BOSTON — Mental health care professionals throughout the state and Westfield’s state senator and representative are trying to push back against a proposal in Gov. Maura Healey’s fiscal year 2026 budget that would strip over $80 million from essential mental health programs and could mean the closing of the only facility in the state that provides specialized care to children.
“We will close down,” said Tina Champagne, the CEO at the Northampton-based Cutchins Programs for Children & Families, who explained what would happen to the mental health facility if the proposed $15.3 million reduction in the state Department of Mental Health budget isn’t restored.
She said Cutchins has been providing a very specialized program for over 20 years for children between the ages of 6 and 12 and their families known as the Three Rivers, which is a Clinically Intensive Residential Program, located in Belchertown.
The program offers children with severe emotional and behavioral challenges a safe, nurturing sanctuary and healing experience, and it’s the only one of the state, Champagne said.
“There’s no other place these kids will be able to go if we shut down,” she said, adding that it accepts children from across the state.
On March 31, Champagne was at a budget hearing to advocate for restoring the proposed cuts.
“The decision to cut the CIRT is not only in direct opposition to well-established evidence-based practices for children and families with some of the most persistent and challenging mental health and safety concerns, but also puts the most vulnerable children and families in the commonwealth at even greater risk by perpetuating the cycle of ACES and traumatic experiences,” Champagne said, referring to adverse childhood experiences, as reported by the State House News Service on April 10.
Also on the chopping block is a 15-bed intensive treatment program, operated by NFI Massachusetts in Westborough, that serves teenagers with serious mental health and safety issues. It would close under Healey’s plan, according to the SHNS.
“Without these services, youth will continue to cycle through expensive and disruptive emergency and acute hospital services,” Lydia Todd, executive director of NFI Massachusetts, said at a State House budget hearing Tuesday, according to a copy of her prepared remarks as reported by the SHNS. “Their families face income loss because it is impossible to maintain employment when they are regularly needed to respond to mental health crises.”
State Sen. John Velis (D-Westfield) weighed in on the proposed cuts on April 10.
“Understanding the very real fiscal challenges our commonwealth is facing, I remain seriously concerned that these proposed cuts to various Department of Mental Health programs in the fiscal 2026 budget are a step in the wrong direction,” Velis said in a statement.
State Rep. Kelly Pease (R-Westfield), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee attended a budget hearing on April 8 where he the budget cuts were discussed questioned whether the adolescent mental health programs represented the “smart place” for DMH to make cuts, according to SHNS reporting.
Without providing sufficient care to young Bay Staters early on, the state may exacerbate the prison pipeline and end up incurring more costs in the future, Pease told Health and Human Services Secretary Kate Walsh, who also attended the budget hearing, according to SHNS reporting.
The other cuts proposed by Healey are a 50% reduction in DMH casework who work for those with behavioral health issues to live safely in their communities, cutting $14.2 million to grants that help improve interactions between first responders and those with mental health challenges.
As the Senate Chair of the Joint Committee on Mental Health, Substance Use, and Recovery, Velis called on his fellow lawmakers to prioritize restoring this funding ahead of the legislature’s budget debates this spring.
“Over the past several years the commonwealth has made itself a leader in the nation through our work to create parity in how we support mental health and physical health. Put simply, we are jeopardizing the sustained stabilization of our most vulnerable residents, risk inundating our emergency rooms, and creating a greater strain overall on a system already asked to do more with less,” Velis said in the statement.
Defending the proposed cuts, Department of Mental Health Commissioner Brooke Doyle said those facilities are slated to close due to low patient counts, inadequate staffing and location hurdles. The cost-saving measure comes as DMH — which would receive a 7% overall budget increase under Healey’s proposal — looks to prioritize resources for its over-capacity psychiatric hospitals, according to SHNS reporting.
“These programs have been very difficult to maintain adequate and safe staffing within. They’ve been understaffed for extended periods of time, and that has contributed in large part to why we had difficulty keeping all the beds filled,” Doyle said. “The programs do provide a specialized service need, and the reality is, that we haven’t been able to operate them fully today. So what we’re proposing to do is to right-size the [intensive residential treatment programs], reflecting the volume that does get utilized.”
Doyle said the state pays for those beds “in full,” regardless
Velis added the with the “uncertainty around federal funding and the state’s slow revenue collections,” he understood tough budget decisions must be made, but he believes the cuts will not have the intended cost savings.
