4/25/2022
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Spokesman-Review
New crisis hotline is coming to Washington this summer
Free clothes for kids: ‘We want it to feel special’
KXLY
Journal of Business
The Center Square
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Spokesman-Review
New crisis hotline is coming to Washington this summer
By Esmy Jimenez
SEATTLE TIMES
A green light blinks quietly on an office phone monitor. A volunteer named Mark McAllister quickly transfers the call to his direct line. A soft voice comes through his headset: “I’ve been feeling a little bit sad lately.”
McAllister shifts in his chair, his glasses bobbing as he nods along. To his right, two other volunteers take calls. One listens to a teary 17-year-old who recently fought with her mother. Another call is from a woman worried about her brother who’s experiencing symptoms of severe mental illness; he’s refusing treatment and she doesn’t know what to do.
Every day at this inconspicuous office a couple of blocks from the Space Needle, dozens of volunteers and staff answer crisis calls and monitor the suicide hotline for King County and large parts of Washington state.
In less than 100 days, this place will add dozens of new staffers for the rollout of 988, a nationwide crisis phone line that’s set to debut in mid-July.
The goal is to consolidate various hotlines and phone services for youth, veterans, people seeking substance use treatment and any caller who needs a kind listener or resources for their mental health.
The challenge is this: consolidating a patchwork of crisis response systems across police, fire and mobile crisis teams, and across state agencies, county and tribal lines. Those building the hotline hope it will eventually connect to a robust behavioral health system that can provide next-day crisis appointments and support families with resources and treatment options. That system doesn’t fully exist today – and won’t for years, if ever – but those implementing 988 see the hotline as the first milestone.
Others, though, worry about launching 988 without a full infrastructure behind it. Ben Miller, CEO of the mental health advocacy nonprofit Well-Being Trust, warns that much of the U.S. is not ready: Workforce shortages in the mental health sector are dire, and in Washington the number of beds for crisis stabilization is limited.
“Hope is not a strategy,” said Miller, who is also a clinical psychologist based in Tennessee. “We’re going to have people call a new number and we’re going to get the same response (as they did before the hotline). Or even worse, my biggest fear is that they call the new number (and) they get a police response.”
Encounters between police and people with mental illnesses can have tragic results: People with mental illnesses are 16 times more likely to be killed in a police shooting than the general population, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center.
How does 988 work?
In 2020, Congress passed the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act as a complement to the current 911 emergency line, requiring states to launch the new 988 number by July 16. The following year, the Washington state legislature passed House Bill 1477 to further develop the plan and partially fund the service through a tax on phone and internet lines (24 cents per month, then 40 cents starting next year).
Three nonprofits that already operate local crisis hotlines – Frontier Behavioral Health, Crisis Connections and Volunteers of America – are set to host the 988 line across Washington, with the majority of Washington’s calls monitored by Volunteers of America. Crisis Connections serves King County, the most populous and busiest part of the state for crisis calls. They receive about 282 calls a day on the current King County hotline, and hundreds more through programs like Teen Link, a call and text service for youth; a service for veterans; and another called the WA Warmline, hosted by peers who have direct experience with emotional or mental health challenges.
While Crisis Connections has a volunteer program for its other hotlines, the 988 line will rely on 35 paid staff counselors who can provide crisis intervention and crisis counseling services around the clock, as well as referrals to local resources and a mobile crisis team when needed. Volunteers of America says it’s bringing on 50 additional staff members.
Administrators expect about 128,000 statewide calls in the first year of the new line, but it’s hard to know how fast demand for services will grow. So far, the state has allocated over $27 million.
The 988 vision
State officials and local leaders see the 988 federal rollout as an opportunity to leverage funding and energy to revitalize Washington’s system of crisis care.
A draft operational plan submitted to the Washington Legislature at the start of the year envisions two new technical systems to go along with 988 and help streamline communication between agencies: an integrated referral system and a crisis call center hub system. The federal government has selected contractors to build these tools, but the state has not yet decided whether to use those vendors or build a different system altogether.
