Mass. lawmakers, providers oppose cuts to youth mental health services

BOSTON — With three state-funded youth mental health programs at risk of closing, lawmakers and providers ramped up their opposition this week to Gov. Maura Healey’s proposed budget cuts that come as Massachusetts continues to grapple with a behavioral health care crisis.

Two 15-bed intensive residential treatment programs (IRTP), operated by NFI Massachusetts in Westborough, that serve teenagers with severe mental health and safety issues would close under Healey’s fiscal 2026 spending plan. That would leave just two other IRTPs in the state.

The governor’s budget would also shutter the state’s only clinically intensive residential treatment (CIRT) program, called Three Rivers in Belchertown, which has a dozen beds and treats children ages 6 to 12.

At a budget hearing Monday in Attleboro, Department of Mental Health Commissioner Brooke Doyle said those facilities are scheduled to close due to low patient counts, inadequate staffing and location hurdles. The cost-saving measure comes as the Department of Mental Health — which would receive a 7% overall budget increase under Healey’s proposal — looks to prioritize resources for its over-capacity psychiatric hospitals.

“These programs have been very difficult to maintain adequate and safe staffing within. They’ve been understaffed for extended periods of time, and that has contributed in large part to why we had difficulty keeping all the beds filled,” Doyle said in Attleboro. “The programs do provide a specialized service need, and the reality is, that we haven’t been able to operate them fully today. So what we’re proposing to do is to right-size the IRTP, reflecting the volume that does get utilized.”

The state pays for those beds “in full,” regardless of whether or not they are occupied, Doyle said. She argued that it is “not sustainable to continue to pay for 50% utilization.”

She highlighted the state’s investment in community-based mental health resources, though the IRTP and CIRT programs are seen as a last resort to stabilize young patients who repeatedly end up in the hospital and pose significant safety risks to themselves and their families.

“Without these services, youth will continue to cycle through expensive and disruptive emergency and acute hospital services,” Lydia Todd, executive director of NFI Massachusetts, said at a State House budget hearing Tuesday, according to a copy of her prepared remarks. “Their families face income loss because it is impossible to maintain employment when they are regularly needed to respond to mental health crises.”

Todd added, “If this program is closed, the commonwealth will lose a recently renovated facility, a highly credentialed, experienced and skilled multi-disciplinary team of 95 staff, a Joint Commission-accredited program, and most importantly, the ability to help youth and families with the most serious needs to manage their mental health issues in their natural communities, and be less likely to end up in one of our adult systems.”

Todd told the News Service that 95 out of 100 positions are filled.

“We could be fully utilized — no problem,” she said.

Program leaders and lawmakers contend the programs are underutilized due to a complicated Department of Mental Health (DMH) referral process that can leave youth languishing in hospitals for weeks or months before they find a placement. Because of high staff turnover during the COVID pandemic, some hospital mental health providers also were unaware the IRTP and CIRT programs existed, said Sen. Jake Oliveira of Ludlow.

“It’s my hope that we can restore the funding for these critical programs because everything that we hear from constituents and everything that we read, there is a dire need for youth beds, particularly adolescent mental health beds throughout Massachusetts,” Oliveira told the News Service. “If we have programs that are underutilized, then that needs to do a better job with the referral process to get help to families across Massachusetts.”

Doyle admitted the referral process was “too clunky” at the hearing Monday.

“So I’ve actually made some changes to that referral process, going to preview it with stakeholders this month, with a go-live plan for May,” Doyle said.

In another significant budget cut, DMH plans to slash the case management workforce in half, saving the state $12.4 million. That move recently triggered DMH workers represented by SEIU Local 509 to take a vote of no confidence in Doyle.

Gov. Maura Healey has already hit pause on a controversial plan to shutter a 16-bed psychiatric hospital on Cape Cod. That closure, combined with the three youth mental health programs, would have saved the state a total of $20.1 million, according to a presentation from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

As House Democrats prepare to release their budget next week, Rep. Aaron Saunders of Belchertown said he plans to fight to ensure the CIRT, operated by Cutchins Programs for Children & Families, receives funding.

“We need it to be there,” Saunders told the News Service. “It is a level of intervention and service that other programs are not designed to provide, and that, to me, really is the linchpin.”

Saunders added, “In my conversations with the administration, I’ve tried to impress upon them that there needs to be access, in some way, shape or form, to this level of service.”

Tina Champagne, CEO of Cutchins Programs for Children & Families, urged lawmakers Tuesday to “dig deeper and to save our programs.” In prepared remarks, Champagne said the state remains in the throes of a “children’s mental health crisis” and argued that “this is no time for a reduction in intensive mental health services in our state.”

“The decision to cut the CIRT is not only in direct opposition to well-established evidence-based practices for children and families with some of the most persistent and challenging mental health and safety concerns but also puts the most vulnerable children and families in the commonwealth at even greater risk by perpetuating the cycle of ACES and traumatic experiences,” Champagne said, referring to adverse childhood experiences.

“The degree of safety and mental health challenges that must occur for youth to be considered for a DMH referral for the CIRT is highly intensive, and the youth’s safety concerns are typically quite serious,” she added. “If these youth could be treated elsewhere in the community, they would have been referred to those services and usually have already utilized these services, but they are not intensive enough to maintain safety and mental health stabilization.”

At the hearing, Oliveira told Doyle he was insulted by her remarks that signaled the Belchertown program was not viable due to its location in western Massachusetts.

“That’s insulting to any western Mass. lawmaker who might be sending people halfway across the state, hours away, to get the programs to utilize them,” Oliveira said.

The commissioner told Oliveira she regretted if her testimony seemed to be “disrespectful.”

“It’s more of a matter that we have to weigh parents’ requests and parents’ priorities, as well,” Doyle said. “So, it has always been a western Mass.-located program. It’s not new. And what we’re seeing is that it is getting a bit more challenging, particularly with workforce constraints, that when we don’t have full staff operating, it requires that the department have to make decisions with parents about whether or not their child can be safely treated in that environment, based on staff that are available at that time.”

Rep. Kelly Pease, a Westfield Republican, questioned whether the adolescent mental health programs represented the “smart place” for DMH to make cuts. Without providing sufficient care to young Bay Staters early on, the state may exacerbate the prison pipeline and end up incurring more costs in the future, Pease told Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh.

Walsh insisted those programs were 50% occupied and emphasized the push by the Executive Office of Health and Human Services is to “right-size our behavioral health infrastructure.” Pease argued the low patient census was a function of DMH’s “antiquated process to get a referral.”

“I think the question for the Legislature is: Do you want to pay for standby capacity in two or three programs across the state that may or may not be used?” Walsh said at the hearing Monday. “In the meantime, you should challenge us to significantly improve our antiquated or very complicated processes to get people into these systems — some of which, I will remind us, were the result of court decisions. So we have patient referral pathways for people with, for children with behavioral health challenges that were built by lawyers, with due respect.”