Annie Pennucci, Laurie Anderson - December 2011

Washington’s Learning Assistance Program (LAP) provides funding to school districts for supplemental services for K–12 students at-risk of not meeting state standards in reading and math. The state Quality Education Council (QEC), which makes recommendations to the legislature regarding basic education, requested that the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (Institute) collaborate with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) on a study that measures the impact of LAP on student achievement.

This study is being conducted in two phases: (1) statistical analysis of the association between LAP funding and student outcomes; and (2) site visits at schools that provide LAP-funded services. This report describes preliminary results from the statistical analysis, focusing on elementary school student test scores. The final report, due September 1, 2012, will examine other grade levels and outcome measures.

This report was revised January, 2012, to include an executive summary.

Mason Burley - December 2011

In 2007, the Washington State Legislature passed Substitute Senate Bill 5320, establishing an Office of Public Guardianship (OPG) within the Administrative Office of the Courts. This new pilot program provides state-paid guardians for legally incapacitated individuals in cases where a volunteer guardian was unavailable and the individual lacks financial resources.

The pilot program started in five counties throughout Washington State, and now provides services in ten counties. While a limited number of incapacitated individuals were served during this pilot period, initial estimates (completed in 2005) found that 4,500 individuals may be eligible for a public guardian in Washington. This estimate, however, was based on research conducted over 20 years ago in different states.

This report uses two different sources – 2009 census data, and a 2011 survey of care providers – to estimate the need for public guardianships services in Washington State. Based on this analysis, we found that between 4,000 and 5,000 individuals may be potentially qualify for a public guardian. The need for these services is also classified according to region and type of care setting.

Mason Burley - December 2011

Guardians are court-appointed legal representatives who have the authority to make personal, medical, and financial decisions on behalf of incapacitated individuals. Washington State implemented a pilot program in 2007 to provide public (state-paid) guardianship services for individuals whose family members were unable to serve as a guardian, or the individual did not have financial resources to pay for a guardian.

This evaluation examines program outcomes and cost effectiveness for clients served by public guardians between 2008 and mid-2011. Our analysis over this period found the following:

• Average residential costs per client decreased by $8,131 over the 30-month study period. The average cost for providing a public guardian was $7,907 per client during that time.

• Personal care decreased by an average of 29 hours per month for public guardianship clients, compared with an increase in care hours for similar clients.

• One in five public guardianship clients showed improvements in self-sufficiency during the study.

This report discusses the characteristics and outcomes of public guardianship clients and presents related research on outcomes for public guardianship programs outside Washington State. While we found positive results for public guardianship clients in this evaluation, without a randomly assigned control group (that did not receive services), it is difficult to determine the extent to which public guardians may have contributed to these outcomes.

Mason Burley - December 2011

Since 2006, over 3,500 students in foster care have received assistance from an Educational Advocacy Coordinator. The Educational Advocacy program was started in order to help foster youth maintain enrollment, connect to school services, and progress academically. The program was first implemented in King County in 2001. Treehouse, the non-profit agency that developed the program model, now manages the statewide program under contract with the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS). This includes training advocates, screening referrals, tracking outcomes, and developing instructional material for social workers, caregivers, and educators.

The 2011 Legislature directed the Institute to “examine the child welfare and educational characteristics for foster youth who are served by educational advocates.” During the 2009–10 school year, advocates spent nearly 8,200 hours assisting youth in foster care. This report describes the background and characteristics of those students served by advocates. We also examine placement mobility and school changes as well other educational outcomes (i.e. grade point average and graduation rate). Our final evaluation report in October 2012 will address the overall effectiveness of the program

Mason Burley - October 2011

In 2012, recent amendments to Washington State’s Involuntary Treatment Act (ITA) will take effect. New legal guidelines will allow a designated investigator to more fully consider information from both credible witnesses and historical records when making commitment decisions. The 2010 Legislature directed the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (Institute) to estimate the number of additional psychiatric admissions that may occur as a result of this law and examine how many inpatient psychiatric beds may be necessary to accommodate this increase. These estimates were presented in a companion to this report (completed in July 2011).

This report outlines various approaches for addressing the projected increase in psychiatric admissions. First, we discuss options for developing additional capacity within the state’s inpatient psychiatric system. Next, we highlight both programmatic and statutory alternatives that may help prevent (or divert) future psychiatric admissions. This section also summarizes laws from four different states that provide for alternatives to involuntary inpatient admissions. Finally, this report examines the relationship between ITA-related psychiatric admissions and utilization of both county jails and hospital emergency departments.

Steve Aos, Stephanie Lee, Elizabeth Drake, Annie Pennucci, Tali Klima, Marna Miller, Laurie Anderson, Jim Mayfield, Mason Burley - July 2011

The 2009 Washington Legislature directed the Institute to “calculate the return on investment to taxpayers from evidence-based prevention and intervention programs and policies.” The Legislature instructed the Institute to produce “a comprehensive list of programs and policies that improve . . . outcomes for children and adults in Washington and result in more cost-efficient use of public resources.” The Legislature authorized the Institute to receive outside funding for this project; the MacArthur Foundation supported 80 percent of the work and the Legislature funded the other 20 percent. This main report summarizes our findings. Readers can download the two detailed technical appendices for in depth results and statistical methods.

