Vashon Youth & Family Services is an excellent organization — the only agency on Vashon that offers a full suite of services to those in need. Indeed, VYFS is probably doing more to keep the safety net intact on Vashon than any other single organization.

It’s both ironic and disappointing, then, to learn that the agency hasn’t found a way to put a critical part of that safety net under its own employees. As we learned this week when talking to Ken Maaz about his decision to leave the agency, VYFS doesn’t offer health or dental benefits to any of its employees.

If it did, it’s possible Vashon wouldn’t be losing Maaz — arguably the best administrator the organization has ever had — to an off-Island agency that offers a full benefits package. The impact of his departure will be considerable. In his two short years at the helm of VYFS, Maaz has established himself as a strong and strategic leader, not only at his agency but in the broader social services arena on Vashon.

VYFS’s failure to provide benefits is not an indictment of the organization. It doesn’t offer health insurance because it can’t afford to. Maaz, meanwhile, a 57-year-old man with a pre-existing condition, can’t purchase it privately.

And so it is that VYFS and the director it stands to lose are emblematic of one our nation’s greatest social crises.

At the same time, we urge the VYFS board to do all it can to find the funds in its slim budget to provide such benefits. It’s only right that an organization with a mission to foster “a community of emotionally healthy, resourceful families and individuals” ensure that its own employees have access to affordable health care.