The referral system would include a provider directory for the public, as well as an electronic health record system that would allow dispatchers to see mental health advance directives (a legal document that describes the kind of services an individual wants in case their mental health problems become so severe they need help). Crisis workers would also see real-time availability of beds in their region – additions that would greatly connect the crisis system that is currently siloed among many networks.
The call center hub would connect the various hotlines, tribal lines and emergency services dispatch centers into one platform that is cohesive and can easily transfer people. That flexibility would be helpful, since not all emergencies are created equally.
“The caller can start the call requesting one thing and then it becomes apparent over the course of that call that there’s a crisis occurring there,” said Jessica Shook, the president of the Washington Association of Designated Crisis Responders. “But it is not the crisis that they initially called with.”
A crisis might initially be called in as a welfare check or a domestic violence situation among family members, for example. Depending on each case, a dispatcher may send police, fire, EMTs, a mobile crisis team, designated crisis responders or a combination of the above.
Evergreen challenges
The state still faces huge challenges before 988 can be part of a truly comprehensive mental health system.
Washington, like many states, faces a shortage of mental health workers. Across the board, health care and mental health care organizations have struggled to retain staff and hire new workers. Many mental health professionals are facing burnout after two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Salaries in clinics that serve low-income people are not nearly as competitive as in private practice, and to enter the behavioral fields, workers often need a bachelor’s or master’s degree on top of work experience, often leaving them with debt.
Advocates point to a peer model – where people who have experienced mental health challenges can help others – as a possible way to boost the workforce. But the state’s current peer program is limited to patients on Medicaid, and unlike designated crisis responders or higher-level providers, peer advocates are limited in their legal capacity to provide care.
Another big challenge is where to take people who are in crisis. Almost everyone agrees that emergency rooms are not the solution, but most regions in the state have a shortage of crisis stabilization beds.
Those beds are meant for a short-term stay for people who need help but are not immediately a threat to themselves or others. People must go voluntarily and they typically stay less than a day, unlike inpatient facilities where people cannot check out and initially spend 72 hours.
A 2016 report from the Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimates there are 175 crisis beds across the entire state. For the people Avalos serves in Thurston and Mason counties, there are none.
Some progress on adding beds is being made. For example, the Washington State Department of Commerce is working to get two additional crisis stabilization facilities licensed in King County.
Still for people who are in crisis now, the wait is hard, and the current alternatives are often jail or homelessness.
Shook, from the Washington Association of Designated Crisis Responders, is hopeful for the start of 988 because it could be a first step to a full crisis care system that includes prevention, early intervention and a place for people in crisis to go to.
“I would love to have the capability for a 24/7 crisis team,” she said. “I would love to have the capability to be staffed up to respond like firefighters and just be able to hit the ground running and go out the door.
“This is the first time we’ve had this much attention and focus on (crisis response) and that can’t help but lead to improvements and changes to the system.”
Free clothes for kids: ‘We want it to feel special’
By Treva Lind
THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
Near downtown Spokane, a tidy boutique- style outlet has racks of apparel for babies, children and teenagers. There are new shoes, jewelry, makeup and grooming products.
The site is Teen & Kid Closet, a 15-year-old nonprofit providing free clothes and accessories for children and youth living in poverty, foster care or homelessness in Eastern Washington and North Idaho. The site, at 307 E. Sprague Ave., serves about 2,000 kids a year.
Each child or youth up to age 22 is referred, perhaps by another agency such as a Family Promise shelter, Catholic Charities, a social worker or school counselor. The families visit on scheduled days each month to find a boutique-like feel that is purposeful, said Robyn Nance, a KXLY news anchor and co-founder of the nonprofit with Linda Rogers.
“We really want it to feel like a shopping experience versus a clothing bank,” Nance said.
“We don’t want kids to feel like they’re getting somebody else’s handme- downs or junk. We want it to feel special and for kids to feel proud of what they leave here with and be excited. We have some kids who have never owned something new with a tag on it.”
See CLOSET, 10
Volunteer Sue Davies works at Teen & Kid Closet in Spokane on April 13. The organization gives new and gently used clothing and accessories to children in need with a focus on youth in foster care or poverty.