Mason Burley - July 2011

In 2010, the Washington State Legislature amended the legal guidelines for Involuntary Treatment Act (ITA) commitments to allow a Designated Mental Health Professional (DMHP) to more fully consider reasonably available information about individuals from credible witnesses and historical records (RCW 71.05.212). These statutory changes will take effect in 2012. The Legislature directed the Institute to assess the potential impact of these changes.

This paper discusses trends in both the utilization of inpatient psychiatric treatment beds and changes in the capacity of these facilities to admit patients. To assess potential increases in psychiatric admissions as a result of this law, we conducted a survey that asked DMHPs to review ITA cases during a one-week period in 2010. Based on this survey, we estimate that the commitment rate could increase from 40 percent to between 45 and 55 percent of all investigations as a result of the statutory changes. Between 42 and 168 additional psychiatric beds (above current capacity) would be necessary to accommodate this growth in admissions.

Roxanne Lieb, Hazel Kemshall, Terry Thomas - June 2011

Published as:

Lieb, R., Kemshall, H., & Thomas, T. (2011). Post-release controls for sex offenders in the U.S. and UK. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 34, 226-232. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlp.2011.04.006

In recent years, both the United States and United Kingdom have developed numerous innovations in legal efforts to protect society from sex offenders. Each country has adopted special provisions for sex offenders. In particular, governments have focused on forms of social control after release from incarceration and probation. These policy innovations for this category of offenders have been more far reaching than those for any other offender population. The two jurisdictions have adopted policies with similar goals, but the selected strategies have important differences. Generally speaking, the U.S. has favored an ever-expanding set of policies that place sex offenders into broad categories, with few opportunities that distinguish the appropriate responses for individual offenders. The UK government observed the proliferation of Megan’s Laws in the U.S., and deliberately chose to establish carefully controlled releases of information, primarily relying on governmental agencies to work in multi-disciplinary groups and make case-specific decisions about individual offenders. Although the UK policy leaders expressed significant concern that the public’s response to knowing about identified sex offenders living in the community would result in vigilantism, to date the results have not born out this fear. Both governments have turned to other crime control measures such as polygraphy testing, electronic monitoring, and civil protection orders as a means to prevent further sexual violence.

Roxanne Lieb, Mason Burley - May 2011

In response to a 2010 legislative direction, the Institute and DSHS are investigating options regarding the use of mental health assessment tools for two DSHS reports to the courts:

- Competency to stand trial assessments of criminal defendants whose competency is in question, and

- The Secretary’s recommendations to the courts concerning the potential conditional release of criminally insane patients from inpatient treatment.

This document summarizes results of an October 2010 survey of state forensic evaluators concerning their use of assessment instruments. Thirty-one (of the 35) mental health experts who conduct forensic evaluations for the three state psychiatric hospitals (Western State, Eastern State, and Child Study and Treatment Center) responded to the online survey; this represents an 89 percent response rate.

We present three options for assessment strategies and instruments, with advantages and disadvantages of each option. A detailed comparison of instruments is included.

Marna Miller - May 2011

In 2008, an Institute study found that American Indian, Black, and Latino children were more likely to have referrals to Washington’s Child Protective Services (CPS) than White children. Following referrals to CPS, American Indian and Black children (but not Asian or Latino children) were more likely to be placed and remain in foster care significantly longer than White children. In 2009, the Washington State Legislature directed the Institute to examine whether DSHS’s recent adoption of the Structured Decision Making (SDM) risk assessment tool affected racial disproportionality in the foster care system. SDM is used as part of CPS investigations to classify families on their risk of further child maltreatment.

Our analysis took advantage of the fact that DSHS began using SDM statewide in October 2007. We compare rates of placement and re-referral to CPS for children with referrals in 2008 to children with referrals before SDM was implemented.

Disproportionality after CPS referral varied markedly from year to year for Black children. Some of the variation can be explained by annual differences in rates of referral. However, analyses that controlled for referral rates still revealed year-to-year differences in rates of out-of-home placement for Black children. We are unable to explain these yearly fluctuations.

When our analysis combined children of all races, we observed no effect of SDM on out-of-home placements or new referrals to CPS. We also analyzed outcomes for each race separately. For White, American Indian, Asian, and Latino children, we found no effect of SDM on placements or new CPS referrals. For Black children—but not for any other race/ethnicity—we observed a significant increase in the rate of out-of-home placements in 2008. We cannot be certain that the SDM risk assessment was the cause of the differences in 2008; differences may also be the product of the largely unexplained year-to-year fluctuations in disproportionality for Black children.

As implemented in Washington State, the SDM risk assessment did not reduce disproportionality after CPS referral for either Black or American Indian children.