Human Services & Housing
Staff Contact:  Julie Murray

Cross-System Demands – Individuals/Families with Multiple Special Needs
Many clients who use social and health services use more than one service. In fact, when economic and acute care medical programs are added to behavioral health and criminal justice programs, one often sees a constellation of needs for both individuals and families. However, just as often, service delivery systems are highly specialized into discrete disorders, needs, rules and regulations. Too often, state and federal programs create artificial barriers to efficient and effective service delivery that present complex challenges for the local delivery systems, which directly serve clients.

While the Department of Social and Health Services has improved coordination with its administrative clusters internally and its involved agencies externally, there remains a huge need to do a better job of serving the whole person and/or family. Unnecessary and duplicative administrative expenditures occur, yet individuals and families have only part of their needs met or are shuffled endlessly from office to office. Economic needs and housing shortages often exacerbate the medical needs of these clients and must be taken into consideration when packaging the appropriate array of services.

WSAC Policy:
Counties support continued efforts by state government to break down barriers to providing services to multi-need individuals and families. The state should remove programmatic, administrative, and regulatory barriers to local government. Local service providers must be allowed to work collaboratively to design and implement comprehensive service packages that meet all the challenges of serving the multi-needs client. Counties also support adequate funding to meet the complex needs of individuals and families with both multiple medical diagnoses and economic challenges.