we the thing we have realized in doing this is that we have not been doing a great job of sharing the stories we have been so busy with our heads down having these meetings figuring out how to make these things work that we haven't been advertising just how much is getting done and how much and and the the the options that are out there and what we're going to be able to do so yes our plan is to be much more Vigilant about

reporting out the good things that have happened and the good things that we continue to hope to see down the road thank you yeah I think that'll make a big difference I think that that if people see what what this money is doing what their money is doing in our community um I think it'll it'll will continue to have good support for this thanks and Jackie has my email address so I'm always happy to take individual questions or have more conversation about that and I'll get back to you um council member Anderson sorry Le about um about the question about the GED okay well thanks again thank you for the presentation hope to see you again next year and with that end of committee thank you