New Medical-Legal Partnership for Children Helps Low-Income Families
October 7, 2008
Seattle Children’s Hospital has received a three-year grant in the amount of $380,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation® to implement the Medical-Legal Partnership for Children (MLPC). The funds will provide valuable assistance to low-income families with children that are receiving medical treatment who also have legal issues affecting their health and medical care.
Efforts to establish this program, led by Children’s along with the Northwest Justice Project, the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine and other community partners, have been underway for more than two years. This is the first program of its kind in the Pacific Northwest.
The three-year pilot project launched in September 2008 to benefit low-income patient families at Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic (OBCC), a community clinic of Seattle Children’s, as well as Harborview Children and Teens Clinic (HCTC). Both clinics primarily serve low-income families from the Puget Sound area. Eventually it is hoped the program will be able to reach a greater constituency of low-income children throughout the region. The MLPC is patterned after a legal clinic established in 1993 at Boston Medical Center.
“Thanks to this grant, we’ll be better able to serve our young low-income patients facing various social, housing, immigration, economic and legal problems that can negatively affect their health,” said Benjamin Danielson, MD, medical director of OBCC. “For example, a child with asthma living in moldy, substandard housing may make repeated trips to the hospital with severe breathing problems. Intervention by a social worker and a lawyer that results in improving the family’s living conditions may have a significant, positive impact on the health of that child.”
Some of the funds will be used to provide an attorney through the Northwest Justice Project, one of the principal legal service organizations in Washington state providing counsel for low-income populations. A staff attorney will train physicians and social workers to recognize legal problems that may affect a child’s health, and also provide direct legal services and referrals for patients at OBCC and HCTC. Issues with legal ramifications including domestic violence, abuse, access to public benefits like food stamps, Basic Health and Supplemental Security Income, housing, immigration, and family law issues including custody, parenting plans and school access for children with special needs may be addressed by this new program when a child’s health appears to be affected. The partnership has also hired a part-time social worker who will provide program coordination, liaison services between the partners, family support and assistance with training and evaluation activities.
“This is a new way to look at the health needs of low-income families seeking medical treatment. Many of these families have at least one significant legal need impacting their health,” said Brian Johnston, MD, MPH, chief of Pediatrics at Harborview. “It makes sense to have frontline primary care providers serving this population learn how to identify legal issues affecting these families, and be able to provide resources to address them.”
“More than a referral process, this is a new service model where lawyers and physicians can collaborate,” said Scott Crain, the MLPC staff attorney provided through Northwest Justice Project. “We’ll be able to offer advice and counsel including full representation in court, as well as educate doctors and social workers so that together we can address legal issues and rights violations that negatively impact health.”
For more information about the Medical-Legal Partnership for Children at OBCC, contact Jennie Richey, MSW, MLPC program coordinator, at 206-987-5942 or email: mlpc@seattlechildrens.org.
About Seattle Children's Hospital
Consistently ranked as one of the best children's hospitals in the country by U.S. News & World Report, Children's serves as the pediatric and adolescent academic medical referral center for the largest landmass of any children's hospital in the country (Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho). For more than 100 years, Children's has been delivering superior patient care and advancing new treatments through pediatric research. Children's serves as the primary teaching, clinical and research site for the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The hospital works in partnership with Seattle Children's Research Institute and Seattle Children's Hospital Foundation. Together they are Seattle Children's, known for setting new standards in superior patient care for more than 100 years. For more information visit http://www.seattlechildrens.org.