By Julie Barrett, Founder, Conservative Ladies of America & Conservative Ladies of Washington
Read Part 1 HERE
Last week, in Part 1 of this series, I exposed HearMeWA for what it is: not a “safe place” for kids, but a taxpayer-funded pipeline to government control. My 2021 nightmare with Seattle Children’s Hospital, when my 14-year-old and a social worker made life-altering decisions behind our backs, is the reason I dig into programs like this and sound the alarm for other parents. HearMeWA, bankrolled with $2.5 million from 2021’s ESSB 5092, is the state’s latest tool for cutting parents out. The 2025 Annual Report shows just 161 reports from April 2024 to April 2025, and those numbers reveal far more about the government’s agenda than about youth “safety.” From selective outreach to secretive referrals, this is about one thing: creating a direct channel between your child and the state, with you on the outside.
The report boasts of 161 tips in a state with over 1.5 million youth under 25…pretty pathetic when we have a youth mental health crisis, but also a huge relief as this is no resource to help them, but to likely make matters worse.
Bullying and cyberbullying topped the list, followed by depression, harassment, and anxiety. Suicide — the second leading cause of death for Washington youth — came in at eighth. The hotline sorted tips into “critical” (57%), “urgent” (31%), and “life-safety” (12%). Most were handed to schools (66%), with smaller portions going to law enforcement, 911, or CPS.
Half the reports came from third parties — teachers, friends, neighbors — not the youth themselves. And the program reached only 20 of 39 counties, concentrated in urban centers. Rural Washington? Largely ignored.
The Real Red Flags
Third-party reporting means someone else can decide your child has a “problem” and feed that to the state without you ever knowing. With SB 5599 already allowing the state to harbor minors seeking certain “protected” services without notifying parents, anonymous reports are a loaded weapon. Add in HB 1296 — giving OSPI expanded power over student data and privacy — and HearMeWA becomes a legal backdoor for parental exclusion.
The outreach is laser-targeted. The report highlights its focus on BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+ youth — the very groups most aggressively pushed toward “gender-affirming care” and other irreversible interventions. Trauma-informed care, in this context, often means bypassing parents as “barriers” to what the state deems best. The quick-exit button on HearMeWA’s site tells kids exactly who they’re meant to hide from: you.
And let’s not gloss over the privacy minefield. HearMeWA admits that details from these tips could be exposed through public records requests. Imagine your teen’s mental health struggles or school conflicts becoming searchable — while you were never told in the first place.
The report offers a single “success story”: a teen connected to mental health resources for depression. That’s one out of 161. There’s no transparency about what happened with the rest. Were parents ever told? Were kids directed to gender clinics, activist nonprofits, or political advocacy groups? The state isn’t saying, and that should terrify you.
The numbers also prove the program isn’t a lifeline, it’s a funnel. Only 12% of tips were “life-safety” situations, yet every report, no matter how trivial or subjective, can trigger contact with schools, law enforcement, or CPS, without parental consent.
Why This Matters Now
HearMeWA is not just a hotline. It’s a piece of a much larger system: legislation, school policies, activist training, and now a 24/7 reporting tool designed to give the state full access to your child’s life and decisions. The Youth Advisory Group, which I’ll cover in Part 3, is shaping the messaging and outreach, ensuring kids are encouraged to see the state, not you, as their primary source of “support.”
The first year’s data proves HearMeWA isn’t failing — it’s working exactly as intended. Not to protect kids, but to normalize state-first intervention and make parental involvement optional.
Part 3 will dig into the Youth Advisory Group: who’s on it, what they’re telling your kids, and how it all ties back to the state’s long game of replacing parents.
