Information from District 1 City Councilmember Lisa Herbold

At Tuesday’s meeting of my Public Safety & Human Services committee, representatives of the Human Services Department (HSD) and PDA (Purpose Dignity Action; formerly Public Defenders Association) joined us to discuss the new contract for LEAD and Co-LEAD services, which contains robust performance metrics that will allow us to learn more about LEAD’s impact over time.  You can watch the presentation here, or review the slide deck here.

PDA serves as the project manager for LEAD, which is a voluntary collaboration among multiple jurisdictions that signed onto a Memorandum of Understanding back in 2010; and agencies who provide services under subcontracts to PDA.

Policy guidance and oversight for LEAD are provided by the Policy Coordinating Group, of which I am a member, along with representatives from the King County Executive, King County Council, Mayor’s Office, Seattle City Attorney’s Office, King County Prosecutor’s Office, SPD, and King County Sherriff’s Office, among others.

In 2019 Council adopted Resolution 31916, which declared our “commitment to ensuring that law enforcement pre-arrest diversion programs, such as LEAD, receive public funding sufficient to accept all priority qualifying referrals citywide.”  While we have not yet reached that commitment, Council has consistently acted to support and expand LEAD, even in difficult budget environments.

I am particularly interested in learning more about LEAD’s impact in our community from the new performance metrics embedded in the contract, which will allow us to better understand how to scale up LEAD, and what impacts we might expect from additional investment.

I have invited HSD and PDA to return to committee in August and December, in order to share the results of the initial few quarters of data collection.