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The only thing unique about this twice-weekly child play space, buried deep in a state Department of Social and Health Services office in Yakima, are its customers: families in crisis. "When they come into this room and are here for a while you see the shoulders drop," Maria Vasquez said. "They relax. They settle. They smile."

Since February 2017, 16 Washington nursing homes — from Seattle to Ritzville — have closed, announced they will close, or converted to assisted living. Each time a nursing home closes, it forces vulnerable residents to endure disruptive — and potentially dangerous — moves.

In recent months, court commissioners on both sides of the Cascades have found the state of Washington in contempt, and even imposed fines, over access to state psychiatric care for people with severe developmental disabilities. The cases involve people who’ve been found to pose an imminent risk to themselves or others, but are languishing in local hospitals.

Over the past eight years, Washington has lost 170 residential beds for hard-to-place foster youth. But now there’s a push in Olympia to nearly double provider reimbursement rates in an effort to reverse the trend.

It’s been more than a year since the state Department of Social and Health Services took the unprecedented step of shutting down a major in-home care provider for developmentally disabled adults. Now, 16 months after the provider’s sister company, Aacres Washington, took over care of many of those vulnerable adults, the cycle is repeating itself.

A year ago, Washington state had 82 hard-to-place foster youths, mostly teenagers, living in facilities in states as far away as South Carolina, prompting calls to bring them home. As of Aug. 1, that number had been reduced by more than half to 38, according to the Department of Children Youth and Families.

Not only are these patients being hospitalized unnecessarily, they’re taking up beds needed by other patients. As of Sept. 6, the state said there were 19 patients waiting for a bed at Western and Eastern State Hospitals.

Initially it was traumatizing. On the occasions when MaryAnn Brookhart would visit her brother, who was nonverbal and diagnosed with severe "mental retardation," he seemed institutionalized and "beat up." But over the years, Brookhart came to accept that the state-run Rainier School was where her Greg belonged.

The trade loophole is meant to ease small-scale sales — but critics say it's been abused and gives Chinese firms an unfair advantage.

Trump's border czar Tom Homan is urging more local law enforcement agencies to support ICE's immigration efforts.