Mayor Opposes State Budget Cuts
By Chris Seymour | Correspondent at March 26, 2024 | 6:30 pm | Print
Plan Hurts City’s Most Vulnerable
Gov. Dan Malloy’s budget proposal could have an alarming effect on city residents who receive mental health treatment and the agency that provides those services, the private/non-profit Community Mental Health Affiliates (CMHA).
“Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s budget has proposed cuts to health and human services that will force CMHA and other providers to severely reduce and close treatment options to the most vulnerable persons in our state who have nowhere else to go,” Mayor Erin Stewart wrote to the General Assembly’s Appropriations Committee on March 6.
“CMHA’s Adult Outpatient Services cared for 724 New Britain residents last year, and if these cuts are enacted, almost half of those clients could be discharged from care,” added Stewart in her letter. “These are individuals with psychotic disorders who, without medication, are likely to put themselves and others in danger and will end up in our emergency rooms, our jails, or on the streets.”
Stewart also urged legislators in her letter “to reject the proposed reduction in Medicaid provider rates and cuts to DMHAS grants. The well-being of our citizens and our communities depends on it.”
CMHA serves as the local mental health authority for state catchment area 19, according to Stewart, who added that the city-based non-profit will serve 17,850 people in central, western and northwest Connecticut through direct behavioral health and substance abuse care and community prevention and awareness services in fiscal year 2015.
Stewart noted she has had the opportunity to see much of the good work CMHA does up close. “As Mayor of New Britain, I’ve worked with CMHA in many capacities, and the agency has been an excellent partner to the city and the community,” she wrote. “This summer, CMHA provided outreach and care for the city’s homeless population after local residents complained about vagrants in Central Park. CMHA also assisted this winter to provide an overflow shelter for New Britain’s homeless during one of the coldest seasons on record.”
Raymond Gorman, CMHA’s President and CEO, penned a similar letter to legislatures and he outlined the negative impact reduced Medicaid funding has been having on his organization (and will continue to have).
“Because of inadequate Medicaid rates and flat grant funding for seven of the past eight years, CMHA has closed eight outpatient clinics in the past five years,” Gorman wrote.
Just six months ago, CMHA was forced to shutter the Northwest Center for Family Services, an outpatient clinic in the Sharon/Lakeville area it had been running for roughly six decades.
“The center had been in operation since the mid-1950s, providing clinical care to hundreds of adults and children every year,” explained Gorman. “In total, over 1,100 people that we used to care for were discharged. These were real people. These are real cuts— not hyperbole. Continued erosion of support for the services that our clients need will necessitate additional closures.”