PHOTOS BY KATHY PLONKA/ THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
This dress is on display in the Teen & Kid Closet in Spokane on April 13. The outlet, at 307 E. Sprague Ave. downtown, serves about 2,000 kids a year. A fundraiser for Teen & Kid Close is scheduled for Saturday at Historic Flight Foundation.
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The site has dressing rooms to try on clothes and a back room where volunteers sort donations.
The nonprofit takes donations of gently used clothes – and preferably newly purchased apparel – that can be dropped off at any First Interstate Bank branch during business hours. On only the first Saturday of each month, volunteers can receive items during open hours at the outlet on Sprague.
It can’t take used undergarments – socks, underwear, bras – those must be new in packages, and the nonprofit won’t accept items with stains and rips, Nance added.
For some apparel on display, Teen & Kid Closet organizers have bought the merchandise from retailers by using donated dollars or grant money.
As a new fundraiser, the nonprofit is hosting its first adults-only Bourbon and Bacon Bash within the Historic Flight Foundation at Felts Field from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday. It will feature about 26 food and beverage vendors for chef-created, bacon-themed foods along with bourbon, beer and seltzers. Proceeds from the event with live music will benefit the nonprofit’s mission, with tickets $45 to $75 in advance online or $65 to $95 at the door.
Nance said some people in the community buy extra clothes to donate when out shopping for their families. A few Spokane businesses do donation drives, as well.
This past week, Rick Clark with Spokane Quaranteam delivered a donation of Seattle Seahawks apparel valued at about $5,000, organizers said. Most of the youth served by Teen & Kid Closet have no other access to nice clothes.
The closet’s range of support has expanded significantly since 2007 when Nance and Rogers first met over coffee to discuss ways to help youth. Nance had worked on a story with Rogers when they agreed to grab coffee and talk.
“Linda was a foster parent recruiter, needing to recruit foster parents, and I was at KXLY doing ‘Wednesday’s Child’ stories when she wanted to talk about other ways to help kids in care,” said Nance, who still does “Wednesday’s Child” KXLY segments about children in the foster care system needing adoptive families.
“We actually both had seen a national story about a similar setup called Taylor’s Closet, a boutique specifically for teenage girls in foster care in Florida. We were talking about it and thinking, ‘Do we have anything like it?’ I actually reached out to the people who ran that closet; they gave us some nice ideas.”
In a matter of months, the two women helped open what was then the Teen Closet in September 2007, inside a tiny space off Sharp and Napa. That early focus was only on foster care teens, girls and boys, in Spokane County. But shortly, they heard about much wider needs.
“We’d only been open a handful of months when people started reaching out from other counties,” Nance said. They heard from Molly Allen, Safety Net cofounder, asking if the closet could serve older foster children. A school leader called after seeing a child who wasn’t in foster care wear the same clothes several days in a row.
“I kept going back to the board saying, ‘What do you think?’ ” Nance recalled. “We kept expanding the mission, and we outgrew that (first) space in about a year or two.”
A second location was in Spokane Valley, until the third move in 2017 to the current site, with about 4,000 square feet. That relocation coincided with another big leap: support all the way from newborns to young adults.
“We were only supporting teenagers up until 2017,” Nance said. “Our mission kept expanding, and then we were asked to take over another nonprofit that was basically doing what we did, but for babies to about 12 years old.”
The Teen Closet leaders were asked about taking over that other entity, but, “We kept saying no, that we just need to dial in what we’re doing. Then they said, ‘Well, they’re going to close.’ We couldn’t let that happen, so we found a bigger place and took on the whole gamut of kids.”
Nance and Rogers both remain involved and are board members.
Today, the closet is open by appointment during four days each month, but back-to-school days are added in August and September. Kids can come back every six months, although a referral is still needed.
Overall, volunteers are seeing more families that need the support.
“What people should know is that the need is getting more and more serious and more and more severe,” Nance said.
