D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s proposed budget would cut the number of work hours the city will pay for in half for a large number of mental health providers, limiting the services people receiving mental health and community support would have access to.
As proposed, the budget would cut the number of hours D.C. Department of Behavioral Health (DBH) providers can bill for community support from 200 units to 100 units, or from 50 hours to 25 hours per client, per 180 days. Community support services include activities like getting a client to the grocery store, helping them to renew their health insurance, or going to the pharmacy with a client to pick up meds. This job is primarily done by community support workers.
Bowser’s proposed budget change effectively cuts the time these workers can be paid for spending time with clients in half. The change is to not only incentivize clients to use more clinical services, like therapy or psychiatric treatment, instead of community services, according to DBH, but also to make service providers shift towards offering more clinical care…