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Lawmakers hear growth in children’s community services and concerns over resource center cut and residential counts
Summary
State officials told the House Finance Committee that community children’s behavioral health services have expanded steadily, while a state resource center required by RSA 135‑F is not funded in the governor’s budget and residential placement counts remain high.
State officials briefed the House Finance Committee on Feb. 27 about children’s behavioral health programs, describing steady growth in community‑based services while noting continuing need for residential capacity and workforce supports.
Katia Fox, director of the Division for Behavioral Health, told legislators that community programs such as Fast Forward (for ages 5–21) and Early Childhood Wraparound (birth to 5) have shown steady increases in enrollments and referrals. Fox said Fast Forward grew from pilot counts of about eight participants in July 2022 to roughly 63 enrollments by January 2025, a pattern the division said indicates deliberate, capacity‑building growth rather than a rapid, unstable scale‑up.
The division described TREC (Transitional Enhanced Care Coordination), a program that coordinates care when a youth is admitted to or discharged from residential treatment or a psychiatric hospitalization. Fox said those transition points are “one of the most important” for preventing people from falling out of treatment.
The department provided a point‑in‑time residential inventory showing 3,309 children in residential treatment at the time of its data pull in early February. Fox said some placements are within New Hampshire, some in New England, and some at national out‑of‑state programs; complex clinical needs — including medically fragile cases and eating disorders — explain many out‑of‑state placements.
Fox told members the state is required by statute (RSA 135‑F) to operate a Children's Behavioral Health Resource Center that links families to services and trains providers. She said the governor’s operating budget does not fund the center in the next biennium; the division had previously budgeted $1 million in general funds per year ($2 million over the biennium) to continue the center. Fox said the department is considering bringing the work in‑house if staffing can be restored, but noted that provider training and some technical assistance functions currently provided by the resource center might be lost without external contracts.
Committee members pressed for counts and trend data; Fox said the department would provide unfiltered referral and enrollment numbers, rapid‑response statistics and monthly residential reports to give the committee fuller context on whether increases reflect better outreach or greater need.
Ending: The division flagged the resource center reduction as a prioritized need not funded in the governor's budget and said it would follow up with the committee with more detailed data on referrals, outcomes and the residential placement crosswalk.