“The numbers of kids we’re helping just go up every single year. We’re seeing the types of families who have never needed this kind of service before. We have parents in tears because they didn’t think they would be in a situation where they would need free clothing for their kids, but they are so grateful it’s here. I think the community needs a huge thank you for supporting us.”
The nonprofit works closely with organizations that have similar missions: Project Beauty Share that provides makeup, Spokane Quaranteam, Cleone’s Closet, Safety Net and Embrace Washington that supports foster families to have experiences in sports, education and more.
Teen & Kid Closet has nearly 30 volunteers, but more are always needed, said Sean Grubb, board president. Roughly 150 kids are served each month. Peaking in 2019, about 2,000 got support that year. Now, the trend is up again.
“We’re up about 20% this quarter compared with this time last year,” Grubb said. Factors might include kids back in school, more community activities, an influx of people moving to Spokane and higher consumer prices.
Around that need, the nonprofit’s focus remains on the kids, their dignity and self-esteem. Volunteers help guide them around the store, Nance said. “Our volunteers make these kids feel special.”
Treva Lind can be reached at (509) 459-5439 or at treval@ spokesman. com.
Teen & Kid Closet members Ellen Peller, Jennifer Madrian, Stacy Pinock, co-founder Robyn Nance, Cindy Bryant and Sue Davies are photographed in Spokane on April 13. The organization gives new and gently used clothing and accessories to children in need.
KATHY PLONKA/ THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW
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KXLY
Updated: April 24, 2022 7:23 PM
SPOKANE, Wash.– A new store in North Spokane is helping Ukrainian refugees in the area.
It’s called “Ukraine’s Closet.”
Its founder, Zhanna Oberemok, started collecting donations weeks ago. At first, she was using a storage shed as a place to operate from.
Now, Ukraine’s Closet has moved and has its own storefront at 9431 N. Division.
Since it got started, more than 20 families have gotten free clothes and shoes. Six households are fully furnished with donated furniture.
Oberemok said the Spokane community really showed up for Ukrainians.
“This is extremely generous of them. It’s every day, I get goosebumps. Every time, when somebody brings stuff, this is for the Ukrainians, this is for the Ukrainians, it’s amazing because people have been so generous,” Oberemok said.
In addition to operating Ukraine’s closest, Oberemok plans to start the Spokane Slavic Association out of the storefront.
You can find more information on how to help here.
You can donate directly to Ukraine’s Closet via Facebook here.
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Journal of Business
Building to support over 200 students in apprenticeships
Erica Bullock
Community Health Association of Spokane plans to build a new, 91,700-square-foot health care training facility, to be called the CHAS Health Learning Institute, at the Iron Bridge Office Campus, says Tamitha Shockley French, director of communications for CHAS Health.
The site at 731 N. Iron Bridge Way is located on a portion of the 23-acre office campus along the east side of the Spokane River, about a block north of Union Gospel Mission Men’s Shelter and Recovery Center in East Spokane.
The project currently is in the design phase. Spokane Valley-based construction company Divcon Inc. is the contractor on the project. ALSC Architects, of Spokane, is the architect, Shockley French says.
The estimated construction value of the health care training facility is $9 million, and financing for the development has been primarily secured through a bank loan, she says.
No timeframe has been set for CHAS Health to begin operating in the new building yet.
She says the organization hopes to secure permit approval in the next month, and the exterior shell is expected to take about nine months to construct once permits are issued. Interior construction will begin later, she says.
The health care training facility will accommodate CHAS Health’s apprenticeship programs, clinical training areas, and both medical and telehealth support teams, with enough space to support more than 200 people.
Although the designs haven’t been finalized, the organization envisions four 150-square-foot medical training exam rooms, four 224-square-foot dental training operatories, a full sterilization area, and a laboratory, Shockley French says.
The program planned for the new building is intended to alleviate the local health care industry’s skilled workforce shortage through its one-year apprenticeship programs, in which students learn on-the-job training. Following the successful completion of the program, apprentices will transition to regular, full-time employees for CHAS Health, Shockley French says.
