Nationwide funding cuts to early learning, health care and food assistance in the past year meant that resources for families became scarcer — but while resources might have disappeared, the need didn’t go away. This has meant a spike in families seeking assistance for programs that are still operating, such as Akin here in Walla Walla. Akin, formerly the Children’s Home Society of Washington, is a nonprofit that helps families with anything they need from securing child care to mental health to food insecurity. Akin’s chief program officer, Daniele Lyman-Torres, said that although Akin has been fortunate enough to not face any major financial hurdles yet, it has spent the past year feeling the effects of these cuts. “ We know that many organizations have had to close or stop services. That puts more pressure on the organizations that are left providing services because people have one less food bank or two less food banks they can go to in the month,” Lyman-Torres said. “So they need to revisit your food bank. And we don’t necessarily have more food, but what we have done is we really have rallied around the communities and we’ve been asking for people to support us.”
