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.

“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. 

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Chris Gamble, a behavioral health policy analyst for the Children’s Law Center, said he’s concerned the crisis response changes will only compound these disruptions. 

The Catholic Charities team — known as the Child and Adolescent Mobile Psychiatric Service, or ChAMPS—has focused specifically on this work for the last 15 years, serving as a resource for schools to call in emergency situations or a way to fill the gap if a school doesn’t have a dedicated clinician. By contrast, DBH primarily serves adults since its crisis response unit operates overnight, and Gamble questions whether the agency is ready to pick up the slack in ChAMPS’ absence.

“Teenagers, they’re not just small adults,” Gamble said. “The way you talk to a child is different from an adult. And from just the clinical perspective, something like suicidal ideation may present differently in a 10-year-old versus a 40-year-old. It’s about being able to know those nuances and ChAMPS is doing this day in and day out.”

Bazron assured the council that her agency is ready for the change, and plans to hire between six and eight additional staffers to supplement its crisis response work. Yet lawmakers expressed skepticism that would be enough to meet the need, perhaps forcing police officers to respond to yet more calls instead.

“Our need for crisis services are expanding while we are slashing the budget in such a significant way,” said Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker.

That’s why Gamble is hopeful lawmakers will be able to move money around in the budget to keep the city’s contract with ChAMPS. He notes lawmakers have previously considered adding a small fee on phone bills to fund the city’s 988 crisis response call center, and some of that money could be directed toward this purpose.