The new facility will accommodate CHAS Health’s growing apprenticeship programs for pharmacy technicians, information technology staff, and billing and coding staff. It also will allow for more room for residency programs, continuing education space for current providers, and CPR and mental health first aid certification programs.
The health care provider also plans to move staff currently working in leased office space at Rock Pointe Corporate Center to the new building. CHAS Health’s administration building also is located on the Iron Bridge Office Campus, at 611 N. Iron Bridge Way.
“CHAS Health has had a need for additional space for administration and training purposes for a while,” Shockley French says.
Project Updates
•Wilbur Road Self Storage LLC has been issued a commercial building permit for the expansion of its storage facility at 1710 N. Wilbur Road, in Spokane Valley, says owner Jay Rambo.
“Business is good here,” Rambo says, adding that the storage facility has leased nearly all of its 180 total units.
Rambo says once construction is complete, Wilbur Road Self Storage will have about 300 total storage units.
The estimated cost of phase 3 is about $1.3 million, Rambo says. For both phases 3 and 4, the cost is about $2.4 million, he adds.
Wilbur Road Self Storage currently is working on phase 3 with the construction of a two-story, 21,600-square-foot storage building, according to permit data. Phase 4 will bring the total number of storage buildings to nine at the site, according to permit data.
Wilbur Road Self Storage LLC is the project owner and contractor. Rambo says the company is working with Rolled Steel Products Inc., of Spokane, which is providing some architectural and engineering services, as well as supplying metal products for construction.
Construction of phase 3 is expected to be complete by the end of summer, he says. Phase 4 will begin in 2023.
•The city of Spokane has issued a commercial building permit for tenant improvements at a 15,000-square-foot space for a new Petco Animal Supplies Stores Inc. building at Northtown Square, at 4727 N. Division.
A Petco store currently is located at 6302 N. Division. A customer service representative there says operations at the current location will move to Northtown Square by the end of the year.
Permit documents list the remodel project value at $750,000.
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The Center Square
Spokane police watch as about 50 protesters leave Camp Serene Freedom on Riverside Avenue in Spokane Wash., in 2004. Dealing with the homeless population has been a longstanding and complicated problem as it is in most large cities. Mayor Nadine Woodward and the city council are trying to find a location for a shelter that will also provide residents with the resources they need to stabilize their lives.
JEFF T. GREEN/AP Images
(The Center Square) – Spokane City Councilor Jonathan Bingle said that Mayor Nadine Woodward’s administration was being asked to perform “impossible tasks” because the council’s expectations were constantly changing.
“How can any reasonable person understand what we’re asking?" he said in a rhetorical question. “This is my frustration.”
Bingle said a majority of the council had sent Woodward a “scathing” letter in January that criticized her for not moving fast enough to get a homeless shelter established.
“The tone of that letter was basically, ‘People are dying in the streets and it’s your fault,’” he said Thursday.
The administration visited more than 90 sites to find one that was workable. When the mayor presented that option, Bingle said the council began obstructing the process it had demanded.
“This, right here, might not have been the best situation,” Bingle said of Woodward's plan. “But at least it was a step toward helping us to take people who are in very dangerous situations and get them out of that situation.”
He was referencing Woodward’s request to have property at 4320 E. Trent Avenue rezoned from heavy industrial so that a 33,00 square foot vacant warehouse could be renovated into a shelter.
The rezone was necessary so a lease for the site could be finalized, and planning could begin, City Manager Johnnie Perkins told the council at its April 18 meeting.
Temporarily changing the city’s zoning laws to accommodate a shelter was the only thing on the table at that meeting. However, Councilors Betsy Wilkerson and Karen Stratton said they could not support the rezone without information about who would run the shelter and the costs involved. In addition, they wanted more feedback from neighboring property owners.
Because the zoning change was proposed as an emergency to get the project rolling, approval required five favorable votes. Councilor Zack Zappone was absent so there were only four affirmative votes. These came from Council President Breann Beggs, Jonathan Bingle, Michael Cathcart and Lori Kinnear.
Perkins said Monday that he would return to the council April 25 to provide more information as requested by Stratton and Wilkerson. He said, by that time, the three shelter provider applications would also have been reviewed so a recommendation could be brought forward. In addition, he would have an estimate of the costs involved in preparing the property for habitation and its ongoing operation.
