Yakima, WA: 800+ kids on waitlist for behavioral/medical services

Feb 24, 2023, YakTriNews: Yakima's Children's Village seeks funding to help 800+ kids on the waitlist for services https://www.yaktrinews.com/news/no-one-hurt-in-kennewick-attic-fire/article_a021ebb6-b4a2-11ed-bcc7-e707a253c46c.html#tncms-source=article-nav-next

Children’s Village is working on expanding its facility to fill in critical gaps when it comes to services for kids with special health care needs, but they need more funding to move forward with the next phase of the expansion.

“We have over doubled the number of patients that we've seen in just four years and still have a long waitlist,” Children’s Village CEO Laura Crooks said.

Children’s Village is a haven for families whose children have special health care needs, providing 30 different subspecialties in medical, dental and behavioral health care.

“We have classrooms for kids with autism and we have Parent to Parent Programs where we support parents who have children with disabilities,” Crooks said….

Crooks said the number of children needing services has gone up as the population has grown, but also because they’re able to diagnose kids earlier and earlier.

Additionally, Crooks said the closure of health care facilities across the country during the pandemic left a lot of families scrambling to find care and they ended up finding it in Yakima.

“Those centers where maybe they might do speech or therapy services don't exist any longer and those kids still have needs,” Crooks said. “We're here to help them."

However, with the increase in children needing care, the increased cost in providing it and the facility running out of space, Crooks said they’re struggling to keep up with the demand.

Crooks said as of last Tuesday, they had 711 kids on the waitlist for physical, occupational or speech therapy and at least 100 more children waiting for medical services.

“Sometimes they're waiting six to nine months to get in here, which is hard — hard for them and hard for us,” Crooks said.

With the long wait times, some families are having to travel hours away for care, often to hospitals with specialists in Seattle, Tacoma or Spokane….

Crooks said expanding their facility is crucial to achieving that goal and the Memorial Foundation is working to get them the funding they need to make it happen.

The Memorial Foundation is $4.3 million short of the $15 million goal in its Children Health and Medical Programs or “CHAMPS” campaign.

They’re raising money, not only for the Children’s Village expansion, but to make upgrades to the Family Birthplace at MultiCare Yakima Memorial Hospital.

Children’s Village has been able to add five behavioral health rooms with the money the foundation has been able to raise so far, but they need additional funding to add 10 more medical rooms.

“We have run out of space, so in order to bring some more of those medical service providers here from places like across the mountains, we need to have more exam rooms,” Crooks said.

Crooks said the goal is to start the second phase of expansion starting in late summer or early fall, but it all depends on getting the remaining $4.3 million through the CHAMPS campaign….