Five years after launching an ambitious mental health program, many schools have struggled to get it up and running. Hundreds more have yet to try. If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.” QUINCY, Calif. — When Taletha Washburn and the staff at Plumas Charter School first heard that California wanted to help schools treat more kids struggling with mental health, it felt like a well-timed remedy for a rural community where families struggle to find care. Employees spent two years “spinning our wheels,” attending state-led webinars, filling out countless forms, and researching electronic health record systems to prepare, said Washburn, the school’s executive director. When they reached out for assistance, she said, they waited months for a state response. The school received its first reimbursement check in April. Washburn said the school has been reimbursed $8,000 and has at least $12,000 in outstanding claims.
Five years after launching an ambitious mental health program, many schools have struggled to get it up and running. Hundreds more have yet to try.
If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.”
QUINCY, Calif. — When Taletha Washburn and the staff at Plumas Charter School first heard that California wanted to help schools treat more kids struggling with mental health, it felt like a well-timed remedy for a rural community where families struggle to find care.
Employees spent two years “spinning our wheels,” attending state-led webinars, filling out countless forms, and researching electronic health record systems to prepare, said Washburn, the school’s executive director. When they reached out for assistance, she said, they waited months for a state response.
The school received its first reimbursement check in April. Washburn said the school has been reimbursed $8,000 and has at least $12,000 in outstanding claims. For a program Washburn had thought could be a game changer in her small rural town, it’s been a disappointing bust.
Plumas Charter is among roughly 1,000 public schools, community colleges, and universities that participate in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s first-in-the-nation initiative requiring that health insurance companies reimburse them for on-campus behavioral healthcare. California schools have been adding counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists to provide services where young people spend most of their time, making mental health treatment more accessible to kids whose families might have spent months waiting to see private therapists.
Five years after the program’s launch, Washburn and other California school officials say they have encountered a rollout fraught with inadequate guidance from the state, an incomplete billing infrastructure, a lack of standardized forms, and persistent delays signing up and getting paid. More than half of California’s school systems and colleges don’t participate in the billing program. Of those that do, fewer than one-fifth had filed claims as of June 1, according to the latest state data.
The program hasn’t come close to bringing in the half-billion dollars in promised revenue to cover the salaries of thousands of counselors, therapists, and wellness coaches, many of whom school districts hired with a deluge of federal covid pandemic funding. As a result, schools across California have issued thousands of pink slips amid local budget cuts.
“One of the things that makes people hate government is when we make a promise and then we struggle to keep that promise because we can’t get the administrative part of it up and running,” said state lawmaker Dawn Addis, a former special education teacher and Democrat who has criticized the program’s slow implementation.
Newsom’s office declined to make the governor available for an interview for this article. At a May press conference to release his final state budget proposal, the Democratic governor pointed to the “unprecedented” initiative, saying “no other state in the nation has done more.”
“We have a lot more work to do to deal with the crisis of our time,” Newsom said. “Making investments in wellness, not just physical health, but mental health for our kids, is a good investment.”
Tom Insel, the former head of the National Institute of Mental Health, who has advised Newsom, said the rocky rollout, in many ways, reflects the groundbreaking nature of what California is trying to do. Still, given the level of investment so far, he too had expected clearer evidence of dramatic improvement.
“What we struggle with in California is: We spend the money, but we don’t always see the outcomes. It’s sobering to realize, especially as an advocate, that you could actually get the programs, get the money, get everything that you want from the policy side, but the execution just isn’t there.”
In 2021, 1 in 10 high school students nationwide said they’d attempted suicide, by then the second-leading cause of death for young people ages 10 to 24.
In response, Newsom announced a $4.4 billion “Master Plan for Kids’ Mental Health,” promising an overhaul of California’s behavioral health system that he said would be transformative. National mental health experts said Newsom’s initiative was the most ambitious attempt of any state to tackle a youth mental health crisis that had metastasized during the pandemic.
The state funneled $730 million in one-time funding into workforce efforts, such as campaigns to recruit mental health workers and programs to repay student loans. An additional $220 million has gone to facilitate partnerships between local governments and school officials, and $381 million was distributed in grants to schools and community groups for facilities or services, according to an analysis of program funding by KFF Health News.
The state has spent roughly $532 million to date on digital apps designed to connect families with counseling and provide a consultation service for primary care physicians handling behavioral health issues outside their expertise, while an additional $232 million has gone toward state operations and program evaluations.
And the state has added 1,855 school counselors since 2021, according to statistics from the American School Counselor Association, which in recent years has integrated mental health into professional standards. That’s well below the 10,000 Newsom had pledged by the end of this year as part of his initiative.