WAMU: Mayor Bowser’s budget proposes sweeping changes to mental health services in D.C. schools, raising concerns

Alex Koma of WAMU reports on the Department of Behavioral Health’s plan to terminate contracts with Community Based Organizations that provide school-based behavioral health and youth crisis response services in favor of moving the services in-house. The piece features Leah Castelaz and Chris Gamble of Children’s Law Center, Miriam Hauser of Mary’s Center, and Gracy Obuchowicz of Empower Ed, all members of the Strengthening Families Coalition.

In a tight budget year, D.C. school leaders, parents and advocates fear a double whammy of cuts is on the way for mental health services for students.

Mayor Muriel Bowser is proposing a major shift for school-based behavioral health services: she wants to phase out the city’s contracts with a network of community-based organizations providing clinicians to schools and bring those functions under a city agency.

At the same time, she hopes to end a long-running contract with Catholic Charities DC to provide a mental health crisis response team, which primarily serves schools, a year after working to slash its budget. Similarly, Bowser plans to rely on the city’s Department of Behavioral Health to offer those services instead.

Taken together, some fear these changes will disrupt a fragile ecosystem of care for the city’s most vulnerable students at a time when there’s growing concern about truancy, “teen takeovers,” and all manner of other issues involving the District’s kids.

“We’re just staring down the barrel of major disruption by trying to move these programs in-house to an agency that I think is not staffed up yet to even take these programs on and doesn’t have the budget to either,” said Leah Castelaz, a senior policy attorney studying these issues at the Children’s Law Center.