Perkins explained to Wilkerson and Stratton that the city had already budgeted funds to get the shelter in operation.
Two days after that meeting, Woodward announced that the process to select a homeless shelter operator had been compromised and had to be restarted
She said three proposals submitted by potential operators had been publicly shared before an internal review process had been completed.
Beggs acknowledged that he had obtained the proposals from the Continuum of Care (COC) board tasked with their review. Not long after Monday’s meeting, he forwarded the information to other councilors for review.
Woodward said another reason to restart the search for a shelter operator was that members of the COC board were parties to one of the proposals but participated in the discussion about which to recommend. She said that was a violation of the board’s conflict of interest policy.
In one of the proposals, COC Board Chair Ben Stuckart was identified as a first-year “project manager” paid a healthy salary.
That same proposal named Compassionate Addiction Treatment as a project partner. Hallie Burchinal, executive director of that organization, is a member of the COC board.
While Stuckart and Burchinal recused themselves from any voting that took place, their reported involvement in board discussions is at odds with the group’s conflict of interest policy.
COC’s charter states that board members must fully disclose the nature of the interest and “recuse themselves from discussing, lobbying or voting” whenever they or any immediate family members have a financial or personal interest in an issue before the board.
The COC board had been asked to provide a recommendation for a potential shelter operator to the city’s Community Health and Human Services Department (CHHSC), which deals with most homelessness issues.
COC Board Co-Chair Dale Briese told the council at the April 21 special meeting that it had long been the policy to allow all members to participate in discussions. He said members with a potential conflict only recused themselves from the vote.
He excused the board's actions by saying the review process was just a “formality.” He said the selection of a shelter operator would be made by city leaders
In addition, he said the seven members of the COC board available for the review had only been given six days to work.
“That was a quick turnaround,” he said.
Briese said the review process allowed COC members to see that a broader conversation needed to take place about how to best serve the city's homeless population.
“If you were to be in that situation, would you choose a car, an RV, a tent, a pallet or, maybe a shelter?” he asked. “That’s a real choice and that should be part of the planning in our community.”
He recommended the city pursue pallet shelters, which are similar to prefab tiny homes, perhaps in scattered locations, instead of relying on a central shelter.
“I see the tent city [existing homeless camp] as individuals trying to have faith in our community,” he said.
Stratton and Wilkerson thanked Briese for his comments. Stratton apologized for the work of the COC being set aside.
Wilkerson agreed with Briese that the city needed to look at spreading the homeless population among smaller locations, as had been discussed for years.
Bingle said his frustration included the council not waiting to hear more from Perkins before taking action to wrest control of the process.
“What exactly do we want the administration to do? Because it feels like we contradict ourselves at every step,” he said. “We ask the administration to provide information and then say, 'That’s not what we meant.'”
The council convened Thursday to consider a resolution brought forward by Beggs and Councilor Lori Kinnear. Kinnear said the resolution was crafted to further guide the shelter development process.
The resolution conflicts with Woodward’s call for shelter providers to operate to a “regional flex capacity shelter” with an estimated daily usage of 250 beds and surge capacity as needed.
The council’s resolution confines shelter space to no more than 120 regular beds on a daily basis. An allowance is made for more people during extreme weather events by utilizing floor mats.
Although Perkins told the council on Monday that details about wrap-around services, such as mental health and addiction treatment, would be provided in the near future, the resolution makes that a mandate.
In addition, the resolution calls for concepts involving both pallet shelter and drive-in models of housing, restricting each model to up to 100 people. These models require a 24/7 monitored fenced perimeter and cannot be near another homeless facility.
Kinnear and Beggs have asked council members to submit feedback on the resolution and any proposed changes. They expect to revisit the measure Monday, at which time there could be a vote.
“The cynic would obviously think this [actions of the week] could be a political move,” said Bingle. “I believe we all care about people, and we all want to see people in the best situation. I don’t, however, see how our actions are in line with our values.”