The Parent-Child Assistance Program (P-CAP), based in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, is the beneficiary of development grants totaling more than $1.3 million to the Community Psychiatric Clinic (CPC). The King County Housing Opportunity Fund and the Gates Foundation Sound Families granted the money to CPC to build a transitional housing facility in south Seattle for mentally ill and chemically dependent mothers in the P-CAP program.
P-CAP, part of the UW’s Fetal Alcohol and Drug Unit, is an intervention program that works with high-risk mothers who abuse alcohol and drugs during pregnancy. The program, originally funded in Seattle as a federal research demonstration project, has expanded to four additional sites (in Moses Lake, Spokane, Tacoma and Yakima) funded by the Washington State legislature through the Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse. The P-CAP model has been replicated at a dozen locations in the United States and Canada. Therese Grant, research assistant professor, is the primary organizer at the UW. Grant has been the statewide director of the P-CAP since its inception in 1991.
The new housing facility will support sobriety and stability for 16 P-CAP mothers and their children. Kovalenko Hale Architects in Seattle are designing plans for the facility. It will be built, owned and operated by CPC with P-CAP serving as a referral source and providing case management for eligible mothers. Approximately 360 mothers are currently enrolled in P-CAP statewide (90 in King County).
August 23, 2002