Jamelle 'Mellie' Harris was driving when her elementary-aged son began to have a breakdown. He had long struggled with mental and behavioral health issues, but this time she just couldn’t de-escalate. She sat on the side of the road, unsure how to get back to their Southeast D.C. home without her child trying to throw himself out of the moving vehicle.
At a loss, she called the Child and Adolescent Mobile Psychiatric Service.
The hotline workers were able to soothe him. Later, when she needed tools to address mental health episodes at home, the service, known as ChAMPS, helped her develop a safety plan and put together a sensory box full of her son’s favorite things to help calm him down. And when she recognized her son needed more intensive help but worried about calling the police on a young Black boy, she trusted ChAMPS to make sure he was taken away in an ambulance, not a police car.
“I can’t imagine what it would be like if we didn’t have ChAMPS to call if there’s an emergency,” Harris, a 32-year-old mother of two, said.
ChAMPS is an emergency service for children and teens ages 6-17 who are having mental or behavioral crises. Under D.C.’s budget proposal, the program would be shuttered, part of a broader slate of cuts that would also phase out the city’s contracts with a network of community-based organizations providing clinicians to D.C. schools. The proposed changes would save roughly $7 million dollars by moving those responsibilities to the city’s Department of Behavioral Health, which operates its own general crisis response team.
In a moment when the city is grappling with teen behavior – from “teen takeovers” to viral Chipotle brawls – and conversations about resources for the city’s youth have come under a national microscope, some fear it’s a dangerous time to disrupt the behavioral health care system. More than 150 parents, educators and behavioral health professionals from over 60 D.C. schools, as well as 45 local organizations, signed a letter last month decrying the proposed changes.
"At a time when children across the District are facing deep instability, DBH is attempting to pull students’ trusted adults from their schools,” said Danielle Robinette, a senior policy attorney at Children’s Law Center, one of the organizations that signed the letter.
A DBH spokesperson said in a statement that it remains “committed” to making services available, and that consolidating children’s crisis services in-house will allow the department to better coordinate follow-up care and encourage families to seek ongoing support. The spokesperson also pointed out that DBH’s new plan for school-based care includes telehealth, which would extend resources to public schools currently without in-person mental health clinicians. D.C. plans to spend $18 million over the next few years to establish the new school-based behavioral health program
Shaina Lamchick Hagen is a parent to an autistic first grader at John Burroughs Elementary School. At a public budget hearing, she testified that her family developed a close relationship with a contracted behavioral health specialist at the school who worked with her son to develop social skills. But the specialist recently told Hagen she will not be returning next year because of the proposed restructuring of services.
“Ms. Taylor has been a lifeline for our son and for our family,” Hagen said. “I don’t know how we are going to tell my son. He and the other students at our school receiving services from Ms. Taylor will be devastated.”
The city is facing a difficult $1.1 billion budget gap, and Mayor Muriel Bowser submitted a proposal that balanced the budget without hiking up taxes. The proposed budget also includes steep cuts to the D.C. Department of Human Services, which provides programs for housing and food assistance, and the Pay Equity Fund, which uses taxes on the city’s wealthy to fund wages for child care workers. Earlier this month, D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson said he identified an additional $420 million in revenue to put towards the 2027 budget, potentially softening some cuts.
During a budget markup session last week, D.C. Councilmember Christina Henderson said she “strongly opposed” the move away from community-based organizations and recommended $6.1 million be reallocated to restore funding for contracts with community-based organizations. She also plans to fund ChAMPS and other crisis hotlines with money from a tax to D.C. residents’ phone bills.
Her colleagues from the council’s more progressive contingent like Brianne Nadeau, Zachary Parker and Charles Allen voiced similar concerns at the hearing. Parker said he doubted D.C. had the capacity to move these programs in-house, while Allen said he worried the sacrifices made in the budget came at the highest cost to the city's most vulnerable.
“A lot has been made about how our economy is shifting and we need to adapt to recent decisions by the federal government to reduce its workforce, its size, its real estate footprint," Allen said. "Unfortunately, I think the executive has chosen to go down a path where the budget may be balanced, but it’s on the backs of those who are most vulnerable.”
Harris said that as a Ward 8 resident raising fifth-generation Washingtonians, community-based organizations can feel more in-tune with neighborhood-specific concerns. She said her sons have made progress when they’ve developed relationships with school-based clinicians, and that they’ve grown comfortable with ChAMPS because they know the program was designed in part to divert children away from law enforcement and, if possible, avoid hospitalization.
“It just doesn’t seem like an ideal time to reduce or disrupt the community-based mental health resources,” Harris said. “Shifting these services into a more strictly clinical structure, it’s not attractive to my community so it might unintentionally reduce accessibility.”
Chandler Dennard, a music teacher at Kimball Elementary School in Greenway, also expressed concern about the timing. He said some of his students’ parents have lost jobs this year and have had to move in with relatives. These children need stability at school, he said, and he worried the potential loss of Kimball Elementary’s contracts with an art therapist or Hillcrest Children & Family Center could feel like a disruption.
“If we don’t protect it now, we’ll pay for it later,” said Dennard, a teacher of 25 years. “Mental health clinicians who are in the schools know the families, know the neighborhood and can step in to support the students before the behavior escalates.”
The Council will continue to make adjustments to the proposed budget in the coming weeks. A final vote is scheduled for June 23.
