Relevant Findings

Findings that drive our organization

Major findings emerged from the examination and research of child and family problems in Washington communities:

• Among communities with state funded community networks, overall severity of problems decreased or remained stable while they worsened for counties without networks.

Among counties with state-funded community networks, the higher the average improved community capacity for assisting youth, the larger the number of better-than-state-average in family problems such as child abuse, youth substance abuse, and school dropouts.

As a member of the Washington State Family Policy Council Networks, TUN is proving that cooperative and systematic focus on key child/family problems does work.

TUN has further demonstrated for every child kept out of the foster care system, the state saves $27,887. It saves an additional $21,000 per case when the child is not involved in a juvenile crime. Therefore, the state legislature’s continuing appropriations for TUN’s programs are a very good investment.

Further information regarding changes in the rates or problem behaviors in Pierce County is available by downloading Pierce Trends Charts 2008.pdf. The results of the State of Washington Family Policy Council's research on the effectiveness of Capacity Building in reducing the severity of problem behaviors is also available Severity-Research-Report.pdf.