Four of Michelle Love’s children who have developmental delays have received services from the Infant Learning Program in Wasilla. On a recent Thursday, her 2-year-old son Christopher ran back and forth between his mom and his older brother Michael, giggling and squealing.
Love and her four children were at an appointment with Mat-Su Services for Children and Adults, or MSSCA, a nonprofit that serves Matanuska-Susitna Borough residents with developmental disabilities. Christopher was born with symptoms of drug withdrawal, and Love began the process of adopting him at just two months old. She said the program helped Christopher make progress when she felt stuck as a parent.
“He was just on a plateau, standstill, it was like I had an infant for months and months,” Love said. “We brought infant learning in, and they were able to help me understand what I was seeing with what he was doing and his behavior.”
Among the line-item vetoes issued by Gov. Mike Dunleavy earlier this month was a $5.7 million cut to expand a program that serves infants and toddlers like Christopher with developmental delays. Advocates have said that a funding increase is long overdue, and needed to help more families. They also argue that expanding the program will save the state money in the long run.
Without the fund, many young kids with developmental delays don’t qualify for services. That’s what happened to Christopher. Love says as soon as he started making real progress, the state stopped covering his services because he no longer had a delay of more than 50% compared to his peers. That’s the standard for the state to provide assistance to infants and toddlers, unless they have a specific diagnosis. Love said as soon as the services stopped, Christopher regressed.
“He was excelling, he was speaking, he was doing all this stuff, and then all of a sudden, he's nonverbal and really behind in a lot of areas,” Love said. “I'm frustrated that he lost that time he could have had, which would have been very valuable.”
This on-off cycle is just one of several issues families and providers have with the state’s current Infant Learning Program. Alaska is one of just five states that doesn’t provide treatment to infants below a 50% delay. MSSCA Interim Executive Director Stephanie Tucker said that makes Alaska stand out when she and her staff attend conferences for developmental specialists.
“It's embarrassing, because they talk about the kids they serve, and we're like, ‘Yeah, we don't serve those kids.’ It's embarrassing because we're behind the grade on the research, we're behind the grade compared to the rest of the nation,” Tucker said. “It’s kind of shameful for Alaska. We should do better because we can.”
State lawmakers considered Senate Bill 178 during this year’s legislative session, which would’ve expanded eligibility for the program down to a 25% delay, but didn’t pass. Lawmakers included the money in the state’s mental health budget anyway, but Dunleavy vetoed that funding. Dunleavy’s spokesperson Jessica Bowers said in an email that “given the state’s current fiscal outlook, further increases in funding are not sustainable at this time.”
But specialists working in the program disagree. They say providing early intervention for infants saves money in the long run. Tucker said the yearly cost for one child to receive infant services is about one-tenth of the cost to provide those services to children once they turn three.
Mark Lackey is the executive director for Child Care Subsidy Early Learning in Wasilla, where children with developmental delays receive services. He said developmental specialists work with the families of delayed infants during in-home visits, teaching them how to help their child develop without the specialist. Lackey said children in the program can often grow out of the need for special education before they turn three.
“That kid with a 40% delay currently can't receive services from infant learning, but the moment they turn three, it's going to cost us a lot of money,” Lackey said. “We could have avoided many, many of those cases if we could have served that family and that child earlier.”
The Mat-Su is the fastest-growing region in the state, and one of the only regions that has seen continued population growth in recent years. Lackey said that growth exacerbates the issue of providers trying to serve all the children who qualify, especially given that the program has not had a funding increase in over a decade.
“That really puts them in a difficult position. Their caseloads just go up and up and up. So they're caught in this, between a rock and a hard place of not having enough staff to do all the things that they're required to by law,” Lackey said.
Filmmakers Laura Norton-Cruz and Joshua Branstetter released a documentary early this year about the Infant Learning Program in the Mat-Su that was screened for legislators in Juneau. Tucker got excited when legislators responded by adding money to the budget to expand the program weeks later. She says her organization reached out to the governor’s office to offer a private screening, but never got the chance. Dunleavy used his line-item veto to cut the funding that would’ve allowed providers to hire more staff and offer services to more kids.
“It was just utterly disappointing, because I know that if you understand the services we provide and what kind of prevention they can lead to down the line for other kinds of services, there's no way you would say no to this,” Tucker said. “It's disappointing, because to me that just speaks to, they don't know. They don't know, and they need to know.”
Tucker said she’ll redirect her frustration into advocacy for the bill when the next session starts in January.
