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This week, Governor Kathy Hochul delivered her State of the State address to officially kick off the 2024 legislative session and forecast some of her priorities for this year's state budget.
Over two decades, our network has observed enough legislative sessions to know that mental health was a rare mention in a NY Governor’s State of the State; even rarer, the mention of children. The silence was deafening.
For too many years, students have been talking about their mental health. Parents have been talking about their children’s mental health. Educators. Peers. Clinicians. Lawyers. Pediatricians. Even US Surgeon Generals.
But not Governors. That is until Governor Kathy Hochul. Yesterday, she demonstrated that she's listening. She's contributing to public discourse. And not just that, she's proposing historic reform and investments. Never has there been more hope that we are witnessing a turning point for children's behavioral health.
In her words: “For decades, our mental health system was deprioritized and defunded. Make no mistake: this is the defining challenge of our time.”
The Governor is right. That's why our network of families young people must urge her to go further. Absent from her speech was commitment to an investment of $195M rate reform for home and community-based youth mental services or a 3.2% Cost of Living Adjustment for behavioral health providers.
To meet this historic moment, we recommend that the state funds these crucial investments by any means necessary- be it new revenue, reinvestment, or funds recovered by carving out behavioral health from Medicaid Managed Care.
Some of our highlights from the State of the State:
Youth Behavioral Health
- Establishing a school-based mental health clinic in any schools that wants one, including startup funds and improved reimbursement.
- Requiring commercial insurance to pay at least Medicaid APG rates for behavioral health
- New Youth Assertive Community Treatment Teams statewide
- Expanding access to the partial hospitalization and children’s day treatment programs
- Improve network adequacy standards that require insurance to provide out-of-network coverage at no additional cost if they cannot provide appointments within a specific # of days.
- 15 new State Operated Psychiatric beds dedicated to youth.
- Increased funding for Teen Mental Health First Aid programs.
- Expanding loan repayment program for children’s mental health practitioners
- Strengthening Mental Health Parity Enforcement through funding additional staff to bring enforcement actions and double fines for insurance noncompliance.
- Forming an OMH Youth Advisory Board to ensure that youth-informed best practices continue to be incorporated in developing behavioral health programs and policies
Child and Family Wellbeing, Youth Justice, and more:
- Dedicate funding to Children’s Community Residences, with a focus on youth with child welfare involvement
- Add funding for the Supervision and Treatment Services for Juveniles Program (STSJP) administered by the Office of Children and Family Services.
- $50M to support anti-child poverty efforts in upstate cities.
- Opting in to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program for Children (Summer EBT) to help families with children eligible for free or reduced-price school meals.
- Continued investment in community- led youth programs (like Project RISE: Respond, Invest, Sustain and Empower) in historically under-resourced communities that experience the highest rates of gun violence.
This list is not exhaustive and we anticipate more specific details on each proposal in the Executive Budget proposal expected to be released next week. Read more in the report below from Carreau Consulting.
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