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Providers warn cuts to youth crisis teams, court urgent care and community supports will reduce access to care
Summary
Witnesses at a Committee on Health hearing said proposed FY26 changes to DBH — including large reductions to CHAMPS funding, elimination of the Court Urgent Care Clinic, and a plan to cut community support (MHRS) units — would weaken DC’s crisis system for children and adults and shift demand to emergency rooms and police.
Multiple crisis‑system providers, hospital partners and child advocates told the Committee on Health that the mayor’s FY26 budget proposal for the Department of Behavioral Health would reduce capacity for youth crisis response, eliminate a courthouse‑based urgent care clinic and materially cut community support services.
Chris Gamble, a behavioral‑health policy analyst at Children’s Law Center, said CHAMPS — the child and adolescent mobile psychiatric service — “is being almost completely defunded.” Gamble warned that the community response team (CRT) is not a ready substitute for CHAMPS’ youth‑specific model and said cutting CHAMPS would be “harmful” because schools rely on CHAMPS for assessments and transportation when hospitalization is necessary.
Bria Mathis, clinical director for CHAMPS, provided operational detail: CHAMPS responded to 1,089 calls over the…
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