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Providers warn cuts to youth crisis teams, court urgent care and community supports will reduce access to care
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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 past year and provided in‑person clinical intervention for 873, or roughly 80 percent, of those calls; 78 percent of in‑person interventions resulted in stabilization in the community and avoided hospitalization. Mathis said sustaining staff and licensed clinicians requires roughly $1.23 million in salary costs alone and that reducing CHAMPS’ proposed FY26 allocation from $1,200,000 to $648,000 would force service reductions.
Several witnesses also testified about the Court Urgent Care Clinic, an embedded clinic at the D.C. Superior Court that provides same‑day behavioral‑health assessment and treatment for people who encounter court processes. Shannon Walsh, clinical director of the Court Urgent Care Clinic, said the program provides same‑day services, often preventing unnecessary hospitalizations, and that it was on pace for 845 unique referrals and 1,029 assessments for the contract year. When asked by the committee, Walsh and Pathways to Housing representatives said DBH had proposed eliminating the clinic; committee questioning showed the clinic’s minimal FY26 funding need if restored was roughly $907,000.
Mark Levoda, executive director of the District of Columbia Behavioral Health Association, warned of a separate, larger cut to community support services (MHRS). Levoda said DBH has proposed an $11,300,000 reduction in MHRS local‑only services that would be implemented by cutting the authorization from 200 units per 180 days to 100 units per 180 days. “Forty units is an hour, so a hundred units per hundred and 80 days results in less than 1 hour of care being available per week for people assessed to have severe and persistent mental illness,” Levoda said. He added that the provider network lacks the staffing to manage the additional administrative burdens the change would create.
Unity Healthcare, Pathways to Housing and community hospital representatives told the committee that cuts to crisis teams and community supports would increase emergency‑department use, jail involvement and unmet needs for people with severe and persistent mental illness. Witnesses urged the Council to restore CHAMPS funding, keep the Court Urgent Care Clinic, and restore MHRS funding at prior authorization levels (200 units per 180 days) to avoid service collapse and overload in hospitals and the criminal justice system.
Ending: The committee asked DBH for clarifying information about the proposed cuts and set a follow‑up for agency testimony on June 2. Providers asked the Council to weigh the potential system‑level costs — including ED use and involuntary hospitalizations — before finalizing budget changes.
